Atomik Aztex

by Sesshu Foster

In the alternate universe of this glitteringly surreal first novel, the Aztecs rule, having conquered the European invaders. Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, is visited by visions of a parallel world run by the Europeans, where consumerism reigns supreme. Aztecs armed with automatic weapons, totemic powers and blood sacrifice conquer and colonize 1940s Europe, as ghosts of the world wars emerge to haunt contemporary Los Angeles.

Atomik Aztex is a hilarious read. A potent concoction, with influences from graphic novels, along with Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, the paranoia of Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs, and an outrageous cyber-Aztlán mix reminiscent of Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

Sesshu Foster is the author of the critically acclaimed City Terrace Field Manual.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Poetry, Alternate History, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Literary Fiction

203 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Sesshu Foster is an American poet. He has taught composition and literature in East LA since 1985, and has also taught at the University of Iowa, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Jack Kerouac School's Summer Writing Program. He was in residence at California State University, Los Angeles.

Awards:
2010 American Book Award for World Ball Notebook
2009 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry for World Ball Notebook
2005 Believer Book Award for Atomik Aztex
1990 American Book Award for Invocation LA: Urban Multicultural Poetry
Finalist for a PEN Center West Poetry Prize, for City Terrace Field Manual
Finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize for City Terrace Field Manual

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eight years after finishing this book for the first time I still get excited whenever I discuss it, pressing my copy upon friends and relatives with the wide-eyed ‘please read this’ entreaties of a newly saved evangelical.

Atomik Aztex is a wildly enjoyable read, a super-stylised detonation of slick phrases, memorable scenes and some genuinely funny moments. This is a book that makes you want to read sections aloud to your friends just to hear the rhythms and punches of Foster’s sentences (you may not want to read all of it out though- there are some seriously blood-and-guts-y sections).

Atomik Aztex is a story of two parts, one, a 20th century alternate reality where the Americas were never colonised by Europe and an Aztec Empire, founded on Aztec techno-spiritual practices and continual human sacrifice, is a regional power. The empire is fighting their timeline’s World War Two, and is engaged on the Eastern Front, allied to the Russians. The main character of the novel, Zenzontil, is a ranking member of this society, a warrior leader, slave-owner and general badass. This narrative is juxtaposed with the very different world of Zezontil’s dreams, where he endures the grinding existence of a Hispanic meat plant worker in 1940s California.

I’m a bit of a history geek so Leopard skin cloaked Aztec warriors hunting Nazis through the ruins of Stalingrad was always going to get my boat out of dry-dock, but while the story and setting of Atomik Aztex are strong, they aren’t what make the book great. What makes this book unique is Foster‘s continually inventive and surprising prose. Foster is a poet, and it shows in the best possible way. Language is his instrument, and he coaxes words into truly entertaining rhythms, furiously minting neologisms at a rate that would terrify the dictionary editors at Oxford, Collins, and Macquarie.

This is Foster’s only novel (he has published several books of poetry) and it made me an instant fan of his work. I’ve long hoped that he’ll write another.

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audacious, bodacious, hyperenergetic, imaginative, imagistically generous, interacting alt-realities, porous borders between eras. Reminded me of Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle), ultraviolent voice-driven Vollmanny pyrotechnics, Ishmael Reed (Flight to Canada, Mumbo Jumbo), with mucho "Junot Diaz" spanglish, vato. (Unlike Joyce at all, per some reviews on here.) Slaughterhouses and sacrifices. The most enjoyable novel I've read in a while. A total mindfugg.

Read the complete impression here

[Rick Harsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Atomik Azteks, Foster rights an historical wrong, making the Azteks victors who rampage and romp through the 20th century, fighting in Stalingrad--oddly, the best fiction I have ever read about that battle--and emerging in a sausage plant in contemporary L.A. The book is savage and hilarious, and I rank it the best novel I have read in this new century by a writer from the U.S.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, a world where the Aztecs (or Aztex in this case) prevailed over those upstart European interlopers.
But is it such a world? There are several separate possibilities in this books and the main character is aware of this confusion. I'm always casting around for comparisons and the nearest equivalent are the Jerry Cornelius books my Michael Moorcock. The ability of the protagonist to somehow exist simultaneously in several different realities.
It's not all good, being an Aztex - ritual sacrifice and unspeakable cruelty seem to prevail. But at least they helped the Allies take Stalingrad in 1942 (interestingly an anagram of 1492)!

[M.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stunning little book. Its brutal violence and hypermasculinity wore on me, and it's nonlinearity might annoy a more conventional reader. But it has a tremendous amount to offer on the relationship between masculinity, empire, and domination. It follows one protagonist in two very different realities: in one, he is a communist labor organize at Farmer John's meat processing plant in Los Angeles in the 1940s; in the other, he is a commanding officer in the Aztec army battling Nazi Germany. In the later, Aztecs easily defeated the Spanish and went on to become a major imperial slave-holding socialist empire. In both worlds, he is a misogynist and an asshole; in both his world in saturated with violence. But he is a profoundly different person in each. In the tension of those differences and similarities Foster offers us a dense mediation on how empires build themselves on blood, how empire constitutes masculinities, and the ways masculinity functions on both sides of a relationship of exploitative domination.

[Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I knew Sesshu Foster and I were going to have problems as soon as I read the "note" before the beginning of the book, which I will reproduce in full, because I think it gives a good sense of what Atomik Aztex is and is not about:

"This is a work of fiction." Did he feel the need to say this because the cover only says Atomik Aztex and not Atomik Aztex: A Novel? Was there any way anybody could have mistaken a book with this title for a work of non-fiction?

"Readers looking for accurate information on Nahua and Mexica peoples or the Farmer John meat packing plant in the City of Vernon need to read nonfiction." (patronizing italics his) So not only does he offend anyone who actually sought out his book and knew what they were looking for, but he's casting doubt on all the seeming facts he includes in the book itself, which is strange, because he spends whole pages talking in great detail about the processes involved in, for instance, Aztec sacrifices or Farmer John meat packing. A significant portion of the book is devoted to listing facts about all this stuff, and he casts doubt on the accuracy of all of it before he even starts. Great.

"Persons attempting to find a plot in this book should read Huck Finn." Whoa, wait. No plot? Shit! Well, he hasn't quite scared me off yet.

"Also, in this book a number of dialects are used, including the extreme form of the South-Western pocho dialect, caló, ordinary inner-city slang, and modified varieties of speech from the Vietnam era. This is no accident." So from this it looks like there are going to be large portions of the book that are nigh incomprehensible to the average person.

Much as I'd like to, I'm not going to give him any more flak about the note, except to say that taken all together, it strongly implies that Atomik Aztex is plotless and characterless, making it, what, an exercise in language? Let's hope the prose is good, then.

Unfortunately, the prose could at best be described as uneven. Foster is clearly a capable writer, maybe even a great one. But every great line is covered in garbage. Sample line of dialogue: "Don't you know nothing? Let me put it another way. Why drown all your kittens in the same sack on a rainy day when you can wear concrete galoshes to your own funeral, find yourself staring up thru the dandelions hog wild on a Month of Sundays in the Windy City? Don't be such a Knuckle Sandwich, Spaz Attack!" I'm not being entirely fair; that line isn't exactly representative of the entire book, but it IS representative of a dense, cliché-ridden six page dialogue with no tags or paragraphs, none of which really makes any sense whatsoever.

Back up. Let me try and reconstruct the story a little bit. For context. The whole book follows Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, and the only character possessing more than one dimension. Half the time, he's a wage slave in a Los Angeles slaughterhouse. The other half, he's an Aztek (sic) warrior of some power and status who leads other Aztek warriors during the Battle of Stalingrad. Guess which one's the dream/vision/hallucination.

It's the slaughterhouse...as far as I can tell. Naturally, it's way more complex than that. There are characters common to both storylines, although they share nothing more than a name; no character is really developed beyond physical description and mannerisms. And the mannerisms seem interchangeable, just like the spelling of every word. Then you have the instances where the two storylines collide, where characters address Zenzontli the meatpacker as if he were Zenzontli the Keeper of the House of Darkness. All this gets pretty confusing, and neither the writing nor the story itself possesses enough power to make the reader want to puzzle it all out.

It definitely has the potential to be interesting; there are some nice parallels between the savage Aztek culture and the equally savage (though slightly more subtly so) American capitalist culture. But why does Foster have to make it so pointlessly difficult? There's no reason to cram all the text onto each page with half-inch margins and no paragraph breaks. There's no reason to include cryptic black-and-white photos at the beginning of every chapter. There's no reason to spell the same word two different ways in the same sentence. There's no reason to write certain passages in italics if those passages don't differ in any meaningful respect from other passages. There's no reason to insert a page of text clearly culled from email spam subject lines into a character's speech. (That's not just me disparaging his writing, he really put email spam in there. "PENIS ENLARGEMENT FDA-Approved vacuum pump/surgical enlargement Gain 1-3'' Permanent and Safe Enhance Erection Dr. Joel Kaplan (619) 574-PUMP," et cetera.)

And there's certainly no reason to end the most/only captivating scene in the book with "Except that never happened."

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kool

[Fraser Simons · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is most definitely a decolonizing work. It doesn’t really accept any notion of a (western) novel. I’m not sure it’s either character or plot driven. The vernacular is purposefully English mixed with other (colonized?) languages. It’s intuitive to read but does always telegraph the Other nature of the text.

What if Aztecs weren’t colonized? What if They were the colonizers? We follow a older warrior sent to the battle of Stalingrad in a reimagined 1942. Hunting Nazis… to enslave them and ritualistically sacrifice them.

Simultaneously, a man in what appears to be “our” reality works at a meatpacking place. Diminutive and diminished, dwelling in the consumerism; ruled by a small man wielding the small power he has, both Aztecs exist. Plaguing and bleeding into one anothers’ thoughts, each are haunted by the other. What goes around comes around. There are a lot of universes slipping and sliding.

There aren’t traditional paragraph structures or formatting, which only increase the confusion and the bleed, or shifts in reality, where something both different and the same is occurring. A dream where a slaver is given a scar becomes true in another. Untimely deaths occurs, then doesn’t. Things become easily to consume, then difficult. Mostly difficult; since the paragraphs generally are almost like chapters, scenes framed and ending, going on for pages and pages. But there is good flow, strangely enough. The eye doesn’t skip along, it’s mostly just crunching the text without a break, and rolling with it when reality shifts.

I think that’s part of the decolonizing properties imbued in the text. It’s not supposed to be easy subject matter to consume. Neither does it say everyone benefits from the alt history of Aztec conquerors thriving. It does show very clearly what is robbed from a people who are, though. Their spirit and language and culture tramped down, at the same time as their history and imagination allowing them to be sliced by the double edge sword of true history and what might have been. There is a humanity lost. The gregarious and funny, vulgar, and different perspective (especially from normalized character voice and language, etc.) is, quite literally, lost. It reminded me a bit of Slaughterhouse Five, when it’s at its best. Only… tackling something much more heady.

[Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I choose to read this because the premise sounded so interesting. Alternate history in which the Azteks survived and thrived contrasted with a multiple reality structure in which the protagonist is confronted by a reality in which the Azteks did not and he works at a meat packing plant. However, I didn't get the impression in reading the book that the protagonist in the 2 contrasting realities was the same person or was aware of his counterpart like I had anticipated. I almost got the feeling that they were 2 different and only vaguely connected stories. So many minor characters seemed to have been more invested and aware of the multiple realities than the protagonist was. And even this structure seemed poorly explained. I kept reading hoping for some elucidation, either on that or on how the Azteks in the first reality thrived, but to no avail. There keeps being mention of how Aztek human sacrifice, especially of the heart was central to their survival, but it is never really explained in any cogent way. I would have even been satisfied if some actual attempt to explain it away as magic would have been made, but not even that was attempted.

The jumping between characters and worlds happens so randomly and suddenly that you are left confused. There are run on sentences and run on paragraphs and collections of words and phrases that are not even sentences or comprehensible thoughts. There is a chapter where, I think, the characters are trying to speak in code, but it just goes on and on, leaving you frightfully confused and feeling left out. At points, it just feels like a free writing exercise that somehow became close enough to a novel due to random chance. I ended finishing the book as a sort of distraught personal challenge; annoyed that I had invested time in it and feeling like, having come this far, I must finish or the book wins. Even though I finished the book, I still felt like I lost for having read it.

That is not to say that it wasn't fun or enjoyable at parts. Sometimes the rambling structure really worked, but not all of the time and not enough to keep me invested in the (story?, if you can call it that).

[Seth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly, this book is probably really fun. The conceit--an alternate world where Aztec ("Aztek" in the book) magic not only repulsed the Spaniards but led to Aztec world domination--coupled with a world-spanning plot bringing our protag back and forth to our world (where he works at a meat-packing plant killing cattle all day) sounds like great fun.

Unfortunately, someone convinced the author that telling the Aztek part of the story--which is the bulk of the story, at least as far as I got--in four- to seven-page paragraphs with no clear cues to the reader as to pacing or thought train (and no way to bookmark!) was a good idea. Clearly, the editor fell down on the job; it was his or her job, and the job of the members of the writers' workshop and the publications that printed portions of the book before it came out, all thanked in the frontmatter, to talk Sesshu Foster down from trying to be James Joyce at the expense of helping readers experience his or her world.

The writing in those unreadable blocks isn't bad. The characters are developed slowly, if at all, but this isn't a character-driven story. Or plot-driven, for that matter. The frontmatter also haughtily suggests that readers looking for a plot should go elsewhere; clearly they don't deserve Foster's vision. But auctorial excess is both one of the prices and one of the rewards of reading. The milieu story is a good read. I especially find myself wondering how the relationship between the two worlds--and their separate kinds of sacrifices--would pan out.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the energy to read the rest. I don't want to fight a book to enjoy it. And unlike Joyce, the words themselves don't transport me sufficiently to draw me along.

I'm glad I saw an in-store employee recommendation for this book and I want to see another by Foster, but I won't buy it until I've spent some time with it in the store. I regret wasting enough time that I'm simply teased by it but I don't resent the shelf space I'll give it.

Well, not too much.

[Robert Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really knowing what to say about this book, I will defer a bit to what others have said, so, please pardon me for a moment. Many, or at least the three or four reviews I have read, have said this is a story of an alternate universe where the protagonist, Zenzontli, is at once in a world where the Aztecs have reigned supreme over the Spanish and have begun the colonialization of Europe. (I should mention here that I saw little if any evidence of this. Yes, in his “alternate” reality Zenzontli did go off to fight the Nazis, but I see nothing of the Aztecs colonizing Europe. In fact, I see this novel as more of a statement of how absurd human behavior/existence is [I don’t even know if existence is the correct word here since this does seem to be an existential work on some levels] and this is illustrated repeatedly through use of language used in contemporary times infused with the past)

Here is what comes to mind when I think of this book:

Time --- is it linear or can it be transcended and traversed?
Do we live more than one life at once? Are dreams a valid existence?
The language that different generations and epochs use is absurd and often makes no sense to those outside the context of those who are using the language. This may speak to the theory that language restricts thought.
There is some existentialism in this book, I just need to spend some time with it to find out exactly where and what it is, but there is plenty of concern of what we do with our lives while we are living them. What if, this novel seems to ask, we were forced to exist in alternate realities where our decisions a/effected our futures? Would we live our “past” lives any differently? If so, why not act as if a future depends on how we live our lives today?

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moves between a few alternate universes, the main one being a world where the Aztecs booted out European invaders and are now busy in the mid-20th century kicking some Nazi ass over on the continent. Lots of ramblings from a crazy Aztec warrior, like

"probably in your World of the future they have discovered amazing stuff like DNA fingerprints, penicillin pencils, free jazz & fusion, 8-track tapes, San Fernando porno-Valley, I can't even imagine all the kool stuff they could discover in the Future, like maybe they will figure out how to take fucked up people & replace them with exact duplicates of people who happen to be kool..."

Deliberately difficult and kind of slow reading as a result, but it did make me want to go kick it in East LA with Sesshu Foster.

[Tom]

After 5 different attempts to read this book--spurred by very enthusiastic recommendations from a couple of friends whose judgment I respect-- I have to admit defeat. This is a book I cannot read

[Joe Milazzo · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give this book 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 stars I would. Thoroughly, even exhaustively profane, meaning it is about as sacred a text as texts go.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

wut

[Math le maudit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Petite déception pour moi, que la lecture de cet Atomik Aztex.

J'aurai adoré aimer ce livre, mais il s'est refusé à moi (et surtout à ma compréhension), et le résultat est en demi-teinte.

Le pitch de départ est le suivant : les Espagnols n'ont pas vainku l'Empire aztèk, et même, se sont vus éradiker par lui. Les Aztèks ont en effet développé une forme de voyage temporel teknologiko-mystik (basé sur les sacrifices humains), ki leur ont permis de renverser la vapeur et d'éliminer dans toutes les réalités possibles (oui, parce k'il y a aussi un petit kôté multivers dans le roman) la civilisation espagnole.

Le récit s'attarde donc sur la personne de Zezontli, gardien de la maison obskure des Aztex, envoyé par les chefs de l'Ordre International Socialiste pour aider les forces anarkosyndikalistes de Makhno à vaincre les Nazis à Stalingrad, à la tête de son régiment de guerriers jaguars.

Dans une autre réalité, Zezontli est un simple débiteur de porcs dans les Abattoirs Farmer John, en Kalifornie, ki rêve de sa gloire passée (à moins k'elle ne soit à venir ? Les frontières du temps sont si floues...), tout en participant sekrètement à la konstruktion d'un syndikat dans son usine.

Atomik Aztex est un ovni littéraire. Ici, rien n'est fait pour aider le lekteur. On passe indifféremment du Zezontli soldat, au Zezontli boucher d'un paragraphe à l'autre, sans ke rien ne l'indike. Aukun renvoi à la ligne pour les dialogues, aukune explikation posée de la tekno-mystik aztèke et de son fonktionnement... Bref, ce n'est pas une lekture facile.

Cependant, la langue est là, et le roman komporte son lot de passages sublimes, mais j'ai peiné à m'y retrouver.

Il est fort possible, (et même probable, plus j'y pense) ke tout ce ke le roman nous donne à lire ne soit ke le fruit la projektion mentale de ce pauvre boucher. Le Zezontli boucher semble en effet bien modeste et sage kand on le kompare à son double guerrier jaguar, et plusieurs fois je me suis demandé s'il ne s'agissait pas d'un hispano (klandestin ou non), qui se rêvait un monde meilleur, où les Azteks auraient mis à genoux les Europiens...

Mais bon, j'en suis réduit aux konjectures, puiske le roman ne tranche jamais vraiment la kestion.

Un livre bien étrange donk, qui offre kelkes morceaux de bravoure, mais aussi pas mal de passages konfus (volontairement, je suppose) et ki m'a trop malmené pour ke je l'apprécie vraiment.

Et en même temps, j'ai assez envie de le relire un jour, histoire de voir si je ne suis pas passé à côté de kelke chose. N'est-ce pas étonnant ?

[Lola · Rating 3 out of 5]

📚 Berlatar di bangsa Aztek yg berhasil menaklukkan penjajah Eropa & menjadi penguasa dunia.

Zenzontli yg merupakan Penjaga Rumah Kegelapan, masuk ke dunia paralel yg dikuasai oleh orang² Eropa, di mana konsumerisme merajalela.

🕵️‍♀️ Konsep ceritanya unik & berani 🔥 Latar sejarahnya berjalan berbeda 👍 Gambaran Aztek yg menggunakan senjata otomatis & kekuatan totemik utk menjajah Eropa jg menarik 🙃

Lalu, gaya penulisannya kaya dgn imajinasi & penuh humor gelap 😂 Narasinya berlapis-lapis sukses membuat aku hanyut ke dunia sureal & penuh warna ❤️

Aku suka bgt dgn perpaduan antara teknologi modern & elemen mistis Aztek yg unik & tidak biasa ini 😂 Aku bacanya kayak melakukan perjalanan melalui mimpi yg aneh 😂

Di samping itu, novel ini sarat dgn kritik sosial, terutama terhadap konsumerisme & imperialisme 👍 Ceritanya penuh sindiran, di mana penulis berhasil menggambarkan kekosongan & kerusakan yg ditimbulkan oleh budaya masyarakat konsumeris terhadap barang² 😂

Namun sayangnya, plotnya membingungkan. Alur ceritanya melompat-lompat antara dunia paralel & realitas, yg kadang membuat aku sulit mengikuti perkembangan ceritanya 😔 Terutama, ketika ada peralihan yg cepat antara peristiwa di Eropa tahun 1940-an & Los Angeles masa kini, yg membingungkan tanpa ada penjelasan yg mendalam 😔

Kemudian, karakter² dalam novel ini jg tidak berkembang ❌ Aku merasa Zenzontli kurang memiliki motivasi yg jelas & hubungan antar karakternya tidak digali dgn mendalam.

💌 Meski demikian, novel ini menyampaikan pesan penting tentang kekuatan narasi sejarah & bagaimana sejarah bisa dibentuk oleh pemenang 😂 Novel ini mengajak kita utk berpikir ulang tentang imperialisme, kekuasaan & dampaknya terhadap masyarakat 🤔

Penulis jg mengeksplorasi tema tentang identitas budaya & bagaimana sejarah bisa membuka pandangan baru tentang dunia kita 👍 Dgn menggabungkan elemen² fantasi, humor & kritik sosial, novel ini mengingatkan kita bahwa sejarah bukan hanya tentang fakta, tetapi juga tentang interpretasi & perspektif 🔥

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

As universes seep into each other, this book is both a work of proletarian literature depicting working class life at its most subjectively real, and an alternative history fantasy story that's funny, gripping, inspiring, revolting and lurid. As the worlds reflect each other, cause and effect merge and reverse and the stories are not separate anymore. Conquest and empire happened, they are happening, they will keep happening; resistance is a duty but resistance can also beget conquest and empire.

But really what I want to say about this book is this: In one plotline an Aztek-Makhnovite alliance defeats the Nazis at Stalingrad and Hermann Goering is sacrificed at the templo mayor in Tenochtitlán. If that's not enough motivation to read this book then I don't know what else to tell you.

[Sandra Del Rio · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's different! and unique! and extremely, impressively imaginative. It was chaotic, vibrant, and intense.

Unfortunately, this style of writing is definitely not one I'm accustomed to reading... not something I particularly enjoyed. :/ Perhaps this is illustrated by the amount of time it took for me to read...

[Adz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Def a tough read but raises a lot of interesting points about the sacrifice Capitlism requires and the possibilities of comparative racial analysis.

Also fun to read when it wasn't incredibly frustrating.

[Brian Trinh · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was one helluva ride. Crazy mind altering parallel universal possibilities of a book.

[Ben Brackett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off good, but kind of loses steam mid-way through and just meanders

[Stan C. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great concept...uninspired and banal execution.

[Mailman · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is delightful. "Pain is Time!"

[Kaylee · Rating 2 out of 5]

there’s a reason why I rarely read books by men, that’s all I got to say…

[lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

And they said women were too emotional to lead

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 STARS

[Alonzo Rangel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is absolutely batshit lmao

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

People who write reviews of this book fall into one of two categories.

This is the most amazing book ever and this writer is BRILLIANT!!!
What The F$#@ did I just read?????

 

I'm firmly in the second category.  I've never wanted Cliffs Notes for a book before this one.  The note at the beginning of the book includes:

"Persons attempting to find a plot in this book should read Huck Finn."
Basically, when the Spanish crossed the ocean ready to take over Mexico, the Aztecs were ready.  They killed the invaders and then went and took over Europe.  Now they wage war to get captives to sacrifice to drive their economy.  The Aztecs also believe in a complex version of time and reality and multiple dimensions.

"The Wurlitzer of the Universe is packed with 78 rpm realities side by side. Get ready to drop your dime."
Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness of the Aztex, a warrior on his way to help liberate Saint Petersburg during World War II, is existing in another reality as a worker in a Los Angeles slaughterhouse with a sadistic boss.  This is a strange version of reality where the Aztec were conquered by the Spanish, like that could ever happen.  This Zenzon spends his nights slaughtering pigs and is being recruited to help unionize his company.

Because of the Aztec idea of everything that ever happened is happening at the same time you get stream of consciousness discussions that reference the Beatles during World War II, for example.  There are times when some of the asides can be funny:

"the exact number of those rainforest leaves it turned out was the ever-changing combination to the doorway to several alternate realities but you know it's so hard to guess I did get it right one time {23,901,7782,880,633 x K to the 435th power; believe me you don't even want to know how I got it}"

That's an exact quote - lack of punctuation and all - which is another reason why this book can be hard to read.  Besides proudly making no sense, it has it's own spelling and punctuation.  Paragraphs can go on for pages.

I put this book aside for a while but determined to finish it for Weirdathon.  I'm arguing for this book today on Outlandish Lit as part of the Weirdathon debates.

I'll leave you with the ending of the book.  Don't worry about it being a spoiler.  It doesn't have anything to do with anything else.

"I mean, sometimes I sense a monkey spirit. I could be mistaken. That's the trouble with one's inner life. Monkeys could be playing around with it. They'll fuck around with your stuff if you let them. You'll be looking for something in your inner life, some truth about your situation, in this world or some other level of existence somehow, then you'll have to take care of some other Business, and when you turn around, when you go back and check your inner life again, just watch, the monkeys will have fucked off with something. Some part of your interior life will be fucking lost cuz of the monkeys. I don't know what you can do about that."

From now on whenever I go a little crazy, I'm placing the blame firmly on the monkeys.  Maybe this book was useful after all.
 This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

[Corvid Crossroads · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I don't have anything nice to say, I try not to say it at all...
...but it gets to a point where one can take only so many throwaway rape jokes that neither further the plot or have the courtesy of being funny, so many run on sentences where the author uses 20 metaphors in a paragraph, and so many scenes that just kind of happen.

The text itself reads more fetishistic than exploratory of Aztec culture, with the author unable to stop himself from using words like "cool" and "awesome" several times when describing the main character's attire, like a boy explaining why he loves Batman so much. Lots of telling and not showing going on here.

But if you love this book, I would genuinely like to hear why. I loved the premise of the book, and truly do hope I am wrong about it.