Pulse of the Planet's
Jim Metzner
This is a rollicking, thought-provoking, rollercoaster of a novel. It's time traveling on steroids, but it asks big questions. Bravo. Ken Burns, filmmaker
After decades of most American fantasy writers echoing European fantasists and using European myths, it's refreshing to see an extravagantly imaginative writer go into history and myths of the Natchez nation, taking us through a vision of the culture that was disrupted by the coming of smallpox -- and the European immigrants who came soon after.
In the meantime, we have a chance to see our own culture through the eyes of a native of the Natchez civilization, so the view is double -- us seen by them, them seen by us. It's amazing to read something so fresh and vivid tying us back into the roots of this land and the people who knew it first. Orson Scott Card, author, "Ender's Game"
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Sacred Mounds draws you right into the action with high energy prose, strands of mystery floating in the wind, and lively characters. A great read, with Metzner's usual deep insights into the amazing workings of the natural world seeping into you while you are caught up in the flow. Enjoy! Robert Thurman, President, Tibet House, US
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Metzner’s time-bending style is interwoven in a well-researched novel about the great Natchez Nation and the mysterious mounds across the midlands of America. This is a witty and inventive historical fantasy that seduces with twists and turns accompanied by lively street wise contemporary dialogue. It will keep you magnetically amused right up to the surprise ending. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Member, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, MT
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A rich, complex ...tale of supernatural heroism. The novel folds ancient traditional wisdom into the seams of its story with the author’s well-honed narrative skills, delivering the tastes and flavors of its mingling times and cultures with ease and aplomb. One ends up feeling not like an onlooker, but an active participant in the events. The book, from this perspective, is hard to put down. It’s a page-turner, but an intelligent one; one that asks more questions than it answers and left, for one, this reader hoping for a sequel. Lee Van Laer, Senior Editor, Parabola Magazine
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The mysteries of the universe are peeled back one chapter at a time in a story that will keep readers spellbound until the final page. This is novel writing at its best. 5 stars. Reader’s Favorite
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Highly recommended for fans of Tony Hillerman, Dan Brown, and other fiction which walks the line between metaphysical and real-world experience. Midwest Book Review
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Brilliant, colorful, panoramic, moving, adventurous, gripping! David Hykes, Founder, the Harmonic Choir
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Jim Metzner has imbued a page-turner of a book with esoteric truth half-revealed behind a somewhat violent drama. There are keys to a meaningful life hidden behind the carnage. A great read. Can't wait for the movie! Lillian Firestone, author, "The Forgotten Language of Children"
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Archaeologists know how the earthworks were built, but excavations cannot reveal what these monuments meant to the native people who built them. With Sacred Mounds, Metzner embraces the mystery to weave a story across time and cultural boundaries.
Jim Barnett, author, "The Natchez Indians: A History to 1735"
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Sometimes it takes a whirlwind to pull us into the center of ourselves. Jim Metzner has created two such tornados in different timeframes and two protagonists who must lose their identities in order to find them. A Natchez Indian from the distant past and a modern New Yorker are compelled to switch more than their bodies, in this novel that is a striking metaphor for humanity’s ongoing schism with itself…This immensely entertaining book will take you to new heights of inner madness and well as delight. Sacred Mounds explores the human psyche in ways reminiscent of Huxley and sparkles with satire that brings Vonnegut to mind. I highly recommend taking the ride. Joyce Yarrow, author, "Ask the Dead"
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If you know Jim Metzner from his radio broadcasts, you know his voice, gently and expertly introducing you to a sound you've heard before but not quite in the way he reveals it to you, to a new place, or a place you've been to many times but of which you never really took notice, or to an exotic insect, or an amazing unfamiliar culture halfway around the world. Jim's voice, this time on the page and not the radio, does all of these things and more in this wondrous novel, a tale of time travel via a clever trick of metempsychosis, a revelation of the palimpsests of indigenous cultures long-vanished but surviving on the margins of contemporary America, and the vital spiritual connections between the grave challenges facing the world today and the challenges faced by Native Americans, who most non-native people assume have disappeared long ago, in their horrific encounters with Europeans. The arc of the story rests on voices, and the memory of voices, voices heard and unheard, describing the everyday magical details of two worlds, worlds that are in collision but that nevertheless need one another in order to avert a catastrophe both ancient and of the moment. This is a novel of a special kind of remembrance you are likely never to forget. Randolph R. Cornelius, PhD, Professor of Psychological Science, Vassar College