A mind-bending, time-bending, zeitgeist-defining novel about the days leading up to December 21, 2012athe day the Maya predicted the world would end

December 21, 2012. The day time stops. Jed DeLanda, a descendant of the Maya living in the year 2012, is a math prodigy who spends his time playing Go against his computer and raking in profits from online trading. (His secret weapon? A Mayan divination gameaonce used for predicting corn-harvest cycles, now proving very useful in predicting corn futuresathat his mother taught him.) But Jedas life is thrown into chaos when his former mentor, the game theorist Taro, and a mysterious woman named Marena Park, invite him to give his opinion on a newly discovered Mayan codex.

Marena and Taro are looking for a volunteer to travel back to 664 AD to learn more about a asacrifice gamea described in the codex. Jed leaps at the chance, and soon scientists are replicating his brain waves and sending them through a wormhole, straight into the mind of a Mayan kinga]

Only something goes wrong. Instead of becoming a king, Jed arrives inside a ballplayer named Chacal who is seconds away from throwing himself down the temple steps as a human sacrifice. If Jed can live through the next few minutes, he might just save the world.

Bringing to mind Neal Stephensonas Cryptonomicon and Gary Jenningsas Aztec, yet entirely unique, In the Courts of the Sun takes you from the distant past to the near future in a brilliant kaleidoscope of ideas.

"Fans of the late Michael Crichton will welcome this engrossing SF thriller, the first in a projected trilogy by D'Amato (Beauty). As December 12, 2012, the date the Maya predicted would mark the end of the world, approaches, the Warren Group, a shadowy conglomerate, seeks to use technological advances to forestall disaster. One way is to send the mind of Jed DeLanda, a savant skilled at a contemporary version of the Mayas' sacrifice game, into the body of a seventh-century Mayan hip-ball player to learn more about why the apocalyptic prediction was made. DeLanda's time-travel comes just as a devastating calamity, possibly triggered by biological weapons, hits Orlando, Fla. The action shifts easily between the near-future and the past. While the use of modern idiom in the historical scenes may take some getting used to, the period details are as convincing as those in Simon Levack's superb Aztec mysteries (The Demon of the Air, etc.)." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)