In the early years of the conquest of the Americas, Inés Suárez, a seamstress condemned to a life of toil, flees Spain to seek adventure in the New World. As Inés makes her way to Chile, she begins a fiery romance with Pedro de Valdivia, war hero and field marshal to the famed Francisco Pizarro. Together the lovers will build the new city of Santiago, and they will wage war against the indigenous Chileans—a bloody struggle that will change Inés and Valdivia forever, inexorably pulling each of them toward separate destinies.

Inés of My Soul is a work of breathtaking scope that masterfully dramatizes the known events of Inés Suárez's life, crafting them into a novel rich with the narrative brilliance and passion readers have come to expect from Isabel Allende.

Allende seems to have captured and portrayed the possibility of events during an important era of the conquest (ref. her bibliography). The religiosity and cruelty during that time, were par for the course and the acceptable way of life (of ignorance). Ines is an intelligent leader but the downside is that she is a woman during the time. If she were a man, she'd probably be as cruel as the others. This is an excellent and well-written historical novel.

Anyone who has enjoyed the beautifully written Eleanor of Aquitaine by Historian Alison Weir will find this a painful and tiresome read. There are details that ring false, and after awhile it was hard to stay interested. After trudging through the Chilean deserts, almost dying of thirst, the troop still has wine to give their wounded warriors? In the springtime, she reports they at last have fruit to eat--what fruits ripen in the spring? An entire battalion of soldiers disguises themselves in sheets--where would there be that many precious and costly sheets in the 16th century? I suppose all of this can be attributed to poetic license or "magical realism" but it just rings false and silly. Perhaps teenage girls will enjoy it as a spicy fairy story.

This is one of the inferior novels that I have read of Isabel Allende. I could not finish it to the end. The protagonist is a strong female character set on an arduous journey with conquistadors and natives,from Peru to Chile. The part of coursing that distance was tedious reading which had to be skimmed.

Allende's imagination took incredible leaps based on non-historical documents to describe some South American early civilizations as extremely cruel and corrupt (Incas) while others were described as peaceful and loving (Mapuches). Probably untrue en both counts, based of textbooks. The book was wordy and tedious and could not even get to the end, somewhat boring.

Inés of My Soul is blandly written (or translated? or both? I'm not sure), and its plot extremely contrived. I enjoyed the history lesson, but that's not what you want your novel to feel like. And it suffers from that really obnoxious phenomenon where historical novels focus on ideas and details specifically of interest to and which reflect the values of the modern reader. Bleh.