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The first part of the book captivated me. I love historical fiction, and I’d heard of Bartolomé de las Casas in passing from various history textbooks, so I was curious about how this novel would portray him. I wasn’t at all disappointed to find that the focus wasn’t going to be on de las Casas, though, since I was just as interested in Rodrigo. From the start, I was curious about this man who had been born to a noble family and raised to be a priest but wound up in the New World, living among Native Americans and learning their language. That Rodrigo had a skill for languages made me even more interested, since that isn’t something that a great many historical fiction novels have as traits for their protagonists but would be very important to a book about an age full of exploration, as this one was.
There were some parts of the book that I couldn’t tell whether I liked or disliked. While I wouldn’t have wanted Rodrigo to have the same viewpoint as so many people of his time and social status might, there were times when I thought he seemed a bit too wise for his time and age, although I did like how wide-eyed he was on meeting a Jewish girl named Esther and wanting to learn more about her culture. While I did also like that the negative aspects of the Spanish explorations to the New World were shown, I thought that the Spaniards came off as a bit too villainous and easy to hate, while the Romany people and the Native Americans were idealized a bit too much. Compared with a protagonist who was simultaneously wise and wide-eyed, the backdrop of the story felt a bit too simplistic.
This isn’t to say it’s a badly-written book. While I thought things got a bit scattered in the last third and it was a bit difficult to tell when the story was switching from Rodrigo’s story to Bartolomé’s point of view (though the switch between first- and third-person made this clear within a few sentences), I’m glad I read the book. It wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read, but I’d recommend it to other people, especially those who like European history and the history of colonization.
In short, I’d say that this book is worth reading at least once, and definitely worth rereading the first few chapters right after finishing. There was a plot point brought up in them that came back at the very end, but I had a bit of trouble remembering it in the last chapter after all that had happened in between.
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