Rating: 
Summary: Spellbinding from cover to cover,great reading!
Review: Gary Jennings eloquent writing will transport the reader to the incredible world of the Aztecs.His well researched history,blended with captivating characters and narrative,provide a rare insight to a mysterious ancient culture
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Let me first settle with the (very few) unfavorable remarks in Amazon.com customer reviews of "Aztec": No human can write a perfect novel. If your standard is perfection, perhaps you should seek other forms of entertainment.Second, let me explain why I probably responded more powerfully to "Aztec" than most readers would. I survived extreme poverty, humiliation, and violence in my youth. Then I left my home town to enjoy a successful music career for 15 years. While performing at night I completed a graduate business education during the day. Now I travel around the world for one of the largest corporations in the US. I have literally thousands of great friends from street musicians to CEOs all over the world. I am in love with my beatiful wife and five children. Finally, I am part Mexican. Given my background, I felt as though Mr. Jennings had spent several years writing my life story in the context of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. Mixtli, the Aztec who's life the book describes in wonderful detail, had an even more adventuresome life than mine - by far. He was both a worse and better man than I. But in the sense that his life followed unlikely, fascinating twists, in that he made friends in many lands, in that he rose from humble origins to great business success, in that he experienced one great romance, and in that he lived first hand one of the most fascinating periods in history, the match between his life and mine are extraordinary. So I loved this book as much as any other I've read, and I've read more than my share. Even if your life didn't match Mixtli's, I strongly recommend this book. You'll get ten times more entertainment and education from your $10 investment than you'll get anywhere else.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the best book I ever read.
Review: In 40 years of reading, I go back to this one as the hallmark of entertainment & historical fiction. I've reread it,and I've bought copies just so I could give them away! If the author, Gary Jennings, were still alive today, he would be the the one author I'd buy the day his books came out. A wonderful wonderful book; trust me. You'll have a hard time getting into the beginning, the letters, but at some point you don't notice you'll be in Mexico with Mixtli. I was 32 when I read it the first time, and 39 when I read it the last time. It will always be the first book that pops into my mind when someone asks, "What was your favorite book?".
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely well done.
Review: This novel is a classic of historical fiction and rightfully so. It really is the best of what the genre has to offer. A gripping tale set over the course of a lifetime. You get a real sense of a character growing and developing and at the same time learn about cultures that are both beautiful and horrific. The characters are well done, the plot is filled with adventure, intrigue, and romance. It starts well, it ends well. There really is nothing not to like about this book. If you have any interest at all in historical fiction, this is a great novel.
The only reason I could think of to avoid this is that you are very knowledgeable about the Aztec empire and would spend your time picking apart the accuracy of the history, or you have absolutely zero interest in this period of time, or you just hate this genre. Other than that, I cannot see why someone would not like this book.
Rating: 
Summary: I only read up to page 250 but...
Review: I just didn't want to pick it up anymore. It just seemed like sex and violence. The first sex scene was good but after that it just seemed like the author was trying to be sensational - which I find boring. This sex stuff is interspersed with all sorts of violence and cruelty in the guise of religious ritual, accidents,etc - also boring to me. Furthermore, I felt this wasn't giving me a genuine picture of Mexico in the 16th century. When my daughter told me she was half-way through the book and was still waiting for a plot to emerge, I decided I was going to toss the book and assume that the rest of it was going to be 99% garbage like the first quarter. Why waste my time any more? I gave it 2 stars because it is well-written, that is, readably written.
Rating:
Summary: Jennings uses his proven formula in The One World
Review: Original review Douglas J. Jackson, quoted in full by Kev11sky:
Having not actually read everything by Jennings, I may be wrong, but it's highly doubtful. What am I talking about? The fact that every novel by Jennings can be described in three words:
Sex, blood, and travel!
Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, in the hands of Gary Jennnings, these things are masterfully and wonderfully interwoven.
Sex-wise, AZTEC continues Jennings' apparent self-appointed task of documenting every possible variation of sexual behavior -- in AZTEC may be found sodomy, two brutal rapes, sex on drugs, and arguably two cases of incest. Not counting, of course, the relatively "normal" sexual encounters swarming through the rest of the book.
With regard to violence, you will find the expected Aztec religious sacrifices -- but I assure you, these are the LEAST horrifying instances of violence in the story.
**SPOILER WARNING #1** You will probably see quite quickly, as I did halfway through reading my first Jennings book (RAPTOR), that Gary Jennings will never, EVER fail to kill, invariably in a horrific way, every single character that you come to care about. But knowing that will in no way ruin the emotional impact.
And then, there is travel, which reflects Jennings' arduous research. Mixtli (the protagonist) visits almost the entirety of The One World, exploring, trading, and doing his best to imitate a nymphomaniac rabbit. But all of this is simply the canvas upon which the life of the man named Mixtli is drawn. As with any good book, AZTEC will make you hurt. I say that this is "good" because happy people are dull people, and it is those books which make you FEEL which also make you remember.
** SPOILER WARNING #2** As Night Wind and The Oldest of the Gods tell Mixtli, his purpose in life (and the purpose of a bood book) is, for better or worse, TO MAKE YOU REMEMBER.
There are moments of revenge -- rare moments -- when you will notice an evil smile on your face (I speak primarily of Mixtli's description of a particular beautiful work of art). There are other moments of revenge where you will NOT smile -- but you will remember nonetheless.
And then, there's the reference on the back cover of the paperback, at the end of the last line: "...the great, enduring, tragic love of his life." At the risk of seeing more than is there, I venture to say that that statement cannot be fully understood until one reads every single word of Mixtli's tale -- no matter what you may think at any moment before then.
Ultimately, AZTEC is the tale of a lifetime -- a fictional lifetime, but of necessity -- since I doubt that any one human being could ever "live" as deeply and thoroughly as Mixtli does, and as such be worth a read on that basis alone. But Jennings is a good and capable storyteller. His characters are well thought-out, and their motivations and actions make sense, so that he avoids any sense of "deus ex machina". His characters are not entirely original, but that's impossible in most ways; the character "Blood Glutton" is reprised in a man named "Wyrd" in RAPTOR, and Nezahualpili and Zyanya are both emblems of literature -- one could call them Gandalf and Arwen, for example; or Mariko-san for Zyanya, if you're a Clavell fan.
In AZTEC there are two examples of lyrical beauty, simple sentences that (to me at least) sit alongside the rest of the events in the novel in my memory. I leave it to the reader to find them.
There was only one real flaw that detracted from my enjoyment of AZTEC -- the tendency of the female characters to behave rather more as Mixtli (or Jennings) would have them behave, instead of how real women are likely to behave. But even if you read this as the ultimate male-fantasy sex, blood, and glory novel (heh-heh), the important part is this:
Read AZTEC! Love it, hate it, experience it. And then, you will REMEMBER it.
Rating:
Summary: Dont pick this book up near an important deadline!
Review: I made the big mistake of picking up this book a week before my finals. Very bad news, I could not put it down and nearly flunked the exam! Captivating is an understatement.
Rating:
Summary: Love it!
Review: I still have the last 30 pages to read, but I hesitate to finish it, because I'll miss it. I read the bulk of the book in Mexico & it gave me a great sense of the history of the country and its people. I will definitely read the other Aztec books by Jennings.
Rating: 
Summary: Missing Pages 52-85 and pages 117-148 printed twice
Review: Very dissatisfied with the printer of this book since pages 52-85 are missing and pages 117-148 are printed twice.
Rating:
Summary: The 1000 pages might seem challenging, but they're worth it.
Review: First of all, I had never heard of Gary Jennings before Aztec, I just happened to find this book on a magazine store, and I thought: "This book deals about the Aztecs, but a guy from United States wrote it, mmmhhh well, let's see if he did a good job." I actually had to go back to my house to get the money to buy this book, and I really don't regret the 10 minute uphill walk home in the baking sun, hell I'll do it thrice for a good sequel not the ones that are out there...
I found the style to be great, it was written as an autobiography, made to please the king of Spain, who wanted to know about the Aztec way of life... In this book you'll meet Mixtli, a Mexica, just like any other, a person that has many virtues, but as any other, flaws, which the author really doesn't hesitate to show them to you... A fictional character, that coexists with real life people, and plays an important role in history, but keeps a low profile, enough to be forgotten in history, that's what makes this so appealing...
I found this book to be one of those that gather all the things right, climax situations, intrigues, plot twists that you didn't expected, that is rare on a book, and specially more on one as big as this... It makes you really get hung up with the story, really get involved, so much that you'll get angry at some things, to the point of throwing the book against the wall, and happy on others, to the point of going around with a stupid grin on your face for a while...
One may think it's too long, it must be boring, but it certainly isn't, you'll find yourself turning each page quickly to find out what will happen next, and all of a sudden realize that you've managed to read 150 pages, and that it's 4 a.m. and tomorrow you have a final exam and you didn't studied because of this book, and...... well, you'll see that you can't put this book down even if you want to...
Another thing that really increases the score is the fact that the author really investigated about the Aztec culture, he won't just describe a person, or the type of architecture, but shows you the way they talked, the way they performed their rites, all their customs, legends about their gods... I even found out things that were not taught to me at school, that's how deep this book is...
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