It is 1521 by the Frankish year, and Eli ben Abram is unsettled. His world is much like ours, with the key difference being that the Reconquista of Spain never happened, and the discovery of the New World was made by merchants working for the Caliphate of Cordoba, here to trade rather than conquer.

In Tenochtitlan, Eli is an outsider twice over: a Moor among the Mexica, a Jew among the Moors. He is married to the Nahua translator Malinala (an alternative version of Cortez' translator La Malinche). Amidst the bustling trade and human sacrifices of the city, Eli has carved out a little slice of peace, and a world where his boundaries are much wider than they are under the Caliph's Laws--boundaries so wide he can almost forget them.

Yet, rumors are unsettled. The Moorish fanatic Benmassoud is reported to have arrived on the coast with an army to end the trade in sinful goods like tobacco and chocolate. Plague is spreading through Tenochtitlan. Popocatépetl is erupting. The other merchants have requested that Eli gain an audience with the Emperor Moctezuma. And worst of all, Malinala is evasive, often absent on business she will not explain, and Eli will not ask.

Red Smoking Mirror is a fantastic piece of mood and setting, a mediation on exile and the ties that bind very different people. Yet it is also not really a novel, Eli is a great observer, but a shockingly passive protagonist. This is a really good book, but it's missing some element that would make it great.