At Road's End
(The Pre-Aztec series, Book 1)
Zoe Saadia
Amazon Digital Services
Fiction, Historical Fiction
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Tecpatl was born a warrior, one of the elite class of fighters defending his great city, capturing vanquished foes to sacrifice for the honor of Quetzalcoatl. He never wished to mingle with peasants and traders... but, after a disastrous raid on a Mayan village, his uncle sent him off as an escort to traders traveling among the northern desert savages. They treat him as a dog, daring to order him, to ignore his advice. Every day he spends on this ignoble mission is another day his name remains sullied - and another day that the upstart, bloodthirsty Aztec tribes might strike at his home, while he languishes in this uncivilized place. And what is he to defend the traders from, in these wastelands?
When they come upon the massacred cliffside dwelling, they think all have fallen... until one young woman emerges from hiding. She speaks some of their tongue, and tells them not only of the terrible raid, but that a great city, Great Houses, lies scarcely a day's walk away. Tecpatl considers women lower than peasants, but something about this foreigner catches his eye. She is nothing but a savage, her people worshipping silly gods who live underground, without even proper castes to define one's place in their bizarre cities. He should be happy to be rid of her. But when darkness threatens the people of Great Houses, a threat that the city elders refuse to acknowledge, Tecpatl finds himself unaccountably torn. He should not care if these unworthy foreigners are too foolish to defend themselves. Besides, the last time he tried to lead warriors, he failed miserably. So why does he find it so difficult to walk away?
A Kindle-exclusive title.
REVIEW: The rich world of the ancient Americas is still a relatively untapped wellspring for fiction, so I thought this might be a different read. The setting, in the days of the Aztecs' rise and the looming collapse of both Anasazi and Mayan cultures, sounded intriguing. Sadly, my vision of this chaotic and pivotal historical era was blocked by Tecpatl, a character so bigoted and full of anger that I just couldn't begin to sympathize with him or his world. The author uses him and his lady love interest (which, in itself, defied the character's logic, as he considers women mere spoils of war for a good portion of the story) to force-feed the reader lessons on the history and cultures of the ancient Americas. I also came to suspect that English was not Saadia's first language; either that, or she needed a third-party editor to clean up her grammar and syntax. Some sentences, while composed of English words, made absolutely no sense whatsoever. These problems, along with a slow and predictable plot, sank what could have been a bland Okay book a half-star in the ratings.
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