Gary Jennings

1928–1999

Gary Jennings was an American author best known for expansive historical novels distinguished by detailed research, vivid settings and strong elements of adventure. Born in Virginia in 1928, he was largely self-educated and wrote books for both younger and adult readers before achieving international success with Aztec. The novel recreates the Aztec Empire before and during the Spanish conquest, presenting its society, religion and eventual destruction through the life of a fictional eyewitness.

His other major novels include The Journeyer, an imaginative account of Marco Polo’s travels; Spangle, which follows a travelling circus across nineteenth-century Europe; and Raptor, set amid the upheavals following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Jennings was known for immersive research, living in Mexico while preparing his Aztec novels, travelling through the Balkans for Raptor and accompanying circus companies while writing Spangle. His fiction combines broad historical scope with graphic depictions of warfare, sexuality, cultural conflict and survival.

Periods and events

American Civil War Emancipation and Reconstruction American History Nineteenth-Century Europe Medieval Period Mongol Invasions Mongol Empire Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire Late Roman Empire Fall of the Western Roman Empire Rome in the Early Middle Ages New Spain Spanish Empire in the Americas Peninsular War

Series

Series by Gary Jennings (2 series)

Spangle in Order

by Gary Jennings 3 books 4.7

Spangle follows Florian’s Flourishing Florilegium of Wonders from the devastated American South at the end of the Civil War to the courts, capitals and battlefields of Europe. Former Confederate colonel Zachary Edge and veteran Obie Yount join a struggling travelling circus whose performers become a surrogate family. As…

Spangle: Road Show

4.8

Spangle: The Center Ring

4.7

Spangle: The Grand Promenade

4.7

Aztec in Order

by Gary Jennings 6 books 4.2

The Aztec sequence follows Indigenous and mixed-ancestry protagonists through five centuries of Mexican history, from the height of Tenochtitlan to the wars that ended Spanish rule. The first novel gives Mixtli’s account of the empire under Ahuitzotl and Moctezuma II and carries his life into the conquest. Later…