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

Book review: War God- A devil pretending to be a God

Author: Graham Hancock
Publisher: Coronet
Released: 30th May 2013

First off, this is an extremely enjoyable and emotionally engaging book. It's not history, but it takes historical events and brings them to life through the fictionalised first person point of view narratives of various people set in historical settings. There is the gold and conquest crazed Spanish, who are seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old slave boy, as well as a bloodthirsty psychopathic lieutenant, and Cortez himself, who is written as an ambitious, conquest hungry violent man who justifies his actions through a highly dubious and unconvincing reading of the Bible, and instructional dreams of `Saint Peter,' who is most probably a demon intent on causing as much death and misery as possible.

The Mayan, Aztec and Mexica people are seen through the eyes of a slave girl witch who escapes the gruesome `fattening pen,' a beautiful courtesan/prostitute, a rival war chieftain who opposes the sacrifice crazed Mexica, and the leader of the Mexica, the historical Moctezuma, who is portrayed as a cowardly psychopath who is being manipulated by a blood thirsty demon who has disguised itself as a God.

The most interesting thing about this book is not the individuals themselves, but the `Gods' who are manipulating the story through their influence on the main characters in the narrative. These `Gods' appear in different forms to the different characters, but they all appear to have one thing in common. That being, they want blood, and they want as much blood as is possible. Gods, or demons pretending to be Gods?

It's a fascinating question, and one that has as much relevance today as it did back in the times of Cortez and Moctezuma. This book is just the beginning of the story of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. It follows the Spanish into their first major battle, and as it ends they have their eyes on the big prize. The city of Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Mexica, and the land that promises the Gold that the Spanish are prepared to butcher and murder for. It's a fantastic beginning, and the epic first battle between the technological advanced Spanish war machine and a woefully unprepared and overmatched Mayan tribe is awful, yet highly informative. Telling the reader exactly how such a small band of just five hundred men defeated a huge army of tens of thousands of brave but technologically overmatched warriors.

In conclusion, this is a fantastic page turning work of historical fiction. The big problem was always going to be that the Spanish were obviously murderous scumbags, and the Aztecs themselves were human sacrifice hungry scumbags as well. How do you pull for either side, when both sides consist of serial killing, murderous psychopaths who are perfectly willing to butcher thousands of people to serve their own war Gods, who are almost certainly the same demons pretending to be Gods, in order to get both sides butchering each other?

It could have been an insurmountable problem, but by telling the story through characters on both sides who are essentially slaves, the author (Graham Hancock) largely gets around this problem, as the reader can pull for the individual rather than either sides of the psychopathic, blood thirsty, warring armies.

When you finish a book and your first reaction is disappointment that you've finished and there's nothing more to read, you know the author has done his job. That's how I felt after reading War God: Nights of the witch. Luckily for me, and anybody else reading this fantastic book, this book is just the beginning. The story will continue in, War God: Return of the plumed serpent. Put my name down for that one as well. I'm looking forward to reading it already. Rating: 10/10