Children of the Sun: The Fall of the Aztecs
By Elizabeth Manson Bahr
December 2009
Book Guild
Distrubuted by Trans-Atlantic Publications Inc.
ISBN: 9781846243103
337 pages
$34.95 Hardcover
OUT OF PRINT
Product Description
It is the year of One Reed, and the island city of Tenochtitlán - capital of the mighty Aztec Empire - has never seemed so powerful or so beautiful. Temples and palaces are resplendent with gold and jade, and its rulers live in pampered luxury. On feast days, thousands of people throng the network of streets and marketplaces and the Great Pyramid is awash with the blood of many sacrificed warriors. Everywhere is the stench of flowers and corpses, of life and death... Montezuma - emperor, high priest, family man and poet - is wracked with anxiety.
News has come of strange, pale-skinned men who have landed on the eastern shores of Mexico. They ride hideous stags, fight with smoke-belching sticks and are hungry for land and gold. But could their leader, Montezuma wonders, be the Plumed Serpent himself, the god Quetzalcoatl, whose return has been foretold in Aztec prophecy? Should he destroy the strangers, or worship them unconditionally? The fate of an empire lies in his hands. Children of the Sun is an epic retelling of the Conquest of Mexico from the Aztec point of view, and a breathtaking story of courage and loyalty, treachery and deceit. Peopled with a huge cast of characters - from the agonised Emperor himself and his headstrong daughter to the enigmatic conquistador Hernán Cortés - this is a richly imagined re-creation of one of history's most extraordinary civilisations and a heartbreaking lament for its fall.
News has come of strange, pale-skinned men who have landed on the eastern shores of Mexico. They ride hideous stags, fight with smoke-belching sticks and are hungry for land and gold. But could their leader, Montezuma wonders, be the Plumed Serpent himself, the god Quetzalcoatl, whose return has been foretold in Aztec prophecy? Should he destroy the strangers, or worship them unconditionally? The fate of an empire lies in his hands. Children of the Sun is an epic retelling of the Conquest of Mexico from the Aztec point of view, and a breathtaking story of courage and loyalty, treachery and deceit. Peopled with a huge cast of characters - from the agonised Emperor himself and his headstrong daughter to the enigmatic conquistador Hernán Cortés - this is a richly imagined re-creation of one of history's most extraordinary civilisations and a heartbreaking lament for its fall.
About the Author
Born in Kenya, Elizabeth Manson Bahr spent a peripatetic childhood shuttling between Africa and the Pacific island of Fiji. She studied French and Spanish at Tulane University in New Orleans, and whilst there spent a summer in Mexico City - the start of her interest the Aztecs and their civilisation. She has had many different jobs - chalet girl, secretary, conference organiser, cook, apple picker - but it was as an illustrator that she discovered her real vocation, founding the successful greetings card business Bizzie Lizzie Cards. Children of the Sun is her first novel.
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