Book Review: Mexica by Norman Spinrad

Mexica by Norman Spinrad

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I became a Norman Spinrad fan in the 90s as he was going through a bit of a revival. His revolutionary science fiction novels were out of print, but the British wave of comic writers like Warren Ellis and Alan Moore, as well as an appreciation from the new thing called the internet, brought him back.

I picked up as many recent Spinrad novels as I could (I somehow found a bunch in a central Illinois used bookstore) which were at the time, "Russian Spring" and "Greenhouse Summer". As you can tell from those very 90-ish titles, Spinrad was taking on the sociopolitical issues of the day.

In the 2000s, as Spinrad was entering his Medicare years and nearly 50 years of writing, he had a bit of a commercial and critical success by turning to Alternate History. The Druid King and Mexica are well -recommended. Spinrad being Spinrad, he could not leave well enough alone, he followed this up by writing a novel called Osama the Gun that no one wanted to touch. That combined with health issues, means we haven't heard much from Norman in the last decade.

Mexica is pretty great. The first few pages were clunky (I had to re-read them) but after those first pages, it really takes off.

It is a fictionalized account of Cortes's conquest of the Aztecs (as told by a Jewish Spaniard disguised as an advisor) . Spinrad's characterizations are fantastic. He fleshes out motivations and backstories, and stays accessible throughout- hitting some big ideas. Even, the action scenes - which are hard to sell outside of a visual medium - work.

Indeed, the most ridiculous elements of the story come from either the actual story or long held legends. When I looked, I was shocked as much as the story follows what we know of Cortes and Montezuma.

This being Spinrad, there's obligatory drugs and sex. In this case, the drug is Chocolate and the sex isn't much different than what you would expect from a HBO story.

As a fan, I wasn't sure that Spinrad could still pull off surprises, but this was a real winner. It's only drawback being at 500 pages, it feels like there is a bit of repetition with the battles. Surely, he could have tightened it up a bit, and shaved 100 pages (150?) off.

Not everyone will like Spinrad, I suppose, but for me, this was a great ride.



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