Sesshu Foster

In the alternate universe of Atomik Aztex, the Aztecs rule, having conquered the European invaders long ago. Aztek warriors with totemic powers are busy colonizing Europe, and human sacrifice is basic to economic growth. Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, is plagued by nightmares of a parallel reality where American consumerism reigns supreme. Ghosts of banished Aztek warriors emerge to haunt contemporary Los Angeles, and Zenzontli's visions of Hell become real as he's trapped in a job in an East L.A. meatpacking plant.

Atomik Aztex

Fraser Simons

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.

Atomik Aztex

Reviews