“Years ago I made the mistake of reading a book called The Journeyer by Gary Jennings, about the life and adventures of Marco Polo. If you’re not familiar with Jennings’s work, the synopsis is simple: SEX, VIOLENCE, history, SEX, VIOLENCE”
Now the only book ive read of his was “spangle” which was about a gilded age circus and it more or less fit the above mold
the only thing that really bothered me was every member under 18 was either molested or killed off or both …
Is all of his writing the same or did he have a more varied style?
Yeah, but it pretty much follows the same pattern ;). Jennings is obsessed with sex in general, outré sex in particular and mutilation. As different as they are as writers, he reminds just a little bit of Jack Chalker in the extent to which his own obsessions seem to repeat over and over on the page. The fact that he is an interesting writer who writes reasonably well-researched historical drama with a( sometimes rough )sense of humor helps mitigate some of the creepiness factor. I mean I certainly enjoyed parts/aspects of both Aztec and Journeyer( with the former being the stronger ). But just based on those two, if you have a low tolerance for mayhem, mutilation and bucketloads of occasionally disturbing sex scenes, Jennings might be best avoided.
Jennings had been a writer of books for children and young adults before writing Aztec. Maybe there was a lot of unexpressed sex and violence that had built up over the years.
well in spangle it seemed like after the first 100 pages of each section he ran out of all the circus stuff then ran out of historical stuff and then decided he had to write tawdry soap opera … the one other thing that annoyed me is the "they meet anyone notable and famous for 20 minutes a piece "