Lady of Palenque: Flower of Bacal, A.D. 749

This book in the Dear America/The Royal Diaries series is about Princess Green Jay, a young girl living many years ago in what is called Mesoamerica, which is today's Central America, during the time of the Mayan civilization.

As happens with girls born to royalty, she is to be married off to someone in another area to help cement a political alliance. This book is mainly about her trip getting there and all the hardships and dangers that she must endure just to meet the person she's supposed to marry.

I think the book runs into a problem in that it deals with a civilization that most people aren't very familiar with. There's not a lot to relate to, unlike books dealing with Hawaii, Korea, China or other countries that we are more familiar with. In addition, almost all the terms are incredibly hard to pronounce, and there are various terms referred to in English which are not really explained. So it's a matter of reading then going back to the glossary to look up this or that word, then going back, getting stuck again, and so on.

It makes the book rather difficult to read, and you lose a lot of the flow of the story when you have to try and figure out how words might be pronounced or what they mean. For example, opening randomly to p. 74, we have Ah Tz'ib, Tzunuun, Pobilk'uk, Ahutz Cocom, all of which look rather difficult to pronounce. On another page, we find Lords of the Three Hearthstones, Mirror Speakers and Rainbowbird lineage, terms which are not explained and would be nice to be able to understand.

Overall, then, an interesting but rather difficult book as far as readability goes.

Main Index

Dear America index page

Yadult Index