In the Courts of the Sun [Unknown Binding]

Product Details

• Unknown Binding
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (March 25, 2009)
• ASIN: B0034689NW
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,071,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful research, plodding storyline, June 1, 2009

By 

C. Blek (Imperial, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Courts of the Sun (Hardcover)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Densely informative, well researched, but not trivial summer reading, July 27, 2010

By 

rtrski "Who, me?" (Grand Prairie, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Courts of the Sun (Hardcover)

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.

25 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Truly a mind numbing trip through time., June 14, 2009

By 

Roger Fladeboe (Plymouth, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In the Courts of the Sun (Hardcover)

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.