IMMORTAL PLEASURES

History comes to undead life in this bloody tale of vampiric vengeance.

When she was mortal, Malinalli spent her days bending to the whims of others in order to survive. A Nahua girl traded away after the birth of her stepfather’s heir, she translated the conquistadors’ demands to the Indigenous communities they destroyed. She bore their leader an heir: Martin, the first mestizo, a child born of rape and colonial conquest. For what she did in the name of survival, history dubbed her “the traitorous La Malinche.” In the 20th century, Malinalli, now an immortal vampire, travels the world on her own terms. Though she still bristles at how easily the modern-day world bandies about the names “Tabasco” and “Cholula”—one the place she first met the Spaniards, the other the site of a bloody massacre carried out by Spanish forces—Castro’s heroine takes some comfort in the knowledge that she persisted where others faded away. "Sometimes the real fight is surviving to tell the tale," she reminds us, "so others can hear it." Her story may be relegated to the margins of history, but she is the only person left alive who saw Mesoamerica forced to bend the knee to its oppressors...or so she thinks. Just as Malinalli starts to believe she might have found a place to put down roots, her past comes into a screeching collision with the present. A bloodthirsty conqueror she knew all those centuries ago survived as well, and he wants revenge. In the hands of a lesser writer, the tale of Malinalli—who was a real-life figure—could have come off as a flat recitation of what little historians know about her. Horror veteran Castro has done a remarkable job here, not only of resurrecting La Malinche, but of turning her into a fully realized, three-dimensional character. Readers meet a woman who scraped by on raw ambition and steely cunning, yet bears the scars of a lifetime of repeated victimization and trauma. Although the author brings a host of other historical actors into play, Castro never wavers in her dedication to, and focus on, Malinalli and her story.

An engrossing tale of monstrous life—human and otherwise.