The Right Hand of the Sun - Anita Mason

Having fond memories of studying the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire at university, I was very interested to find this book and I was not at all disappointed. This is a brilliantly researched account which tells the story from multiple perspectives, emphasising the voices of Cortés's two translators, a Spanish man and an Aztec woman, who had both spent years as Mayan slaves and so both sat uncomfortably between the clashing cultures. This is made particularly clear through the use of names in the book, particularly that of the Aztec emperor - Cortés arrogantly refers to him as "Muckety", the Spanish translator Gerónimo is careful to learn his correct name of Muctezuma, and the Mayan woman Marina (whose name has in turn been "given" to her by Cortés) has grown up hearing tales of his power, and calls him by his title of "Lord-Who-Is-Severe".

Although I am not usually a fan of macho war stories, the battle scenes in this book were so well written that I found them totally gripping, really imagining what it would have been like to be there. Similarly, the engineering feat of constructing several ships in pieces to be carried for miles and assembled in place is described with human passion through the eyes of their designer, bringing the achievement to life. Cortés's coexisting motives of greed, ambition, and sincere religious fervour are also very well portrayed.

My only criticism of this book probably just reveals me as a lazy reader - in the middle section where the narration is given in turn to several of the Spanish gentlemen in Cortés's company, it was hard for me to keep their details and allegiances clear in my head. Other than that, I found the book compelling, rewarding, and convincing. I particularly enjoyed the tantalising glimpses at the end into the possible motivations of the strangely passive Muctezuma: Marina felt that he "knew everything that would happen" in the moment when "a low-class woman from the coast, a slave, raised her eyes and looked him in the face", and Gerónimo remembers a conversation where the emperor mused that "the Lord of the Near lacks a sacrifice" since the youth who had lived for a year as his incarnation on Earth had been killed by a Spaniard before his ritual sacrifice could take place - and as Gerónimo later realises, the other incarnation of the "Lord of the Near" was Muctezuma himself.