The Discovery of Chocolate (2001) by James Runcie

Diego de Godoy is one of the lesser lights of Cortez's expedition to the New World. There, amid the treachery and carnage, he discovers chocolate and the love of its supreme artisan, a woman he calls Ignacia. After a passionate retreat together, filled with chocolate- and love-making, they are separated by war -- but not before she tricks him into drinking an elixir of life. It's an elixir whose effects are stranger than merely conveying immortality, in fact, because his life seems thereafter to incorporate sudden slippages between one era and another, with intervening periods being spent at the same rate as the mortals with him he mingles. Needless to say, his intervals of ordinary history have a chocolatey theme, and he works with such luminaries of chocolate's tradition as Fry (in the UK) and Hershey (in the US; his opinion of Hershey's chocolate is much the same as mine, and in the book you'll find the technological reason for the judgement).

This is all pretty jolly, with plenty of entertaining sex and lashings of chocolatey lore. Since I'm not particularly a chocolate fiend, I know that some of the book's attractions must have gone right past me; but it was an amiable read all the same.
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http://kosmyryk.typepad.com/wu_wei/2007/05/a_luscious_read.html ( )

A bit silly - the plot had a lot of potential but it seemed like it was written for an audience with a very simply reading comprehension level. ( )

a few quotable lines--for your mushy love notes. some parts seem contrived; others flow and taste like rich chocolate. ( )