I received City of the Gods by Patrick Garone from the author, so I could interview him on LT’s Author Chat. I will start by saying I was a little skeptical when I saw this had aliens and Aztec gods battling it out. My suspicions seemed proven when the online excerpt introduced us to a little self-centered prick who appeared to enjoy pissing off the one person in his life who cares about him. Well I put aside my biases and gave the book a fair shake and I have to say I was happily surprised. Patrick is a pretty good story teller and I enjoyed reading his book.

The story starts with a space ship showing up over the ruins of an Aztec temple in downtown Mexico City broadcasting instructions in Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs). The world is stunned and no one knows what to make of it. The US wants to bomb it and is pressuring the Mexican president to allow this. The ship leaves a rampaging monster in the city, then ‘shifts’ itself to another ancient Aztec site where it seems to be awaiting a response..

Overall, not a bad book. I enjoyed the storytelling. It kept my interest and prevented me from going ‘ya, but what about’ on things that didn’t really matter to the story itself. I will say the book could have used one more comb through by an editor. Mostly to fix ‘spell-check’ errors and replace the missing words. Here and there was a sentence that could have been smoother but not too many. Basically most of the problems I had with the book could be fixed with some light editing which would make it a very good book. ( )