Sara Rosario Gonzáles lleva una existencia relativamente tranquila, como restauradora de libros y manuscritos antiguos en el Getty Museum de Los Ángeles. Pero cuando se encuentra ante la tarea de restaurar un manuscrito del siglo XVI sobre una princesa azteca que fue esclavizada por Cortés y enviada a Europa para divertir al Papa y a Carlos V, no se da cuenta del poder que tiene la historia en la que está a punto de sumergirse.
En el manuscrito, nos enteramos de que una vez llega a Europa, la princesa está empeñada en vengar la masacre de su pueblo.
Sara, por su parte, busca comprobar que el libro fue en realidad escrito por la misma princesa azteca, y no por el monje europeo que es su presunto autor. La fascinación de Sara por el manuscrito se mezcla a los conflictos que debe afrontar en su propia vida. La frustración que le causa su incapacidad de comprometerse con Karl, el hombre que la ha amado desde la secundaria, el recuerdo de la sabiduría evocadora e inquietante de su madre difunta, y la aparente estabilidad de su padre, quien, contrariamente a Sara, ve el mundo con pragmatismo y sin prejuicios.

Though I loved many parts of the Helen tale and the book binding and restoration details,
why will readers care about a woman who, not only is sleeping with the professed "enemy" of Mexicans,
but does not at all care that she is ruining another woman's whole life...? ( )

I'm not sure how I feel about The Conquest... I love books about books and the people who love them, but Sara, the rare book restorer who is the main character of this novel, is dreadfully unlikeable. Sara is on a quest to discover the mysteries behind the book she is restoring but also to win back her estranged lover, who is getting married to another woman. While I understand how a person can become totally immersed in a book and bewitched by the content in its pages, I did not find myself rooting for Sara. The premise of The Conquest is fascinating, but selfish characters alienated me from the storyline. ( )

It's about a Mexican-American antique book restorer who's convinced this old European manuscript about an Aztec princess/juggler/slave was actually written by the Aztec woman, instead of a crazy monk like everyone thinks. The antique book restorer is a hardcore bibliophile who uses storytelling as a seduction and romance technique. (Her on/off boyfriend can never resist her seduction, even as he's alienated by her bibliophilia.) The manuscript has juggling that can affect the sun and can assassinate an European king, crossdressing, and a lesbian romance subplot between the juggler and an Italian nun. It touches upon Cortez, post-colonial history, hidden history, Titian, and the West projecting itself onto the "dark" continents.

Here's a quote: I love the museum because it is a garden of such secret histories. For the past few years, I've made a home in this place, surrounded by these relics of lost empires and the breath of the great dead. It's in the Getty that I've learned I have a knack for resurrecting and protecting a history that not everyone can see, and it is one of the greatest passions in my life. I spend all my days, all my weekends, all my evenings at it, unless I'm with Karl. He has trouble understanding why I work as hard as I do, but I'm still looking for proof of my own past in these pages that I mend--maybe a foreign name obscured under a false title, the dusky blood in the provenance, an unexpected tint in the skin of a genius--any afterimage of the dark continents burned by the lumen gratiae of these brilliant civilizations protected by the Getty, and, more generally, anything that might rattle the case of this perfect collection I feel so many things about. I suppose you could say I'm an eccentric looking for something that doesn't exist, like the famous cracked knight who saw a princess Dulcinea in the big-hipped girl busy slopping pigs. But though some of my esteemed colleagues do levy such slanders my way, they don't ruffle my whiskers even a little bit.

The Conquest is pretty good. Definitely better than the last book I read of Murray's, [The King's Road]. The evocation of ancient Mexico, and the history of Cortes' invasion, are nicely done. The characters (at least the contemporary ones) act with much more believable motivation than in the The King's Road. The more fantastical characters aren't supposed to be realistic so it's not a problem when they do something bizarre 8). ( )