The book isn't good just as history, but it is also filled with romance and adventure, without loosing it's sense of history. There is however one thing that could diminish it's greatness, and that is the tragic sense of Jennings. The whole book is filled with tragedies, and Jennings tends to do this a lot, however, in this particular case, the whole momentum of the book is tragedy.
Strongly recommended, yet not for the faint of heart.
As you can tell by the other reviews, AZTEC is essentially the life story of one Aztec named Mixtli who lived during the last 50+ years of the Aztec Empire, and in so doing witnessed the civilization at its prime and then witnessed its downfall. Rather than get into the substance of Mixtli's many adventures here, let me just say that Mixtli leads a very extraordinary life. Through his unlikely but gradual rise from a commoner to a noble, every facet of the Aztecs' social, political and religious life is explored. Of course, as with all historical fiction novels, the reader should keep in mind that the specific events are fictiously rendered, and may therefore be exaggerated or otherwise altered to make the story more exciting. Also, because significant portions of the book concern aspects of Mixtli's life that have little or nothing to do with the Aztec civilization as a whole, the reader should expect to have his/her history lesson of politics, economics, war, and religion occasionally interrupted by Mixtli's oftentimes unconventional (even among the Aztecs) personal life.
Finally, AZTEC is more than just a good story and a quasi-history lesson, it is also a social commentary criticizing Anglo/European culture and the Catholic Church. The Spanish/Catholics are portrayed throughout AZTEC as greedy for gold, and as terribly unenlightened hypocrits that regularly burned "herotics" but thought the Aztecs' human sacrifices to be barbaric. So, not only is AZTEC exciting and quasi-educational in the context of a history lesson, it also makes us examine the errors of our past so that we may possibly be more tolerant of the wide-array of beliefs and cultures we now encounter amongst our family, friends and co-workers each day.