“ In this world, your clothes were your passport, and a gang of javelinmen helped steer us through the plebes. Members only, I thought. We edged past knots of people. By now I could pick out clans and nationalities by their clothes and body mods, and, as a bonus, Chacal’s set of mainly disdainful status associations kicked in automatically: For instance, the orange sort of saris those short, dusty people were wearing meant they were Cacaxtlans, and over there, those tall wiry domeheads with—damn, I’m using derogatories, which was good manners here but bad, bad bad in Century 21—those wiry individuals with the precancerous sun-cracked skin were Chanacu, proto-Mixtecs, from the mountains around Zempoaltépetl. The roped together gang of tall ectomorphs with the fresh scabs and penitential sandbags tied to their ankles weren’t slaves but Yaxacans, people from the far northwest of the valley, expiating a black debt. That line of tiny, pale, furtive nearly naked characters with the big lip plugs and clay-caked bowl cuts had come from the far, far south, maybe even from Costa Rica, and sold little frogs and insects made of hammered gold, which was still a huge novelty in these parts. ”

Book Review:

Review by Ann Wilkes (DEC 12, 2009)

The world-building in this speculative fiction novel set on Earth is staggering. Over half the book takes place in Guatemala and Central Mexico at the height of the Mayan empire. The detail D’Amato puts into the pageantry, customs, sights, sounds, smells and tastes truly transport the reader to a seemingly alien world. The story is told by a Mayan descendent with his share of neuroses, gifts and curses. The first person, conversational narration was fresh and often humorous.

In 2012, a multi-national conglomerate, the Warren Group, sends a copy of Jed’s consciousness back to 664 AD to learn how to play the Mayan Sacrifice Game with nine stones or runners which would give them much more information than his three-stone game. D’Amato describes the Game as a Parchessi-like, more complex than chess or go, with number crunching and intuition. In the right hands, it is capable of prognostication with frightening accuracy. When Jed goes back in time, the game takes on a more fantastical aspect that is hard to follow.

The Warren Group has a Mayan Codex from the seventh century AD that predicts what may be global, catastrophic events in 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar. Foreknowledge may help the company, and whatever world leaders they choose to include, to prevent global terrorist attacks. A devastating attack at Disneyworld turns things desperate.

“On CNN they were saying that the Disney World Horror—as they were apparently now calling it—was officially a Mass Casualty Incident. Like, glad they got that straight. Drudge’s links were saying that judging from medical radio reports the death cloud, whatever it was, hadn’t been just in the Magic Kingdom but had affected an area extending south to Lake Tohopekaliga and west at least as far as downtown Orlando, with a long plume angling northwest at least to Lake Harris. Symptom clusters had been reported a lot farther out than that, but since people had moved around in the day or so since their exposure, it wasn’t clear exactly how far the cloud had carried.”

The book begins with Jed2 (Jed’s duplicate consciousness) finding himself in AD 664 as planned, but in the wrong body. Instead of being in the head of a Mayan king, he’s in the body of a man about to sacrifice himself. Jed2 struggles to stop the still aware man he’s inhabiting from throwing himself down the pyramid’s jagged stairs created for just that purpose.

Between his pessimistic, irreverent inner dialog and his immediate plight, I was hooked. The irreverence did get a bit extreme at times, causing me to skim ahead. The action and descriptions are compelling, but often graphically violent. I rooted for the underdog protagonist throughout. The ending made me angry, but at least I wasn’t indifferent. D’Amato did succeed in stirring my emotions.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 39 readers
PUBLISHER:	NAL Trade (November 3, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Ann Wilkes
AMAZON PAGE:	In the Courts of the Sun
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Brian D’Amato
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More that you might like: The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks Empire of Humiliation by James Jens Broussea Turing’s Delirium by Edmundo Paz Soldan

Bibliography:

Sacrifice Game Trilogy:

• In the Courts of the Sun (March 2009)

“There is a picture of my mother. She is kneeling in front of a bed of roses in the garden of our Los Angeles home, one hand holding a huge straw hat against an obvious gust of wind, the other clutching weeds and roots she’s just dug up from the moist soil. Her long, curly hair is blowing around her face, and she’s smiling and she looks beautiful and impossibly happy.

I had that picture in my bedroom, and it was my favorite for many years, before I learned that my mother hated gardening. That every plant she ever touched died. That the beautiful day in that beautiful garden was a fluke. That at the time the picture was taken, she was probably already thinking of another life, another place, far from me, far from us.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (OCT 15, 2009)

Leila Cobo’s debut novel, Tell Me Something True, is an utterly wonderful and riveting book that had me in its clutches from the first page. It is lyrical and sensual with no word out of place. The character development is perfect, deep and meaningful, bringing the reader into the heart of the protagonists and their lives. In a sense, this novel sang to me in its poignant story of great loves.

The story is about Gabriella, a young woman who is half American and half Colombian. She was orphaned at four years old when her mother died in a plane crash. Every year Gabriella goes to Cali, where her mother is from, to spend a month with her grandparents. She has always believed that her mother and father led an idyllic and perfect life until she finds her mother’s diary in Cali – – and then she realizes that what she thought was true is a lie.

The diary talks about a tumultuous affair that Helena, her mother, had when Gabriella was four. Helena was in Cali for two months working on a photography book that had been commissioned by the governor. She met a man who she fell in love with and Gabriella questions whether Helena would have abandoned her and her father for her lover. The diary consumes her as she reads page after page of sensual and loin tingling descriptions of their affair. Gabriella is puzzled and angry about her family’s secrets, of being led to think something was true that was not.

At the same time that Gabriella finds the diary, she meets a young man. Angel, with whom she falls in love. Gabriella and Angel are both rich and are part of high society but Angel has a darkness about him and is not accepted by the old money that Gabriella is associated with. Angel’s father is the foremost drug lord of Cali and is currently in jail. Everywhere that Angel goes, he is accompanied by a cotillion of armed guards. Gabriella is swept off her feet and their love affair is as sensually and sexily described as any literary depiction I’ve every read. Now Gabriella is at a crossroads. Is she drawn to Angel because of her anger and puzzlement about her mother’s actions or is she truly in love with this man for who he is, despite his family?

The book gives a very detailed and clear portrayal of Colombian culture and lifestyles. Having been to Colombia, I can say with some experience that the descriptions of armed bodyguards, cotillions of soldiered cars, the danger, the frenetic and joyful lifestyle, the parties, the fear and the celebrations all ring true.

The book is structured in chapters alternating Gabriella’s experiences with pages from Helena’s diary. The story flows beautifully in this manner as both women’s lives are juxtaposed on one another. We feel the joy, the pain, the heat, and the quandaries that each woman experiences. We feel at one with them. I am not one who usually cries when I read books, but this book brought tears to my eyes – – of joy and of pain. It is a wonderful book and I look forward with anticipation to Ms. Cobo’s next novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Grand Central Publishing (October 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	Tell Me Something True
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Leila Cobo
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt Live Interview with Leila Cobo
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More books with the idea of Lying: Lying on the Couch by Irvin D. Yalom Two Truths and a Lie by Katrina Kittle Yo by Julia Alvarez And secrets: Certainty by Madeleine Thien

Bibliography:

• Tell Me Something True (October 2009)