MLE
08-25-2008, 07:11 PM
The Incas by Daniel Peters
As a llama packer/breeder/trainer I have had this book on the radar for years. Not that it is current (published 1991, at what EC calls the bottom of the HF market) but because there aren’t very many novels to choose from that deal with the Inca civilization. Since it was over a thousand pages and the author described himself as ‘married to a feminist writer’ I put it off, figuring that it was likely to be a strange brew of half-history and wishful thinking. I could not see any society less amenable to feminist ideology than the militant, ultra-disciplined, super-regulated Inca Empire. On the other hand, everybody likes to read about things they know well. So when I found a copy at a library sale, I started it with a mixture of dread and anticipation.
To my relief, it was a rewarding read. Comparing the work to more generally known ones, it reminded me of Cecelia Holland’s ‘Great Maria’ in that it was a long-term view of the relationship between a couple covering momentous events in their lives over a long period of turbulent history. Also in the leisurely pace and the attention to a minutiae of daily detail. It would be a good book to bring on a long trip, where you didn’t want to get so sucked into the novel as to not enjoy other things, but long enough that you wouldn’t run out of reading matter.
There were the expected anachronisms, mostly the common one of including romantic elements that would have been impossible in that time and culture. The Incas were a young civilization in a demanding physical climate, and like most peoples in those circumstances, their sexual restrictions were exacting. The punishment for any activity outside the bounds of marriage was severe flogging (in cases where the couple could be married) to death, by various more or less painful means according to who screwed whom under how forbidden a circumstance. Our hero was involved with an Inca princess (rolls eyes) but fortunately for my suspension of disbelief, shortly fell in love with and married a Chachapoya chief’s daughter, with yet more anachronistic premarital relations.
But for the rest, the hero and heroine were engaging people, fairly well-rounded. Cusi is an undersized youth whose father dislikes him but who compensates by earning friends among his classmates (initiation brothers) who will be in and out throughout the story. Micay is a young woman forcefully yanked from her own culture and made to learn the roles of another, who chooses to adapt rather than sulk and is assigned as a companion to Cusi’s sister. I did appreciate that these characters do not exist in a vacuum, but each have a web of relationships that are accommodated in the plot throughout. This is also very true to the Inca culture (and most subsistence-based cultures) where who you are related to dictates the choices available.
The novel alternates between the adventures of Cusi and Micay as Cusi earns respect for his prowess and cunning as a warrior and diplomat and Micay finds her place as a healer and follower of a regional high priestess. Both must inevitably choose sides in the intrigues of the Inca’s court, mainly stemming from the problems of their relatives and associates. The book includes strong spiritual elements which is quite appropriate to the culture; the Incas, like the Romans and Greeks, were constantly aware of signs and portents and based many of their decisions on them. Peters even resisted the common current plot device of inserting a ‘closet unbeliever’ to pander to modern-day views. He doesn’t do so well on the medical front, though. When smallpox arrives, Micay is ‘guided’ by dreams and spirits to adopt a incredible number of modern-day medical practices to prevent infection, including cutting off hair, oiling the skin, and even (!) wearing gauze masks.
For the rest, the details were very nice. I already knew many of them, and by and large Peters had done his homework, even if a lot of bits from the Aztec and Maya civilizations wandered south. He did include a homosexual relationship in a family member. It was presented as a problem for everybody, which is an understatement: by Inca law, such practices would not only incur the death sentence, but the entire village was to be burned as well. But other than that, it did reflect reality – though conveniently glossing over the pedophilia aspect usual in such situations. I figure it was mostly a nod to the twilight of the Mochica civilization and their rather explicit pottery, which has been the center of many recent discoveries. Never mind that the Mochicas were about as close to the Incas as the Ancient Greeks were to the Tudors.
Parents beware: some of the sexual scenes are explicit, although not overly so by modern standards, and only between the protagonist couple. Of more concern is the large array of drug use and drinking, which is rather overdone for the society. Alcohol was a feast day treat, although it is true that drunkenness was the usual result. The Incas were binge drinkers. Coca use was much more strictly controlled than Peters presents it, since there is a downside that goes beyond dark green teeth. Only among slaves working in the mines (a death sentence) was coca used freely. And as to all the other hallucinogens Cusi samples going in and out of his spirit world – they were used very sparingly, and many are lethal in small doses. These plot elements could give the wrong idea to impressionable minds.
Peters scrambled up the politics of that last three Incas and their generals to fit his story, but it wasn’t too far off, and anyway, who else is going to know? It did keep his characters hopping, and in exchange for an entertaining read on the Inca’s, this reader will forgive him a few switcheroos.
So I’ll give it four stars.
And now, the llama-breeder’s rant (which nobody but Spitfire would care about, but here goes):
Obviously Mr. Peters knew that llamas were an integral part of the Inca civilization. So of course he worked llamas in wherever he could. But Mr. Peters knew only one thing about llamas: they spit. So he had them spitting almost every time they came on the scene. It was absolutely crazy-making for me, a 4-H leader who has spent thirty years showing up with llamas in public places and saying, over and over and over, “No, it won’t spit at you. Llamas mostly spit at other llamas. They don’t even do that very often, and it is always for distinct and predictable reasons.”
As for the rest, he substituted what he might have heard/read/known about SHEEP! He had them bleating (llamas make almost no noise, but when they do, it is a hum audible for less than six feet away); he had them stinking (llamas have only a light odor that smells like corn chips) and their handlers stinking of them; he constantly mentioned their greasy wool (llamas have no lanolin like sheep, a problem for electric shears). There was the incident of the animal licking something – lamas use their split lip to manipulate food, their tongue is very short, so they don’t lick. He had them raised in the jungle area of Tumbez; llamas would die of heatstroke there --the Inca actually had laws regarding taking them back to high ground after only one night in the lowlands. And in one really wrong plot twist, he had dishonest herders separate out all the twins to enrich themselves and report only single births. The big laugh here is that llamas twin so rarely that in the Inca empire such an occurrence was seen as prophetic, and it would have been reported to the governor, if not to the Inca himself.
As a llama packer/breeder/trainer I have had this book on the radar for years. Not that it is current (published 1991, at what EC calls the bottom of the HF market) but because there aren’t very many novels to choose from that deal with the Inca civilization. Since it was over a thousand pages and the author described himself as ‘married to a feminist writer’ I put it off, figuring that it was likely to be a strange brew of half-history and wishful thinking. I could not see any society less amenable to feminist ideology than the militant, ultra-disciplined, super-regulated Inca Empire. On the other hand, everybody likes to read about things they know well. So when I found a copy at a library sale, I started it with a mixture of dread and anticipation.
To my relief, it was a rewarding read. Comparing the work to more generally known ones, it reminded me of Cecelia Holland’s ‘Great Maria’ in that it was a long-term view of the relationship between a couple covering momentous events in their lives over a long period of turbulent history. Also in the leisurely pace and the attention to a minutiae of daily detail. It would be a good book to bring on a long trip, where you didn’t want to get so sucked into the novel as to not enjoy other things, but long enough that you wouldn’t run out of reading matter.
There were the expected anachronisms, mostly the common one of including romantic elements that would have been impossible in that time and culture. The Incas were a young civilization in a demanding physical climate, and like most peoples in those circumstances, their sexual restrictions were exacting. The punishment for any activity outside the bounds of marriage was severe flogging (in cases where the couple could be married) to death, by various more or less painful means according to who screwed whom under how forbidden a circumstance. Our hero was involved with an Inca princess (rolls eyes) but fortunately for my suspension of disbelief, shortly fell in love with and married a Chachapoya chief’s daughter, with yet more anachronistic premarital relations.
But for the rest, the hero and heroine were engaging people, fairly well-rounded. Cusi is an undersized youth whose father dislikes him but who compensates by earning friends among his classmates (initiation brothers) who will be in and out throughout the story. Micay is a young woman forcefully yanked from her own culture and made to learn the roles of another, who chooses to adapt rather than sulk and is assigned as a companion to Cusi’s sister. I did appreciate that these characters do not exist in a vacuum, but each have a web of relationships that are accommodated in the plot throughout. This is also very true to the Inca culture (and most subsistence-based cultures) where who you are related to dictates the choices available.
The novel alternates between the adventures of Cusi and Micay as Cusi earns respect for his prowess and cunning as a warrior and diplomat and Micay finds her place as a healer and follower of a regional high priestess. Both must inevitably choose sides in the intrigues of the Inca’s court, mainly stemming from the problems of their relatives and associates. The book includes strong spiritual elements which is quite appropriate to the culture; the Incas, like the Romans and Greeks, were constantly aware of signs and portents and based many of their decisions on them. Peters even resisted the common current plot device of inserting a ‘closet unbeliever’ to pander to modern-day views. He doesn’t do so well on the medical front, though. When smallpox arrives, Micay is ‘guided’ by dreams and spirits to adopt a incredible number of modern-day medical practices to prevent infection, including cutting off hair, oiling the skin, and even (!) wearing gauze masks.
For the rest, the details were very nice. I already knew many of them, and by and large Peters had done his homework, even if a lot of bits from the Aztec and Maya civilizations wandered south. He did include a homosexual relationship in a family member. It was presented as a problem for everybody, which is an understatement: by Inca law, such practices would not only incur the death sentence, but the entire village was to be burned as well. But other than that, it did reflect reality – though conveniently glossing over the pedophilia aspect usual in such situations. I figure it was mostly a nod to the twilight of the Mochica civilization and their rather explicit pottery, which has been the center of many recent discoveries. Never mind that the Mochicas were about as close to the Incas as the Ancient Greeks were to the Tudors.
Parents beware: some of the sexual scenes are explicit, although not overly so by modern standards, and only between the protagonist couple. Of more concern is the large array of drug use and drinking, which is rather overdone for the society. Alcohol was a feast day treat, although it is true that drunkenness was the usual result. The Incas were binge drinkers. Coca use was much more strictly controlled than Peters presents it, since there is a downside that goes beyond dark green teeth. Only among slaves working in the mines (a death sentence) was coca used freely. And as to all the other hallucinogens Cusi samples going in and out of his spirit world – they were used very sparingly, and many are lethal in small doses. These plot elements could give the wrong idea to impressionable minds.
Peters scrambled up the politics of that last three Incas and their generals to fit his story, but it wasn’t too far off, and anyway, who else is going to know? It did keep his characters hopping, and in exchange for an entertaining read on the Inca’s, this reader will forgive him a few switcheroos.
So I’ll give it four stars.
And now, the llama-breeder’s rant (which nobody but Spitfire would care about, but here goes):
Obviously Mr. Peters knew that llamas were an integral part of the Inca civilization. So of course he worked llamas in wherever he could. But Mr. Peters knew only one thing about llamas: they spit. So he had them spitting almost every time they came on the scene. It was absolutely crazy-making for me, a 4-H leader who has spent thirty years showing up with llamas in public places and saying, over and over and over, “No, it won’t spit at you. Llamas mostly spit at other llamas. They don’t even do that very often, and it is always for distinct and predictable reasons.”
As for the rest, he substituted what he might have heard/read/known about SHEEP! He had them bleating (llamas make almost no noise, but when they do, it is a hum audible for less than six feet away); he had them stinking (llamas have only a light odor that smells like corn chips) and their handlers stinking of them; he constantly mentioned their greasy wool (llamas have no lanolin like sheep, a problem for electric shears). There was the incident of the animal licking something – lamas use their split lip to manipulate food, their tongue is very short, so they don’t lick. He had them raised in the jungle area of Tumbez; llamas would die of heatstroke there --the Inca actually had laws regarding taking them back to high ground after only one night in the lowlands. And in one really wrong plot twist, he had dishonest herders separate out all the twins to enrich themselves and report only single births. The big laugh here is that llamas twin so rarely that in the Inca empire such an occurrence was seen as prophetic, and it would have been reported to the governor, if not to the Inca himself.