A nice book. Looking at the other reviews, I liked it more than I thought I would before I started reading. It was not a wow, though, but I have a hard time putting my finger on the exact spot why I feel that way. Somehow it feels like the characters are flattening the further the story goes. There is hatred, betrayal and fear in the book, but the characters that are experiencing them can't really convince me. I liked the story itself: in-family war between the successors of the Inca, insight in how the Inca lived and thought, Spanish conquerers at the other end of the world that intend to colonize Peru and make the Inca and all others they find there good Catholics. The two ways the two people look at the world are well pictured in the scene in the morning at Cajamarca and the clash afterwards, where the priest talks about God and his son and then Atahualpa's answer the he is also a son of God. What I miss is a list of Inca / Spanish words used in the book. Some of the terms are explained in the text right behind the word itself, but the greater part isn't and that disturbs my understanding of the story (for my in-head movie I need to be able to form a picture) and subsequently my reading. ( )

I loved this book (and the two subsequent books in the series). History with a story - very readable. ( )

I tried very hard to like this book. But in order to like it, I had to finish it. So I tried very hard to read this book. Twice. And I put it down after about 60 pages both times.

I love the whole mythology and history surrounding the peak of the Incas and the ensuing Spanish Conquest. This book and the full “Incas” series revolves around that time period, but this book is just bad. I keep thinking that it may be the translation since the book was reprinted from its' native french in numerous other languages. Though my wife pointed out that just because it's printed in different languages doesn't mean that it's read in different languages.

The plot is actually the least of the problems. The characters are extremely weak and come and go with neither rhyme nor reason. There’s no subtly to their development and after numerous chapters covering over a year of time, there was very little hope that the book was going to get better. There were glimmers of hope, but then characters would disappear and reemerge as if they'd never been missing. It's so poorly written, I imagine that something went seriously wrong in the translation.

I can deal with a good bit of melodrama...if only it was interesting and even reasonably well done. In this case, it wasn't.

There’s so little historical fiction surrounding this amazing period in time. It’s a total shame that “Incas” couldn’t have been better. ( )

saga molto piacevole ( )