Horrible Histories is a range of history books aimed at children but also quite fun and enlightening for older children (like… er… thirty year-old children such as myself!) They’re a really easy read but despite their slim volumes, inclusion of cartoon illustrations and appeal to the kiddies, they contain a mine of intriguing information about past civilisations and suchlike. Of course, with a name like “Horrible Histories” you expect a certain amount of gore… which the books gleefully deliver.

All the Horrible Histories are written by Terry Deary, who obviously has a real passion for bringing history to life. In this book, The Angry Aztecs, he starts off by giving us some information about the Mayan people – and why no book about the Aztecs can really avoid starting off by talking about the Mayas. The Aztecs were apparently the third great civilisation in Central America – first there was the Olmecs, then the Maya. A great mystery surrounding the Maya is the fact that they built large cities with huge pyramids and then at around 900CE, they just disappeared – still living on in rural communities, but the cities were completely abandoned. No-one knows why…

Then we come to the Aztecs. We find out just why they were so angry, and how they vented that anger. They became great warriors and eventually turned on those who had subjected them, becoming the most powerful people in Mexico at that time. They had a few unfortunate traits however – not least of which is their habit ripping out living peoples’ hearts in ritual human sacrifice – nice, eh? They had a huge number of superstitious beliefs, had some rather odd dietary habits, some medical methods that you really wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of, an advanced calendar (that incidentally predicts the end of the world in 2012), and a very hierarchical society with priests at the top. Children didn’t have much luck in the Aztec society either (but by hell there was discipline!!! A bit extreme perhaps and not many children lived through it…) Being captured by the Aztecs in battle was a really, really bad idea too – and they would actually try not to kill too many of their enemies so they were sure of having enough human sacrifices – after all, if there weren’t, maybe the soldiers would have to make up the numbers! It was a brutal and cruel society, which came to an end brutally and cruelly at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadores led by Hernan Cortes.

Out of the three Horrible Histories I’ve read so far, this was by far the least impressive. Deary tries far too hard to be funny, resulting in him often failing. It also struggles to fill the 128 pages with interesting information – it often seems to be made up of filler material, which is not at all how the other two Horrible Histories I’ve read came across. It’s still quite a good read with many interesting facts spread throughout it, and Martin Brown’s illustrations we still good (though he also tried too hard to be funny) so I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in the Aztecs who don’t fancy reading a 600-page academic textbook on the subject right now. It lacks the sparkle and quality of information that the other books have though, so unless your child is a real Aztec-o-holic, get this in a collection rather than paying for just this one.

Thanks to Arienej who added this to the Epinions database for me.


Other Horrible Histories

Horrible Histories: The Awesome Egyptians

Horrible Histories: The Ruthless Romans



Recommended: Yes