In the Courts of the Sun (A Jed de Landa Novel)

The year is 2012. Math prodigy Jed DeLanda is enlisted to decipher an ancient Mayan codex containing the secrets of the Sacrifice Game. It foretells the end of civilization, and only Jed can prevent the coming apocalypse. He must play the Game himself-in a mind-bending journey that stretches from thousands of years in the past to the very brink of the end of time...

A mind-bending, time-bending, zeitgeist-defining novel about the days leading up to December 21, 2012—the 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 game—once used for predicting corn-harvest cycles, now proving very useful in predicting corn futures—that his mother taught him.) But Jed's 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 “sacrifice game” 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 king...

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 Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and Gary Jennings's 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.

“A stunningly inventive novel that... weaves together Mayan history, modern science, game theory and the coming Mayan apocalypse. BEWARE DECEMBER 21, 2012!”—Douglas Preston, author of The Monster of Florence It was predicted. We were warned. December 21, 2012. The day time stops. The year is 2012. Jed DeLanda, a descendant of the Maya, is a math prodigy raking in profits from online trading. But Jed's life is thrown into chaos when his former mentor, Taro, and a mysterious female game designer enlist Jed's help in deciphering an ancient Mayan codex containing the secrets of the Sacrifice Game. It foretells of the end of civilization, and only Jed can prevent the coming apocalypse. He must play the Game himself—in a mind-bending journey that stretches from thousands of years into the past to the very brink of the end of time. “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 Last Templar According to the ancient Maya, December 21, 2012, could be the day the world ends. In this ambitious novel, a modern-day descendant of the Maya, Jed DeLanda, goes back in time to save mankind. Well, he doesnt go back physically; thats not possible in DAmatos world, but it is possible to send back the consciousness of a person and to place it inside the mind of someone living in the past. The plan was to put Jeds mind inside the body of a Mayan king in the year 664 CE, but, instead, he winds up inside the head of a man about to be killed by ritual sacrifice. Can Jed keep his host alive long enough to save the world? Math prodigy and Maya descendant Jed DeLanda is invited by his former mentor, Taro, to travel back in time into another person's life more than thirteen centuries earlier to learn about a "sacrifice game" that has been described in a newly discovered Mayan codex.