Book review: War God- Return of the Plumed Serpent- Unrelentingly brutal

Author: Graham Hancock
Publisher: Coronet
Release Date: 9th October 2014

Website:
http://www.grahamhancock.com/wargod/vol2-synopsis.php

Graham Hancock on the Joe Rogan Experience (Highly recommended)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygWxXphYRos

***Spoilers in review***

‘War God II- Return of the Plumed Serpent’ is a difficult book to read, but not because it isn’t very well written, and not because it isn’t very cleverly structured. It is in fact extremely well written, expertly structured, tightly edited and extensively researched. It also has helpful summaries of previous events that nudge the reader’s memory, making it easier for him/her to understand what is happening in the relevant context.

The book is very good, but I didn’t enjoy reading it, and when I came to the final page I felt a wave of relief come over me. It was a relief that I would no longer have to read about disgusting, self-serving, avaricious sociopathic leaders instructing their order following subservients to carry out acts of inhumanity that they were very obviously revelling in.

Graham Hancock

This is not the fault of the author, as what he is doing in this book is using fiction to tell the real-life story of the Spanish conquest of the modern day Mexico. The problem is that we know how the story ends, and it’s difficult to see anybody in a positive light, not just the Spaniards, but the sacrifice crazed Mexica as well.

Author Graham Hancock understands that this is going to be a huge problem, and he does his best to surmount it, but I feel that the task is impossible. There are no heroes in this story, just sides.

A young girl named Tozi is introduced (in the first book) as a potential sacrificial victim to the wicked Mexica. She ends up as a servant of the wicked Spanish, as does her best friend Malinal, an attractive translator who sleeps with the psychopathic Cortez, helping him to deceive, manipulate, butcher and conquer the native people. A brave warrior name Shikotenka ends up utterly defeated and emasculated by the Spanish war machine. He doesn’t sleep with Cortez, but he might as well do. He finishes the book as little more than another concubine/vassal to the psychopathic Spanish leader. A good hearted and innocent young boy named Pepillo is taught how to kill, as is his pet dog Melchior. Innocence corrupted, incorporated and made into a tool to be used by the blood and gold thirsty Spaniards.

All of the characters that I could relate to, all of the individuals that I could empathise with in the first book have now joined the Spanish war machine of death and conquest.

Hernan Cortez himself is disgusting. He orders massacres, the burning of villages and the killing of civilians for tactical reasons. The individual human lives are not important to him. He is complex and cunning, but that does not interest me. He is simply disgusting, as is his rival Moctezuma. The former delights in getting his hands bloody on a one to one basis, whilst the latter is a coward, but both men revolt me. I don’t like reading about them, I just don’t.

UK book cover

The novel contains detailed accounts of massacres where the heavily armoured Spanish use their superior technology to slaughter the local tribes whilst having a whale of a time doing so. I could take no enjoyment from what I was reading here. This is a narrative for fans of splatter movies and serial killer books. They’ll love the descriptions of hand to hand butchery, the piled up human bodies, the torture, the stench of rotting flesh, the pulled out fingernails, the disemboweled wailing victims, the skin torn off screaming bodies.

To me it was unrelentingly brutal. It is historical fact, but there is no redeeming message here. Its just humanity at it’s worse. Order following, greed, deception, butchery, war and death. The gods look on, revelling in the bloodshed, but I don’t.

War God II- Return of the Plumed Serpent is a harrowing book to read. The young heroines and brave warriors of the first book are now just vassals of the Spanish Conquistadors. The streets are lined with rotting corpses and rivers of blood as Cortez the butcher enjoys the prettiest girl in town whilst dreaming of wealth and power.

History is harsh, it can leave you feeling hopelessly depressed that this is what our modern civilisation and cultures have been built upon. Graham Hancock has woven a brutal account of some terrible times here, but it just left me feeling cold. As Hancock himself puts it in the amendments of his book:

‘It is a historical fact that within fifty years of the Spanish conquest, the indigenous population of Mexico had been reduced through war, famine and introduced diseases from thirty million to just one million.’ 

There was no happy ending in Mexico. The gods of war enjoyed themselves, and the humans suffered. This brutal book tells the awful truth.

Rating: 9/10