Tenochtitlan, 1551. Thirty years after the Spanish Conquest destroyed everything she loved, the last Aztec empress has passed and left behind a pristine yet tenuous legacy for her children. As her last will and testament is read out, her daughter Isabel suspects that another account of her mother’s life may exist, hidden away, chapter by chapter, in the Valley of Mexico. Following each clue, Isabel is determined to find out who her mother really was and to discover the secrets she buried in order to survive.
Joined by her siblings and a handsome young cook named Juan, Isabel embarks on a perilous journey to piece together the past–a journey that will force the party to brave the brutal viceroyal court, face fearsome legends in mystical chinampas, and trek through desert, fire, and snow. As Isabel’s feelings for Juan grow, she confronts everything she thought she knew about her Spanish father, her empress mother, and herself. Facing everything from the tunnels of ancient pyramids to the summit of an active volcano, Isabel will meet every challenge to fulfill an epic quest for the truth.
Sofia Robleda is a Mexican writer and author of Daughter of Fire. She spent her childhood and adolescence in Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and completed her undergraduate and doctorate degrees in psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia. She currently lives in the UK with her husband and son, and splits her time between writing, raising her son, and working as a psychologist, supporting people with brain injuries and neurological conditions. For more information, visit sofiarobleda.com or follow @sofiarobleda on Instagram.
My thoughts: This was a really interesting and enjoyable book. The only things I know about Mexican history have been filtered through a European lens, so to read something written by someone determined to preserve pre-Conquest history and culture was really good.
Plus it’s a terrific story. The daughters of the last Mexica empress, Isabel and Catina, go on an epic quest across the country seeking out the chapters of their late mother’s memoir, revealing the events of the Spanish conquest, of the terrible slaughter, plague and destruction that followed, which killed thousands of innocent natives and allowed the Spanish to seize control of the country.
Although the girls are pledged to become nuns and stay out of men’s hands, they are putting off that destiny to uncover their mother’s story, and their true inheritance. Pursued by their own older, cruel, brothers and facing danger at every turn, they are brave and resourceful.
I genuinely really enjoyed reading this book, I loved Isabel and Catina, the rebellious girl and the gentle girl, who adore each other but still fight as all sisters sometimes do. Their personalities are very different but they need each other to survive. They take along a young cook, Juan, who is himself of noble birth as the viceroy’s illegitimate son, and for a time, their brother. But this is the girls’ story, and that of their mother. Stories that get lost in a world ruled by men.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 