The Sacrifice Game

by Brian D'Amato

Overview

TO THE WORLD OF ANCIENT MAYA, AND FAR BEYOND…

In the Courts of the Sun introduced Maya descendent Jed De Landa, a math prodigy with rare knowledge of an ancient divination tool called the Sacrifice Game. But now there are two Jeds—one existing at the height of the ancient Maya civilization in AD 664, and another in the present who—for an unusual but compelling reason—is about to bring about the destruction of humanity. And only one self can win the game…

With illustrations by the author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451415646
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/04/2013
Series:	A Jed de Landa Novel , #2
Pages:	656
Sales rank:	1,064,911
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

BRIAN D’AMATO is the author of Beauty and In the Courts of the Sun. He is also an artist whose work has been shown in galleries and museums, including the Whitney Museum and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. He divides his time among New York City, Chicago, and Michigan.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Fans of the late Michael Crichton will welcome this engrossing SF thriller."
— Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

Raves for In the Courts of the Sun
 
“Absolutely amazing…takes over the late Michael Crichton’s territory with a loud bang.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“Stunningly inventive…weaves together Mayan history, modern science, game theory, and the coming Mayan apocalypse.”—Douglas Preston, coauthor of Gideon’s Corpse
 
“Remarkable.…prodigious in its scope, its originality, its ambition, its intelligence, and the mastery of its research. In a word: awesome.”—Raymond Khoury, Author of The Devil’s Elixir

From the Publisher

The overly long second volume of D’Amato’s apocalyptic trilogy (after 2009’s In the Courts of the Sun) opens on a note of doom. Ethnic Mayan Joachim Carlos Xul Mixoc DeLanda, who’s able to use his expertise with an ancient divination game, the Sacrifice Game, to anticipate the future, describes his decision to end all human life in time to fulfill the Mayan prophecy that the world will end in December 2012. DeLanda believes that “over 99.8 percent of , now, in the future, and always, is and will be sheer unrelieved agony.” DeLanda’s justification for his horrific act and his description of what’s led up to it make compelling reading, but the initial momentum and tension peter out in the middle section set in seventh-century Mexico at the Mayan empire’s peak. While explicit descriptions of mutilation and cannibalism highlight the cultural differences between the Mayan civilization and our own, some readers may feel less would have been more. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agency. (July)

Publishers Weekly

The world's going to end in 2012. It's not? Well, don't let the homicidal Maya who figures in the pages of D'Amato's (Beauty, 1992, etc.) latest futuristic/apocalyptic/sci-fi thriller know. Now, the Mayan calendar runs out in 2012--and even if it's lately been discovered that they cooked up a calendar that gives us a few thousand more years, said "ethnic Maya, a twenty-first-century descendant of those guys who built all those palaces in Mexico and Guatemala with the big wacko pyramids with the scary stairs," young Joachim "Jed" Carlos Xul Mixoc DeLanda really wouldn't mind if the crawling anthill that is the human world disappeared. "Life sucks," he sighs. He knows more about it than most, having been sent back in time to save the world from one prophecy, only to decide that the world may not deserve saving. World-weary Jed's got other world-savers on his trail, including a cool chick named Marena, who calls him as she sees him: "You're what shit would shit if it could shit." Never mind the scatological scurrilousness: everyone in D'Amato's sprawling, busy novel has a job to do in playing the big, elaborate game that will decide the world's fate. It helps to have a little knowledge of things Mayan to read it, and it helps to be a little geeky--geeky enough, for one thing, to be able to call up in your mind's eye what the board of the old game Kriegspiel looked like. D'Amato is both funny and brittle, often both at once, as when he remarks of one bright, young thing, "She could end up like Jesus and be dead for a hundred years before the franchise really got going." Hallucinatory and goofy, D'Amato's yarn is a kind of Game of Thrones for those who prize jungles more than castles, and if it's improbable in the extreme, it's a pleasing and well-thought-through epic. But not one without loose ends that'll take a sequel to tie up. Stay tuned for this literate end-of-the-world saga to continue--and well beyond 2012, come to think of it.

Kirkus Reviews