By focusing on death and the social and religious practices that accompany it, Gabriela Ramos's Death and conversion explores the fundamental questions of life in the context of the conquest and colonisation of the Andean region. The sixteenth century in particular was a time of trauma and transition for the people of the Andes and one in which ways of dying changed dramatically both as a result of the massive increase in death rates due to violence and disease and of the campaign to Christianise the region's inhabitants. The early part of the seventeenth century, meanwhile, was marked by the repressive campaign to extirpate perceived idolatry. Nevertheless, Ramos's work makes a significant contribution to the growing body of scholarship that in fact rejects the notion that the extent of Christianity in the Andes was defined solely by violence and repression, and that indigenous Christianity was a pretence to enable the continuation of Andean religious rites and practices. Such an argument is untenable (p. 188) and this is borne out by the profound changes in burial practices and will-making of the indigenous populations of Cuzco and Lima over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Furthermore, Andean funereal practices were not all lost with the arrival of the Spanish, but instead to a certain extent were able to continue as part of an Andean-Hispanic Catholicism. What is clear from reading Ramos's work is that there were tensions and there was conflict, but there were also significant accommodations. The study itself is both thematic and chronological. Ramos begins with a detailed analysis of the historiography of pre-Hispanic death practices and the relationships that existed between the living and the dead. The subsequent chapter focuses on the violence of conquest and the years of turmoil that followed. In particular, she gives an insightful analysis of the execution – even sacrifice or martyrdom (p. 47) – and burial rites of Atahualpa as described by the key colonial chroniclers. As she summarises, ‘ritual provides an effective way for a group to take control of the dead’ (p. 221); the importance of this is demonstrated by the focus of the chroniclers who gave as much if not more attention to the rites and ceremonies for the burial of the emperor as they did to the reasons for his execution. The bulk of the book subsequently uses the framework developed here as a point of departure for a detailed analysis of how relations between the living and the dead changed over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Intertwined with this narrative, of course, are the relations between members of colonial society, all of whom were influenced to a greater or lesser extent by funeral practices. To this end Ramos examines the establishment of indigenous hospitals and parishes, will-making, confraternities, burial places and rites and, together with the detailed figures provided in the appendices, she succeeds in producing a well-written, systematic and pioneering study of an important aspect of early modern Andean society.