Customer Reviews

In the Courts of the Sun

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

I believe that your personal politics will play a big part in whether you like this book or not. Conservatives will probably not like it and liberals probably will. As a moderate, the authors unrelenting desire to inject politics into a sci-fi/time travel/adventure was simply annoying.

In the world according to Mr. D'Amato, the United States, Caucasians, Mormons, the C.I.A., Corporations, Haliburton (ok, he got that one right) Tom Clancy, Alicia Keys and National Geographic are all bad.

The research is brilliant and the idea for the story is solid. I was really looking forward to reading this novel. But this is a wonderful idea squandered. The storyline is slow and strangely the pace does not increase as the book progresses. The lead character is marginally tolerable. At one point the author rags on Tom Clancy, but D'Amato is likewise very detail oriented, only unlike Clancy, often at the expense of the story.

In fact, lots of information appears to have no purpose other than for the author to convince his readers that he is a really smart guy. And this is a planned trilogy? Sorry, it's one and done for me.

An exerpt from page 667 -"No matter how little you are enjoying the show, past a certain point you stay in the theater to see how it ends." This really sums up the numbing effect of reading/skimming this novel. If only that had been made plain in the first 20 pages I would have moved on to a better book. Brian D'Amato employs a vocabulary that leaves the reader guessing or running for the dictionary. The plot movement suffers intolerably from the overly detailed descriptions and the repetitious self examinations of Jed. Where was the editor to put the brakes on the wordiness and why are other authors calling this a page turner when it is clearly a snoozer? THis is an OK story best told in 250 pages - not 679. Brian D'Amato should stick to being a sculptor because writing is clearly not his bailiwick.

Reading other reviews this seems to be either a love it or hate it sort of work. IF you were expecting yet another "Mayan calendar cycle ends = apocalypse" supernatural type blockbuster potboiler novel, you'll be very disappointed. The Mayan calendar angle instead is a vehicle for rather interesting discussions of time, consciousness, language and culture (calendrical assumptions) and its influence on personal and civilizational development, and the like.

As more of a conservative myself I saw some of the "anti-conservative sniping" others have commented upon, but just took it in stride. Some of it was clearly done tongue-in-cheek, some of the apparently totalitarian devolution of the US culture is a rather likely consequence of some of the other events leading up to the timeline of the novel. Some of it was just window dressing. Get over it. Since the more authoritarian and info-intrusive nature of the government allowed the resolution of the climax vs. a left-wing fantasy wonderland that would have been roadkill, it was hardly preaching. And he seemed to enjoy writing about military hardware far too much to come across as a peacenik.

Ditto some of the main character's annoying quirks and inaccurate portrayals of Mormons - you're seeing it thru his eyes, and he's a damaged, intellectually superior but strangely insecure (lost his own cultural identity) individual, so it made perfect sense he'd mock or get incorrect that he didn't care to understand. I found him a bit of a trial yet at the same time, as a geek who lives in his own head too often sometimes, rather a good portrayal of an inner voice. Sometimes characters you don't like (at least at first) but can grow to understand read truer (another good example: the main character of Neal Stephenson's "Zodiac", or Alastair Reynold's "Revelation Space"). But if you're looking for a self-satisfied, steely-eyed supergenius protagonist, you'll probably not like this book.

As others have said, the portrayals of Mayan society are impressive...especially his early descriptions of both main cities in which the past elements take place. Having visited some of the ruins and come away strangely underwhelmed (its a big pyramid, impressive for built by hand at that time with no wheel, etc...but otherwise kind of leaves you flat) his description of how it looked when it was alive is kind of like the first time someone thought 'gee, modern lizards are colorful, why have all the dinosaur reconstructions imagined their skin as olive drab?' ... it seemed rich, and detailed, and just feels TRUE.

I didn't feel the plotline was plodding. In fact although it hardly has a breakneck pace, it was quite satisfying to me. Rather than force to to take giant leaps of faith (aside from accepting the time travel methodology) as to how the main character can easily hoodwink what are supposed to be the leaders of a rather complex and (for its time) quite advanced society, you get to see how his plans go awry and how he struggles thru to adapt, and succeed (or fail) in his goals despite setbacks. Ditto the way the main chunks of the book (intro, backstory, past, present) are organized...they're trying to somewhat stick the organization to match the first person point of view, although given that the main character kind of splits effectively, there's no perfect way to do this. I think the way it was organized made more sense to me than trying to intermix the past and present more, since so much of the present after he was sent back was entirely 'on hold' (although no time passed, heh heh) until they could get the information left for them.

All in all, I've enjoyed this enough that I am looking forward to the sequel. The final twist was unexpected....but not out of character, at least not the way I read him. It will be interesting to see how things go as the protagonist's past and present selves both still have some legs left to them, so the setup may be a pretty big head fake. Judging from the detail and effort the author put into the first book, I'd be vastly surprised (and disappointed) if those few pages foreshadow the entire next volume.

Finally! I finished this book. Thank goodness I didn't pay full price for it in the bookstore when I picked it up. When reading the jacket blurb, I felt it would be right down my alley, combining themes from two of my favorite books, Time and Again by Jack Finney and Aztec by Gary Jennings. I went home and ordered it for my Kindle. Unfortunately, the book failed to deliver what I had hoped.

First of all, the passages on gaming were completely foreign to me, a woman in her 60s. I suppose a younger person with gaming expertise might enjoy them, but I found them extremely boring--unfortunate, since they were the key part of the story. Mathematical formulas were interspersed throughout the book; again, to me, distracting. I had no problem with the foreign words in the story. There were enough definitions in the story that one could read through them with little problem. Plus, if forgotten, the Kindle's search ability lets one find the first instance of the word, where the definition is often found.

In both Aztec and Time and Again, I was moved by the events and characters in the story. At no time during the reading of In the Courts of the Sun did I feel compassion for any of the characters.

The redeeming quality of the book was the description of the Maya cities and people during their civilization's peak. D'Amato was able to bring life to the abandoned cities we now see and describe what must have been the splendor of their buildings, attire, customs, and celebrations.

Again, I'm glad that I ordered the book on Kindle, rather than purchase the hardback. It was rather tedious to read, and I doubt that I will continue reading the series.

A huge waste of time. I can't believe I read it all. Vast amounts of detailed description of gaming that may be of interest to some but pretty arcane. I am not going to spoil what there is of a plot-however the whole time-travel gambit borders upon silliness. I teach anthropology, was an archeologist at a major university and even the snippets of Maya culture is about as exciting as weak tea.

Also, be forewarned--bottom of page 679 states:

end of book one

I got this book as a gift and zoomed through the first 200-something pages in about a day's time. I did not yet finish it, but my impressions are a mix of interest and disappointment. Even though a few people complain about the pace of the story, I personally did not find it to be an issue. The second and third chapters may be a bit of a drag, but if you get past that, the story picks up rather well and keeps its flow. The only "slow" point is that he doesn't get to the time travel bit for a good chunk of it, but there is nothing dull about his experiences prior to that.

The author sure seems to have done his research, maybe even a bit too extensively, which is not a crime. However, sometimes it seems like he tosses in facts just to prove that he is credible or knowledgeable on the subject.

The down side of it all for me is probably the overly wordy, jargon-filled, poorly structured and grammatically shaky 1st person narration. The main character is a trilingual who, as most of such people have the habit of doing, thinks and speaks in a medley of all the languages he knows. Unfortunately most of the words, terms and even full chunks of conversation (which are NOT irrelevant) are not translated. So every couple of pages you find yourself jumping on Dictionary.com's translator or guessing what in the world the guy is trying to say. Moreover, about half the text is composed of unexplained abbreviations, acronyms and obscure references that not every reader will understand, and at times these make the story difficult to follow until the author switches back to mainstream English. Finally, the biggest disappointment for me as a reader must be the crassness of the narration when the main character tosses F-words around so liberally that, at times, it is difficult to take the him seriously. To add to the nice assortment of cussing, the narrator tends to go on mental tangents of a pretty distasteful nature such as inappropriate sexual fantasies about a female supporting character, a few explicit (and unnecessary) analogies, and even his fantasy of mentally raping a Jesus figurine on a crucifix. Seriously... Even though i do not find any of the above offensive, it does ruin the mood of the story at times.

Those are my impressions so far.

Its a good story and an interesting concept, and despite the poor narration, the book is still entertaining if one can put up with, follow or ignore the writing style.

The first chapter (14 pages) grabbed me. Then the next chapter (and the following 264 pages) were slow, plodding, mindless drivel from a main character (Jed) that was so boorish, self-centered, and clearly a vehicle for the author's puerile attempt to show how smart, well-educated, and intellectually elite he thinks he is, that not even Jed's mother would have anything to do with this jerk of a character.

The Mayan adventure, which lasts just over 300 pages is only slightly more interesting than the "Jed" pages, and never rises anywhere close to the level of the promise of the first chapter. Other reviews cite how well researched his book is. I would disagree, myself having spent only one day at Tikal and a half day in a Guate University Mayan museum, it would appear to me that D'Amato put a huge amount of speculation and Timothy Leary-inspired fantasy into his book.

The book's editors need a refresher course on editing as well. There are a number of non sequiturs and 'leaps' that are in the book that left me non-plussed and thinking "huh? Looks like we skipped some steps getting from one page to the next" or "what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?" There is also at least one technical error, where cold-fronts in the Gulf of Alaska appear to move west-bound and not east-bound. The worst, though, as at least one other reviewer noted, is the flip-flop that our precious Jed makes in the last 5 pages. It's flop that is even less believable than when Anakin turned into Darth in 10 frames of video for reasons that didn't seem to be that compelling. Musta been the drugs and parasites...

I'd advise readers to not waste their time with this book and to run from his next two in this 'trilogy'. Mr. D'Amato should stick to sculpture and not torture us with his tiresome writing.

I read the book before I read the reviews. Had it been the other way around I may have passed, but I'm glad I read it. I have a pretty good tolerance for people taking a while to say what they have to say. While I can see some peoples' points about D'Amato being wordy or slow getting to it, I didn't mind. I was interested in the story as it was told. It was a good tale even without my interest in Meso-American Indian culture. How accurate was D'Amato's portrayal? Who can really say? Important thing is, it seemed credible and interesting. Don't know how I'll feel about reading the third book, but I will try the second when I can. That ought to say enough.

Brian is very impressed with himself and he wants you to be as well. There is no doubt that he is very intelligent and on the surface, the concept of this book has an exciting mix of subjects. Beyond that, it seems to hit a major fault line. The subject takes on the visual of a poorly cut jigsaw puzzle that you have to "force" together. The disjointedness of the first and 2nd half of the book are jarring. The connection between the two major divisions of the story just isn't plausible enough to suspend your disbelief through 679 pages. And if you like detailed lists and in-depth "pages" on the arcane details of a pre-Columbian Tarot ploy (the Game), then you might like this quite a bit. I'm always intrigued by material on Mesoamerica, and in that aspect, I believe he creates an immersible world. Unfortunately, there are more negatives than positives to this tome and it burned up more than 3 days of reading that I'm not willing to consider Brian's brand of time-travel to get it back.

Despite the reviews of a poor story, I actually enjoyed In the Courts of the Sun. It was slow to start. The main character seemed whiny and I did not appreciate him as a character at first. Unlike some reviewers, I liked the way the gaming was included because it made made more sense the further along I went. In fact, it was an essential part of the story.

The main character's change, his education, as a Maya was enjoyable. It was humorous to see him grow up finally...to grow up as a man. I thought the end was jarring, but realized it was because the book is part of a planned trilogy. I was left hanging and wanting more. Some books are to be enjoyed as a fast read. In the Courts of the Sun is not meant to be read quickly. It takes time to grow into a story...to understand the characters and become a part of the story. If you prefer books that engage your mind on many levels, then In the Courts of the Sun fits the bill.