Can One Man Play the Game to Save the Planet?

Brian D’Amato weaves a cunning thread through doomsday prophecy, catastrophe events, and fringe science. His many years studying the Maya culture and their system of glyphs really pays off.

When it came time to write he has been able to weave fact and fiction in a way that brings the story coloutfully to life within the readers mind.

I do not normally review fictional books on the Maya and 2012 prophecies. Recently though I excepted the offer of a free book to read and agreed to throw something together. Having just had an accident and being firmly fixed in one place for the next few weeks, it had sudden appeal.

This turned out to be no ordinary storybook seeking to cash in on popularity of 2012 in pop culture (my first assumption). Brian d’Amato has spent years researching for this book and by any standard has a very good knowledge of the background environment for the book.

The focal character of the story (both of him) is Joaquin Carlos Xul Mixoc DeLanda, a mixed race Maya Indian from Guatemala. Tragically orphaned by the terrible genocide in that nations recent history he retains the knowledge of a predictive system taught to him by his mother. This system is referred to as the ‘Sacrifice game’. Played with coloured seeds and a board depicting a cross pattern of positions, it helps to focus the mind on possible outcomes of occurrences.

Thanks to his knowledge and ability to play the game Jed DeLanda has become a wealthy businessman from the investment markets. He is not alone in this tactic however as there is also a corporation very interested in the game. They too are using it to assist their own portfolio. In fact as a young man Jed had assisted their chief researcher with his experiments.

Paths cross once again however after a new Maya codex is discovered and reveals details of an ancient prophecy system pointing toward 2012. The significance is not clear at first, but as there is another date alluded to in the more imminent future it is possible to watch the prophecy play out its next prediction. It is a dire outcome and leads to radical changes for America. From this Jed is drawn deeper into the secret work of the company and its aim to predict what is to happen on 21-12-2012 so that it might be prevented. As an expert on the Sacrifice Game, our unlikely hero Carlos is selected to join a secret project, which might just give him the extra knowledge of the game, required to beat the prophecy.

Jed DeLanda is a very well animated character with multiple levels and believable responses. His private thoughts when shared are very human and realistic for the given situations. More than anything else he is funny, amidst a situation that is anything but. For me a story is dead from the outset if it’s characters are wooden. Thank Hunab-Ku that Mr D’Amato spent the time to build up a believable central figure to whom events happen. Even more thanks given to him that he also made Jed an amusing anti-hero personality.

The depictions of Maya culture and the lives of the ancient Maya themselves really bring back to life a nearly eradicated world. I know that the author was determined to paint a view of the real historical civilisation rather than rely on the reader’s ignorance and simply publish fantasy or make believe. Several years went into this project and he even learned to write in Mayan glyphs!

The fringe science in the book is worked with in a fairly clever manner. The main area involved is time travel and this will always be a subject fraught with paradox. Although a clever argument is used to get around these it fails to do so in reality. There is now way to travel in a single timeline without causing butterfly effect results. Still it was one of the cleverer attempts to avoid that problem.

My criticisms of the book will likely be similar to those of others I expect. The story does at times seem to jump around to subjects, interesting, but not really relevant. There is quite a lot of time spent attacking several modern institutions and organisations. I could list those and recommend people involved with them do not read the book. Unfortunately for them I will not as I have no great love for those institutions and groups either. The chief complaint is that the book is to long, in as much as it could have done with dropping the unneccasry jumps and some side alley journeys.

In The Courts of the Sun begins a trilogy set to finish in 2012. At around 650 pages long this means we are likely to end up with something 1800 pages in length. My general rule remains that no story has the right to be longer than Lord Of The Rings, the best story in the whole world ever and told in under 1200 pages. This is not the high calibre work of the master himself, Mr (Lord God) Tolkien, and I hope that the following books are trimmed to bring it all closer to the magic number. In my utter generosity I might through in the 320 pages of The Hobbit thus allowing a maximum of just over 1550 pages. Please not fail me Brian, or the review of the concluding book will likely be harsh!

My final criticism is of course on the subject of Maya 2012 Prophecy. As a scholar of that subject I was disappointed to find that the real subject matter on this did not get mentioned. The dropping of real 2012 data was a missed opportunity considering the lengths gone to for the creating of a realistic Maya landscape. Still this fictional version of the 2012 subject was less fanciful than many versions being claimed as factual by online researchers!

For those who wonder what the author actually believes will happen in 2012 I can only go on the information I received with the book. Brian D’Amato mentions in this that his view is reflected in the story itself.  To me this indicates he feels mankind will destroy itself around 2012 through either chemical or biological means. This view is due to the number of chemists and biologists (mostly students) openly stating they think the best thing that could happen to our planet is a deadly plague killing everyone. It is factual that people like this are indeed working in labs with the ability to create just such a doomsday event...

I rate this book as somewhere between a ‘buy’ and a ‘strong buy’, so click here to do just that!