Living Now Book Awards--Mayan Interface won the Silver Medal for Adventure Fiction!
"Modern science and ancient magic take on new and exciting meanings." -- Fred Alan Wolf, physicist and author
"A fascinating exploration into a mythic past and technological future."-- N. Katherine Hayles, Professor of Literature, Director of Graduate Studies, Duke University
"The circular nature of time and the need for change are recurring themes in this well-researched novel" -- Sharon Sullivan Mújica, former Director, Yucatec Maya Program, UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University
Santosh
Posted May 7, 2013
Mayan Interface is the creative output of two genius authors, Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin. Both are collaborating their writings for more than 25 years now. Mayan Interface is based on myths and traditions of Mexico, which Wim and Pat got in contact with when they were living there. This book is written for any fictional fantasy genre reader.
The story begins with bit confusion but with passage of time and lines you as reader get to know the depth of what is written, like:
“My city gone.
My people gone.
And I, myself, a ghost in my own world.”
Symbolism and real places are at the core of this book. If the book was only about the Worlds end in 2012 then if would have been pretty boring because it’s already 2013. But Wim & Pat were able to create very compelling fantasy thriller. The thing to look forward to in this book is, how technology and myths are merging together and form one of the best plots.
When I got the copy of the book, my expectations with the book were simple; a nice and easy read that somehow manages to give hybrid view on Mayan prophecy. What I got was way more, a very complex and deep plot. Good characters. And a nice story to move them forward. The Language used was bit heavy and could have been simplified.
On concluding notes I know that authors have put forth way too much research while writing this book. This is a good book to read but certainly not the best. I’ll give this one 3.5 stars out of 5. And I am most certainly going to read other books by Wim & Pat, because they have the quality (richness) to the content.
lizasarusrex
Posted May 1, 2013
If I can say anything about Mayan Interface, it would be that it is a very interesting read. I do not know much about Mayan history, except for what rumors have been spread about the December 2012 apocalypse, but I found myself very intrigued, especially about the Uay and the Zaztum. The main character is named Lydia Rosenstrom, an archeologist/shamen who is exploring Mayan ruins and translating Mayan glyphs. I can't tell you much more about the glyphs without giving away too much of the book.
She travels to Portland, Oregon to visit her niece who works at a museum with an extraordinary exhibit that lets you virtually walk through the Mayan temples and get up close to seeing how the villages may have looked at one time. It sounds like something I would be very interested in visiting.
When she finds out that her niece died of sheer fright from something she saw in the virtual walk through the ruins, she makes a decision to stay in Portland to try and find what happened to her. It seems the only way she could have died while using the virtual programs is if someone had tampered with the program.
With this sort of intriguing and unique plot I couldn't help but be so engaged in the book, that I couldn't put it down. While the author goes into detail about what you could see through the virtual reality program, I felt like I too could see what was being described.
Although this is not they typical book I normally find myself picking up, I did greatly enjoy reading it and highly recommend it to anyone interested in action, history, and thrill. I give this book a 5/5 with no complaints on any aspect of the book.
Sue_in_CT
Posted April 15, 2013
Mayan Interface by Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin is a great read. I know very little about Mayan history and computer programing so
I can't tell you how realistic any of this is but it still engaged me in its magical grasp. Once I started it, I hated when I had to put it down.
It is not packed with action scenes nor is it a boring history book but it has both action and history in it and so much more. It is a
mystery that has me looking at history a little differently and makes me wonder, what if? It is also about the spiritual with the Uay and
mystical with the Zaztum and so much more.
The main character is Lydia Rosenstrom who is an archaeologist and shaman exploring Mayan ruins and translating Mayan glyphs
in Yucatan but she leaves Yucatan to go to Portland. Her niece works at a museum there and is making an exhibit that has a virtual
reality (VR) stroll through Mayan temples so visitors can see how the village looked. There are these plastic bubbles and the visitor
stands in and puts on this type of headgear that allows them into this virtual world of long ago. When Lydia learns her niece died of
fright in one of these bubbles she stayed in Portland to try and find out what had happened to her. How did she die in the virtual world
as there is nothing in there that would cause a death unless someone tampered with the program, but who? She suspected the one
person who has his own private access to this world, but why would he do such a thing?
This is not the only thing going on in the story although to me it is like the main plot, the one that starts the rest (aside from the fact
that Lydia is trying to translate the glyphs). I have said enough about the plot since I don't want to give any spoilers but what I will say
is that there are many layers to this story each holding its own magic, mysteries and warnings. There is another member of Lydia's
archaeological team back in Yucatan and the storyteller is telling stories to him.These stories are things passed down generation to
generation and a lot is learned about the Mayan through these stories. Also, a lot is learned by Lydia's experiences in the VR world.
Not only about Mayan history but about herself and reality. All of these are braided together in this cleverly written story. Just as three
strands in a braid are separate but are twisted in a way that they come together time and time again to make one braid so does this
story. At no time did I feel I couldn't grasp what was going on nor did I feel like I was bounced from one thing to another. Instead, this
was written with such fluidity that it was seamless and flowed naturally.
The authors described the scenes so spectacular that it was like I was in that VR bubble since I could see it laid out before me. It was
extremely easy to visualize and if you are cooking dinner and you also smell that incense, put the book down and turn your stove off.
You just burned dinner so you are having pizza tonight! (I did that, that is how engrossed I was in it.) Even the characters were
described beyond the usual and they were all well developed.
While reading the book, I was on the edge of my seat a few times wondering what will happen next. Then I would put the book down
to make dinner (more like burn dinner) or sleep and I would find myself wondering what if certain things were that way? Is reality
something we only perceive on one level although there are many that make it up? Are we who we think we are? Is she who she
thinks she is? It had me guessing all the way to the spectacular ending.
I highly recommend this book.
KenishaP
Posted March 31, 2013
Mayan Interface follows Lydia, an archaeologist, as she in entwined in mysterious events that were set into motion long ago. On a dig in Yucatan Peninsula she finds a stela (a stone tablet used to publish/write various messages). Things start getting weird as she deciphers the meaning behind the tablet. Her niece turns up dead in a virtual simulation of the very site the stela was found, and Lydia explores both the real and virtual world looking for answers.
The writing is pretty captivating, and captures the sights, sounds and smells of exotic places well enough that I can envision them. The book seems well researched enough to add some veracity to the more fantastical elements. The details about Mayan culture are one thing that kept me reading, as I like to learn about different places. There are even images of some of the runes in the book. A neat touch. The story mixes ancient shamanism with modern technology, creating a mash-up that is intriguing and successful. Mayan Interface is something of a twist on the 2012 Mayan calendar apocalypse rumors that circulated, but it covers many themes beside that. The characters are interesting and fleshed out, their relationships to one another made clear. There are touched of action, sci-fi, fantasy and horror that made this a refreshing read.
tiffanydavis2
Posted March 31, 2013
Mayan Interface, by Wim Coleman, follows a young woman named Lydia Rosenstrom. Lydia is a translator who is working alongside a group of archaeologists in a Mayan temple in Yucatan. The group uncovers some stone tablets that Lydia translates, finding birth and death years. Alongside these are some strange markings that she is not familiar with. Before she is able to translate them, she leaves for Oregon to work with a museum in Portland to help recreate the Mayan City for an exhibit. Lydia's niece helps her to recreate the strange markings on the stone for the exhibit, and then oddly meets an untimely and strange death. Lydia starts to unravel clues that start to prove that the mysteries that she has been uncovering may be more true than she has realized.
I found the story line to be very intriguing. I loved the mystery of it, as well as the tie in of the Mayan history. Lydia's character was very easy to relate to and she played a very strong female role. The story grabbed my attention from the very first page and held it all the way through the end. I found it hard to not turn the page late into the night. The story is packed full of details, making it easy to paint a picture of everything that is going on. I really enjoyed the book and I would recommend it to anyone simply looking for a good story to read. I will be looking forward to reading more from this author!
Seattle-Slew
Posted March 21, 2013
The Mayan Interface mostly follows Lydia Rosenstrom, a translator working with a group of archaeologist at an old Mayan temple in the Yucatan. After unearthing an ancient stela, basically a stone tablet, that shows the fall of the last queen of that ancient city, Lydia works on translating the ancient glyphs which are mostly birth/death dates. She finds some strange, almost graffiti like, etchings at the base if the stela where there was nothing else written. The glyphs are not normal looking but Lydia doesn't have time to try to decipher them before she has to leave to Portland, OR where she was helping a museum create a virtual reality walk-through of the ancient Mayan city before its collapse.
There she and her niece create a digital form of the stela to add to the walk-through and make plans to go back to Mexico together. But when Lydia's niece meets a strange and mysterious death, Lydia finds herself searching for the truth and being pulled into the virtual world where strange things begin to happen and where everything may not just be completely fake.
The book was extremely interesting and really grabbed my attention right from the start. I found it very intriguing to find out more about the Maya and some of the customs etc. There was always something going on with the book and you really couldn't guess what was going to happen next. The characters, including the not so important seeming ones, are all given good development and you can get a really good feel for who they are and their place in the story.There's plenty of rich detail, but the story definitely doesn't drag or make you bored.
It was definitely worth the read and with plenty of mystery, intrigue and suspense to keep you hanging.
LFrankel999
Posted March 20, 2013
I tend to prefer novels that demonstrate their themes through the events of the plot rather than bringing the plot to a halt while the characters discuss ideas. So I thought that the didacticism in this novel did become too overt at times. Yet I did consider the resolution of the plot an eloquent statement about the value of sacred cycles in any culture.
I enjoyed some of the character background. I think I would have loved to have been a child with a puppeteer as a parent like central character Lydia Rosenstrom. The bond that resulted from Lydia’s shared experience with her niece Ivey made their relationship seem more intense. I also thought that the background of computer genius Claude Vandermeer made him more sympathetic to me.
There were aspects of the characterization that I didn’t care for. Although Mayan Interface is not New Age oriented as a whole, Lydia exhibited certain New Age attitudes that I occasionally found bothersome. I also didn’t like the fact that the Maya holy man was called “Nacho”. It seemed to me that naming him after a snack trivializes him. It’s hard to take a character with such a name seriously. On the other hand, I wondered if the historical personage who became the VR persona of one of the characters was too imposing for him. Perhaps the authors were attempting to show that he had large aspirations.
The novel itself had large aspirations that I rather admired . I liked the main thematic thrust of this novel. The idea that time doesn’t exist on the plane that is accessed by mystics, mediums and shamans is common to a number of spiritual traditions.
The idea that virtual reality might have unpredictable impact on people is an important observation that we need to heed. We have already seen that our entertainment technology can have negative effects on some individuals in the case of 3D movies. Perhaps one of the lessons of this novel is that we should be more cautious about technological innovations.
Intriguing, scary, haunting, inspiring… what other adjectives can I use? Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin have crafted a terrifying tale in their novel, Mayan Interface. But, intriguingly, the terror is so enticing you never beg the protagonist not go forward, begging her instead to try it and try it again. Best of all, the protagonist feels the same attraction, driven by the same curiosity, freed by the same sense of non-belonging that so characterizes modern society, and empowered by a wonderful mix of intelligent analysis and creative inspiration.
The novel moves between Portland Oregon and Yucatan, rendering both places convincingly, recreating the Rose Garden and a thatch-roofed house with equal aplomb under the watchful gaze of the Milky Way. But in Mayan mythology, the Milky Way is more than a carpet of stars. And in modern understanding, there’s more to life than measurements and computer simulation.
“[W]hat doctors here call schizophrenia, folks there call magic and vision,” says Lydia, describing her experience of reality knit by myth and legend in Yucatan. A combination of measurable and mythic, science and story, past and future threads through these tales, with computer’s virtual reality almost as real as history, almost as true as feathered gods and priests in headdresses.
The mix of shamanic peace and scientific measurement in this novel is enthralling. Wonderful storytelling merges with the solid reality of archeological digs and complex computer programming, and a timely rejection of end-of-the-world simplicity. What stays with me most at story’s end is a tale told by one of the characters to another, of a divided brain, left and right, art and science, and how perhaps the truths of life lie somewhere in unity. But read the book; the characters tell these tales and follow this plot with much more intensity and feeling than I can convey.
Disclosure: I was lucky enough to be offered a free copy of this book. I’m just sorry it took me so long to get around to reading it. I really enjoyed it.
Overview
Near the end of the Terminal Classic Mayan period, a high priest commits a murder where a sacrifice is needed. The consequences of his deed will reach across worlds and ages. In our own time, Lydia Rosenstrom is a master translator working with an archeological team in Yucatán and on a virtual reality simulation of the ancient site. She is drawn into a dangerous convergence of realities. This tightly-woven ...