Malinalli is a beautifully written retelling of La Malinche - vivid imagery, rich mythology and intricate magic are tied into this story and make it feel tangible and genuine. I liked that Malinalli was both flawed and endlessly motivated, though she was somewhat static and didn't change much through the course of the book. The side characters were also very flat and I would have liked to see some development in the rest of the cast.
The writing was really pretty and the first half of the book did a great job introducing the world of magic and priestesses. The second half, however, was inconsistently paced, and the writing seemed to exchange clarity for purple prose at times. I also felt like the ending was anticlimactic and didn't tie up any loose ends - it read like a summary of Malinalli's later years that you would see in a research paper, not a historical fantasy novel. Overall, though, this was a good book and a beautiful reimagination of Malinalli's story through her own eyes.