Henry Rider Haggard was a typical writer in the latter part of the 19th century. Most of his stories were the sort of tale that was designed to encourage young men to seek their fortune throughout the British Empire, and they are generally adventure stories.
This one is still that sort of tale, but it is slightly different in that the hero (Thomas Wingfield) is of Spanish descent (although brought up in England) and the story is set at the end of the 16th / beginning of the 17th century. His mother is killed by a Spanish Nobleman, and Thomas sets out to track the man down and obtain revenge. His travels take him first to Spain, and from there to the Spanish colonies in the Carribean, and then to Mexico.
The story is quite lengthy, and covers a great deal of Thomas' life; including his marriage to the daughter of the Mexican leader Montezuma and his life after. It contains a considerable amount of descriptions of violence, war, torture and human sacrifice. Although it may be thought that these notions were fuelled by a jingoistic distrust of non-English people's beaviour, in fact much of what he describes can be corroborated by many academic sources. It was a brutal, bloody period of history and the reality is that things were probably far worse than the descriptions given.
I did feel that the story was a bit over long although very well written. It might not appeal to a lot of young people today, but I certainly enjoyed it. Certainly not a light read, but one that you can get your teeth into.
