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Inca
Inca is the life story of Haylli Yupanki, a man who served three generations of emperors only to watch his whole world shatter and shatter again, leaving nothing behind but his memories and his pride. Hiding in the jungle with the last of the unsubjugated Inca, Haylli transcribes his memoirs from quipus –the Inca’s writing system of knotted string– into Spanish with the help of a captured priest. Beginning with a childhood of privilege and a youth spent as a fugitive from Imperial justice, through a successful career as the Inca’s most powerful bureaucrat, to an old age spent in the ruin of his life’s work, Haylli was present at all the important moments of his people. Through his words he hopes their story will be remembered. Fans of historical fiction can look forward to an epic family saga covering more than seventy years to include almost everything we know happened between the zenith and nadir of Inca power. More than two-thirds of the characters are based on real people, and every corner of the empire is visited over the course of the narrator’s The plot has court intrigue, forbidden loves, triumphs, tragedies, rivalries, heroes, monsters, coups, civil wars, prophecies, plagues, treasures, sex and violence –all before the conquistadors arrive to change everything forevermore.
430 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 2, 2011
118 people are currently reading
224 people want to read
About the author
Geoff Micks
7 books12 followersGeoff Micks was born and lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been interviewed by the New York Times and National Public Radio about his writing, and in addition to his novels he was also commissioned by Vice Media to write and narrate an animated short that aired on HBO.
For most of his career he has researched, organized, and run industry conferences on a wide range of topics throughout North America and Europe. Prior to that he worked for a number of community newspapers over the course of four years. He has a BA Honours with High Distinction from the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Journalism from Centennial College.
For most of his career he has researched, organized, and run industry conferences on a wide range of topics throughout North America and Europe. Prior to that he worked for a number of community newspapers over the course of four years. He has a BA Honours with High Distinction from the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Journalism from Centennial College.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 18, 2016
One of the best book i have ever read. How captivating can it be to learn about an entirely different and greatest civilisation without jumping to any judgements.... i went through such an experience. If all history books are written with such interesting and clever plots kids will fall in love with our History. For his first book its really spell bounding .Geoff you have done a great job!!
January 1, 2016
Tremendous reading
Wonderful way to learn to some history. The book was a page Turner. Teaches you something about the rise and fall of a civilization. I would recommend to anyone interested in history or just a good read. Use the glossary at the end to help understanding some words. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Wonderful way to learn to some history. The book was a page Turner. Teaches you something about the rise and fall of a civilization. I would recommend to anyone interested in history or just a good read. Use the glossary at the end to help understanding some words. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
November 8, 2020
I am tired, Friar.
I am tired of you, and that shoddy brown robe you wear. I would not have given such an embarrassing rag to the poorest llama drover who ever worked my flocks.
I am tired of this thing we must do together before we have even begun. I used to savour a long and difficult task, but now I begrudge even the small annoyances of finding you parchment and ink. The scratching of your quill sets my teeth on edge. I would weep, but even a useless old man knows his tears will change nothing.
I begrudge the new reality that darkens the twilight of my life. I used to be able to guide the lives of millions of people with just a few balls of string, but now all I can do is sit here and speak to you in your clumsy tongue. My life’s work is gone, and those squiggles you labour over shall produce my only lasting legacy.
I feel it in my bones. I am weary all the way down to the marrow. I ache where the monster of Time gnaws at me, swallowing my accomplishments, digesting all the people and places and things that I have ever loved. Time is relentless, unstoppable, and it devours all memory, some faster than others. When the monster voids its bowels, everything I care about vanishes into the emptiness and loneliness and stillness and silence that is to be forgotten forevermore.
I can see you don’t understand, and your ignorance exhausts me. How can I make you see what I am trying to do? Speaking in Spanish is like trying to play the drum when all you have is a flute. It is a lover’s language, and full of colourful obscenities, but it is not a proper medium for lofty discourse.
Do you know that the Inca chose a language that was not our own with which to rule our world? You call it Quechua, which is the name of an unimportant tribe of river people who live not too far from Cuzco. We call it Runa Simi, the Language of the People, and of all the tongues I have mastered I always marvel at Runa Simi’s versatility, its capacity, its grace.
Take the word Pacha, Friar. Pacha means Time, Earth and Universe. You can tell which one a man means by the context, but it is always there in the back of your mind that Time and Earth and Universe are all one whole, inseparable from one another.
There is another word, Cuti, which means change, movement, alteration. A simple term, to be sure, but what happens when you put it together with a word that has three meanings that are the same thing seen from different angles? How do you translate Pachacuti, a thoroughly complex and beautiful word in my tongue, into your unimaginative language? Does it mean Earthquake? It does, but not always. Does it mean Change of Time? Yes, but what does that mean to you? It terrifies me, so I must find a better term than a mere Change of Time for Pachacuti.
Think of the world you know, Friar. Think of the reality of your life that wraps around you like a warm blanket. That is not the way things are. It is just the way things are right now. At any moment the world you know can stop, and a new and different world, unimaginable and unacceptable to you before, will begin. That is a Pachacuti. It is the end of one era and the beginning of another. It is the Apocalypse. One era ends and a new era begins. Do you see now?
One of our emperors even named himself Pachacuti so there would be no confusion: There was a time before him and a time after him, and during his reign the old world changed and a new world —the world that was divided into four quarters with each paying homage to the Inca— was born.
Your very presence here is because of a Pachacuti that clenches my heart and disturbs my dreams. My old eyes fog up with regrets sometimes, and when I try to blink them away I see flashes of what we were, and what we should have been long after my death. When I was a boy my people ruled. Today those few of us who survive bow to your kind, or we cower in the darkness of the hacha hacha, the cloying sticky jungles that are fit only for beasts and men prepared to act like beasts.
That was a Pachacuti. Our time is gone, and now I must spend my final days bitter and useless and defeated in your time. The world has changed, and not for the better. I am so tired of being helpless, of not being able to correct the great wrongs and injustices that have swept my world from Quitu to Tchili, from the never-ending ocean to the never-ending forest.
I have brought you here, Friar, to preserve some small part of all that I have lost. After a Pachacuti no one remembers what life was like before. What will the future remember of the past? Shaped stones, abandoned cities and dusty graves are no fit legacy for all that my people accomplished, but someday that will be all that remains unless I do something with the few days I have left to me.
You know you're reading something special when your intervals of actual reading are so incredibly sporadic they stretch out over three years, and in between dozens and dozens of other stories, and yet the tale being woven is so spellbinding you still end up engrossed despite doing next to no rereading and struggling to remember the names of people, places, and things every time you pick it up.
I can't apologize enough to Geoff Micks for choosing not to finish this book all the way back in 2017. The entire chronicle from the heights of the Inca's power to their ignoble fall would have been even more incredible and heartbreaking than it already was.
4 3/4 stars
I am tired of you, and that shoddy brown robe you wear. I would not have given such an embarrassing rag to the poorest llama drover who ever worked my flocks.
I am tired of this thing we must do together before we have even begun. I used to savour a long and difficult task, but now I begrudge even the small annoyances of finding you parchment and ink. The scratching of your quill sets my teeth on edge. I would weep, but even a useless old man knows his tears will change nothing.
I begrudge the new reality that darkens the twilight of my life. I used to be able to guide the lives of millions of people with just a few balls of string, but now all I can do is sit here and speak to you in your clumsy tongue. My life’s work is gone, and those squiggles you labour over shall produce my only lasting legacy.
I feel it in my bones. I am weary all the way down to the marrow. I ache where the monster of Time gnaws at me, swallowing my accomplishments, digesting all the people and places and things that I have ever loved. Time is relentless, unstoppable, and it devours all memory, some faster than others. When the monster voids its bowels, everything I care about vanishes into the emptiness and loneliness and stillness and silence that is to be forgotten forevermore.
I can see you don’t understand, and your ignorance exhausts me. How can I make you see what I am trying to do? Speaking in Spanish is like trying to play the drum when all you have is a flute. It is a lover’s language, and full of colourful obscenities, but it is not a proper medium for lofty discourse.
Do you know that the Inca chose a language that was not our own with which to rule our world? You call it Quechua, which is the name of an unimportant tribe of river people who live not too far from Cuzco. We call it Runa Simi, the Language of the People, and of all the tongues I have mastered I always marvel at Runa Simi’s versatility, its capacity, its grace.
Take the word Pacha, Friar. Pacha means Time, Earth and Universe. You can tell which one a man means by the context, but it is always there in the back of your mind that Time and Earth and Universe are all one whole, inseparable from one another.
There is another word, Cuti, which means change, movement, alteration. A simple term, to be sure, but what happens when you put it together with a word that has three meanings that are the same thing seen from different angles? How do you translate Pachacuti, a thoroughly complex and beautiful word in my tongue, into your unimaginative language? Does it mean Earthquake? It does, but not always. Does it mean Change of Time? Yes, but what does that mean to you? It terrifies me, so I must find a better term than a mere Change of Time for Pachacuti.
Think of the world you know, Friar. Think of the reality of your life that wraps around you like a warm blanket. That is not the way things are. It is just the way things are right now. At any moment the world you know can stop, and a new and different world, unimaginable and unacceptable to you before, will begin. That is a Pachacuti. It is the end of one era and the beginning of another. It is the Apocalypse. One era ends and a new era begins. Do you see now?
One of our emperors even named himself Pachacuti so there would be no confusion: There was a time before him and a time after him, and during his reign the old world changed and a new world —the world that was divided into four quarters with each paying homage to the Inca— was born.
Your very presence here is because of a Pachacuti that clenches my heart and disturbs my dreams. My old eyes fog up with regrets sometimes, and when I try to blink them away I see flashes of what we were, and what we should have been long after my death. When I was a boy my people ruled. Today those few of us who survive bow to your kind, or we cower in the darkness of the hacha hacha, the cloying sticky jungles that are fit only for beasts and men prepared to act like beasts.
That was a Pachacuti. Our time is gone, and now I must spend my final days bitter and useless and defeated in your time. The world has changed, and not for the better. I am so tired of being helpless, of not being able to correct the great wrongs and injustices that have swept my world from Quitu to Tchili, from the never-ending ocean to the never-ending forest.
I have brought you here, Friar, to preserve some small part of all that I have lost. After a Pachacuti no one remembers what life was like before. What will the future remember of the past? Shaped stones, abandoned cities and dusty graves are no fit legacy for all that my people accomplished, but someday that will be all that remains unless I do something with the few days I have left to me.
You know you're reading something special when your intervals of actual reading are so incredibly sporadic they stretch out over three years, and in between dozens and dozens of other stories, and yet the tale being woven is so spellbinding you still end up engrossed despite doing next to no rereading and struggling to remember the names of people, places, and things every time you pick it up.
I can't apologize enough to Geoff Micks for choosing not to finish this book all the way back in 2017. The entire chronicle from the heights of the Inca's power to their ignoble fall would have been even more incredible and heartbreaking than it already was.
4 3/4 stars
December 30, 2018
One of the best books I've ever read, and easily the best one I read in 2018.
Micks is a master at world-building, and this work would be impressive even if it weren't his first novel. Haylli Yupanki is an incredibly complex character that the reader will empathize with. Micks went to great lengths to create a main character that is relatable yet imperfect.
As I devoured this book I felt like I was standing next to Haylli the entire time. I loved with him and suffered with him, and I have Micks to thank for that. Micks also makes it clear that many historical texts on the Inca will argue against the historical world that he created, which I appreciated. He clearly put a lot of love into this book, to the benefit of the reader.
There were these cool little tidbits that were satisfying as hell to read. For example:
"As for us, we were chewing five times our number’s worth of coca, and we took to spitting our wads onto the rocks to appease Supay’s minions. No one suffered soroche, the mountain sickness, so it must have worked."
Chewing coca leaves alleviates symptoms of altitude sickness, or soroche, and tiny observational details like that really made a positive difference for me.
If you're on the fence, don't be. Absolutely read this.
Micks is a master at world-building, and this work would be impressive even if it weren't his first novel. Haylli Yupanki is an incredibly complex character that the reader will empathize with. Micks went to great lengths to create a main character that is relatable yet imperfect.
As I devoured this book I felt like I was standing next to Haylli the entire time. I loved with him and suffered with him, and I have Micks to thank for that. Micks also makes it clear that many historical texts on the Inca will argue against the historical world that he created, which I appreciated. He clearly put a lot of love into this book, to the benefit of the reader.
There were these cool little tidbits that were satisfying as hell to read. For example:
"As for us, we were chewing five times our number’s worth of coca, and we took to spitting our wads onto the rocks to appease Supay’s minions. No one suffered soroche, the mountain sickness, so it must have worked."
Chewing coca leaves alleviates symptoms of altitude sickness, or soroche, and tiny observational details like that really made a positive difference for me.
If you're on the fence, don't be. Absolutely read this.
May 17, 2013
I chose this book to accompany me during a trip to Peru and it could not have been a better companion. The characters and settings in the book came alive as I travelled and learned about Inca history.
Micks has done a masterful job of characterization and I had no trouble identifying with the protagonist. Likewise, his descriptions of Inca life and cities are bang on. His research has been impeccable, drawing - I believe - liberally from the main resource entitled The Royal Commentaries of the Incas by Garcilaso de la Vega.
I enjoyed his approach of relating the story as if it were being told to a Spanish priest, exactly as the original stories had been done in Vega's commentaries. It covered the transitional historical period from immediately before the Spanish conquest to just after.
A wonderful tale, hard to put down. I highly recommend it.
Micks has done a masterful job of characterization and I had no trouble identifying with the protagonist. Likewise, his descriptions of Inca life and cities are bang on. His research has been impeccable, drawing - I believe - liberally from the main resource entitled The Royal Commentaries of the Incas by Garcilaso de la Vega.
I enjoyed his approach of relating the story as if it were being told to a Spanish priest, exactly as the original stories had been done in Vega's commentaries. It covered the transitional historical period from immediately before the Spanish conquest to just after.
A wonderful tale, hard to put down. I highly recommend it.
August 27, 2015
A great plot, filled with interesting information about the Inca, but writing style is poor and really juvenile in places. The female characters are ridiculous and the narratives are filled with modern day cliches. Depending on your literary taste, this novel may be difficult to stomach, but action is fun to follow.
January 15, 2015
entertaining and well written
I truly enjoyed this read. Well formed characters and smooth pacing. Historical fiction at its best covering a truly blurred and confused period of history, the decline of the Incas.
I truly enjoyed this read. Well formed characters and smooth pacing. Historical fiction at its best covering a truly blurred and confused period of history, the decline of the Incas.
January 4, 2016
Engrossing read!
I'm simply amazed this young author was able to create such a complex, compelling and insightful history of the Inca! Thank you! I look forward to reading his other works...
I'm simply amazed this young author was able to create such a complex, compelling and insightful history of the Inca! Thank you! I look forward to reading his other works...
January 18, 2018
This is one of those books I could stay up all night reading. I'm a sucker for books set in exotic and historic locations and have never read any from the point of view of the Incas, while there are some strange lexical choices, overall the experience of the book is enough to elevate it.
Exploring the Inca world is fascinating, and although sometimes the language they use is out of place. The author succeeds in filling Tahuantinsuyu with engaging and memorable characters.
While it is impossible not to compare it to Gary Jenning's Aztec. For all intents and purposes, they share basically same plot except for a shift in setting. Inca is an entertaining and haunting book in its own right. It doesn't surpass or come close to how dark or unsettling Aztec is, but it portrays the spirit of this civilization well and equals it in some respects, it's far less brutal than Aztec, which makes it a much easier read.
Overall, I'd reccomend this to anyone willing to learn about the Inca civilization, it was more than worth the nights it kept me up for.
Exploring the Inca world is fascinating, and although sometimes the language they use is out of place. The author succeeds in filling Tahuantinsuyu with engaging and memorable characters.
While it is impossible not to compare it to Gary Jenning's Aztec. For all intents and purposes, they share basically same plot except for a shift in setting. Inca is an entertaining and haunting book in its own right. It doesn't surpass or come close to how dark or unsettling Aztec is, but it portrays the spirit of this civilization well and equals it in some respects, it's far less brutal than Aztec, which makes it a much easier read.
Overall, I'd reccomend this to anyone willing to learn about the Inca civilization, it was more than worth the nights it kept me up for.
July 28, 2014
I greatly enjoyed this book! This would have been a five star book except for two things; one, it is STRONGLY similar to Gary Jennings' Aztec, from the story telling style to the great but sorrow-filled lives of the protagonist. Secondly, while the book has a lot of details, it's still not enough to describe the great and once almighty Inca.
April 22, 2016
Good historical fiction along the lines of James Michener except not as well written. Micks seems to have done his research and put together a narrative, even if his style is lacking.
August 15, 2020
A great book to learn the history of the last 50 years of the Incan Empire before the Spanish arrived. More books like this need to be written and read.
December 20, 2017
I enjoyed this book, a good companion while in Cuzco, it really brought - for me personally- a well known piece of history to life.
December 4, 2019
Learning about history has never been that interesting! Absolutely loved this book.
August 21, 2022
This book is a hidden gem on kindle unlimited, highly recommend for anyone who likes historical fiction that is well researched and detailed.
May 28, 2021
The author's speculation about life as a noble Incan man is realistic and entertaining. He has obviously studied the history of the Inca Empire and the story fits seamlessly into that history.
February 13, 2013
Interesting, I think the author uses quite a bit of poetic license, but I found it a good adjunct to my fascination with the Incas and Peru.
March 30, 2014
All the Inca names are a bit tedious, but a very good read.
June 14, 2014
What we all wouldn't give to have hindsight in order to moralize history as we experience it. A main character that's just one great big "I told you so." In other news, the Incas were amazing.
November 27, 2019
Great book!
January 4, 2019
I have enjoyed this book very much. Well researched, well written. Strangely enough, it is quite similar to my own book: Zoon van de Zon, written in Dutch, no translations available yet.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews