The Emperor's Second Wife - Zoe Saadia

   2012; 270 pages.  Book 3 (out of 7) in the “Rise of the Aztecs” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Mesoamerica; Historical Fiction; Intrigue.   Overall Rating: 8/10.

 

    Kuini and Coyotl have made it to the big city!  In this case we’re talking about Tenochtitlan in 1419 CE, at the time, the largest metropolis in the Americas.  Nobody takes any notice of the two lads; they enter the city dressed like a couple of commoners.  They’re here to see if they can meet up with Coyotl’s half-sister, Iztac.

 

    Iztac will certainly be better dressed.  She’s married to Huitzilihuitl, the emperor of Tenochtitlan, and her official title is “the Emperor’s Second Wife”.  Not quite the queen of the hill, but close to it, and above all but one of the other half-dozen or so wives of the emperor.

 

    But that’s a mixed blessing because Huitzilihuitl is in poor health, and probably has only a year or so to live.  The Emperor’s Wife #1, hereafter simply called “the Empress” has done her duty and birthed a son who’s next in line to succeed Huitzilihuitl, but he’s still just a lad, just barely teenaged.  Until he’s an adult the Empress will rule as his regent.

 

    Everything would change though, if either The Empress or her son dies.  This makes the Empress very wary of any and all of the other wives and their offspring.  If and when the Emperor dies, the first thing she’ll do is get rid of any of them she perceives as a threat.

 

    And guess which one she perceives as her greatest threat?

 

What’s To Like...

    The Emperor’s Second Wife is the third installment in Zoe Saadia’s 7-book Rise of the Aztecs saga. Mesoamerica consists of a bunch of altepetls (think “city-states”) that spend most of their time and resources trying to conquer their neighboring altepetls, then extracting tribute from them.  At the moment, the top altepetl is Tepanec, to which Tenochtitlan (think “Mexico City” and/or “the Aztecs”) and many other cities in the region, bow.

 

    There is some discontent within the ranks of the Tenochtitlan nobility with their kowtowing status vis-a-vis the Tepanecs.  A few key figures are developing plans to rise up, although so far, very little action has been taken for fear of the Tepanecs finding out.  Just how our three protagonists, Kuini, Coyotl, and Iztac, will fit in with these plots is unclear, but here in The Emperor’s Second Wife our heroes do make contact with the Resistance.

 

    Once again, I loved the attention to historical detail in the storyline.  Although there is some fighting involved, it remains on a personal level, due mostly to hotheaded Kuini shooting his mouth off at Aztec warriors, including a new character, Tlacaelel, who I have a feeling will be developed into a fourth protagonist.  Yet the story never becomes boring due to the scarcity of bloodshed.  Instead, intrigue, on both a personal and altepetl level, abounds.  There is also a fascinating love triangle, Dehe-Iztac-Kuini, which does not get resolved; I look forward to seeing how that plays out.

 

    Once again, I enjoyed the bits and pieces of the Nahuatl language that are woven into the text.  And once again I chuckled at the invented profanity: “dung-eaters”, “frog-eaters”, “little piece of dirt”, and the more-protracted “dirty, stinking, disgusting filth-eater”.  Two deities are also briefly mentioned: Camaxtli and Huitzilopochtli, but Mesoamerican religious factions don’t seem to make much of an impact here.

 

    The ending is satisfying—full of intrigue and unexpected acts with unexpected consequences.  None of the overthrow scheming gets resolved, but when the dust clears, Tenochtitlan has taken its first step towards throwing off the Tepanec yoke.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 187 ratings and 58 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.43*/5, based on 159 ratings and 220 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Why do you eat this?” asked Kuini, mostly to take the conversation off his motives for breaking into the Palace.

    “Health troubles.”  The Aztec shrugged.  “I’m an old man, you know?  Should have died on the battlefield, a death of heroes.  Instead, here I am, watching over young hotheads, taking baths in the middle of the heat, eating disgustingly healthy, trying to prolong the inevitable.”  The wide brow creased with a frown.  “I’ve already covered most of the distance of my Path of the Dead.  There is not much left to walk.  Still, one tries to prolong the way when his time is nearing.”  He shrugged again.  “Warriors should die before they grow old.”  (pg. 131)

 

    “Did you talk to the Empress?”

     “Well, yes.  And it was anything but pleasant.  Don’t do this when your time comes.”

    The young woman blinked.  “What did she do to you?”

    “Oh, nothing.  She locked me in a small room, with no baths and no food, and told me to think it over.”  Iztac shrugged, amused by the open dread in her companion’s eyes.  “So, today I told her I had thought it over, and that I won’t make any more trouble.  And that was that.”

    “And she just let you go back?”

    “Well, you know the Empress.  She made some difficulties.  I had to convince her that I meant it.  I had to cry and make pitiful noises.”

    “You?  Cried?”  (pg. 179)

 

“There can be only one empress, so it’s important that you should not nurture any ideas of you becoming one.”  (pg. 6)

    The quibbles are minor.  As mentioned earlier, almost all of the cussing is delightfully invented, but with four exceptions, two involving eschatology, two involving an excretory function.  There’s also one roll-in-the-hay.

 

    It would’ve been nice to have a Cast of Characters to refer to, even better if it included the deities.  And although all the Nahuatl words and phrases are either translated when introduced or else clear enough to where you can suss them out, having a Nahuatl-English Glossary would’ve come in handy.

 

    As in the earlier books, typos abound: gap/gape, breath/breathe, envelope/envelop, and the spellchecker-challenging Chimalpopoca/Chimalpapoca.  There were more, but I tend to cut indie authors some slack when it comes to spellchecker errors.

 

    My main quibble has to do with the names of characters: a couple of them simply don’t have any.  The most notable of these was the Tenochtitlan Empress/Regent herself.  She’s pretty easily identified by her title, but there are two Tenochtitlan warlords in the storyline; one active and one retired; one of which has a name given, the other which doesn’t.  And keeping those two straight in my head was no small feat.

 

    So much for the nitpicking.  The Emperor’s Second Wife is another solid entry in this series, deftly advancing the overarching plotline (the growing prominence of the Aztecs) while still keeping me interested in who is going to do what to whom.  So far, this has been a great series, although I do recommend reading the book in chronological order.

 

    8 Stars.  In checking at Amazon, it appears the author’s last published book came out in late 2019.  That’s a bummer, since I enjoy the geographic setting of her tales: the pre-Columbian Americas.  One of the minor characters in The Emperor’s Second Wife, Kaay, is noted to be of Mayan heritage.  I’ve always been intrigued by the Mayans with their more-accurate-than-ours calendar and their end-of-the-world predictions.  It would be really neat if Zoe Saadia were to resume her writing career with a series based on the heyday of the Mayans, a millennium before the Aztecs.