#WeNeedDiverseBooks and a few other related hashtags have been trending on Twitter lately among the circle of people I follow; mostly writers.  The impression that I’ve gotten is that the hashtag is primarily directed at literature for very young readers and pre-readers, but there’s no reason it has to be; all segments of literature benefit from diversity– diversity of authors, diversity of publishers, and diversity of subject material.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you T. L. Morganfield’s The Bone Flower Throne, the only book I have ever read set in tenth-century Mexico.  And not for lack of trying– this book was a blind order based on a Big Idea piece at Scalzi’s blog, so it was ordered based on the setting, the cover, and a maybe 500-word introductory piece by the author.

Check this one out, folks.  The Bone Flower Throne is on my shortlist for best books of the year right now; it’s got it all– compelling characters, a fantastic setting, interesting villains, errythang.  I’m generally not a huge fan of historical fiction but when I like it I tend to like it a lot; Morganfield either did an immense amount of research into Toltec society or did a magnificent job faking it, which for my purposes is functionally the same thing.  There are two more books coming in the series and they’ll be day-one orders when they show up.

My only complaint is not really a complaint, more of a warning: names in this book tend to be… tricky.  To start, most of the characters have two or three of ’em: an Aztec name (such as Quetzalpetlatl or Topiltzin), a translated name (Little Reed or Smoking Mirror) and sometimes they have nicknames or ceremonial names or their names change at pivotal parts in the story.  It means that keeping track of everybody can be more than a little bit challenging at times, especially since the Aztec names are all going to be long and complicated and hard to pronounce for a lot of people.  Also, to keep you from needing Wikipedia: a tlaxcalli is a tortilla.  🙂

Five stars.  Check it out.