The Ledge of Quetzal, Beyond 2012: A Magical Adventure to Discover the Real Promise of the Mayan Prophecy

I really disliked this book. Its message, “Behold the plane of your divinity. Come. Trust. Walk in the light,” is clichéd enough in stories of spiritual journeys, and this book doesn’t give it a fresh pair of walking shoes. Instead, we are given weak characters and a catalog of “What does it all mean?” moments. At the end of chapter four, the author writes about a birth dream and says, “It was a profound vision.” For me, that’s where he lost command. I felt that at that point he threw his hands in the air and said, “Well, just take my word for it that it was a profound vision. Now, chapter five.” No bueno.

Hate is really too strong of a word to talk about a book, but I have to say that I was really disappointed in The Ledge of Quetzal: Beyond 2012. I requested this book because I thought it would offer some enlightenment to all the "end of the world" craze surrounding the Mayans and the year 2012. Instead, I got a book about a confused character searching for some kind of hope in a crazy world. That concept is not what makes this book a poor read. It's the fact that this book if full of cliches about spiritual beliefs and enlightenments. As other reviewers have noted, the writing is poor and the characters are flat as cardboard. I had to struggle to finish this read.

To be honest, I don't know what I think of this book. It has some excellent ideas in it, but it seems kind of preachy. I'm not sure if that was the format of the story (Daniel is being directly told these things after all) or poor writing. Also, the end seems rather purposely vague, as if "only those who are spiritual enough will comprehend this book". I thought of Siddhartha by Hesse often as I read this book, which I think aspires to it. Both were about man's spiritual journey, both had simplistic structure and obvious symbol. However, the imagery of this book wasn't quite as magical or beautiful as Hesse's work, amd the journey not quite as complete.

The Ledge of Quetzal: Beyond 2012 is a short book took me a long time to read. I just could not stay focused on this story, and kept yearning to read some of the other books I have stacked up around the house. At times I was confused about what was really going on because the story line just jumped from one thing to the next, other times it flowed quite nicely. The only constant was the lack of consistency in the flow of the book, which was quite distracting to me. I did like Daniel, the protagonist. I believe the author did a fantastic job of making Daniel’s fears and personal growth real. So while this book may not be to my liking, if you like new age personal journey stories you may like this book.

It was a struggle to get through this one, which is unfortunate because the premise sounds interesting. However, it came across as trite (the illustrations were horribly cliche). Daniel, the main character, was difficult to empathize with, and from there it was difficult to engage as a result.

If you do not have a backgrond in the subject matter this book is not for you. It does not explain terms leaving the user to wither research them on their own or just keep reading. The character development is lacking. I ended up putting the book down 2/3 of the way through because I had no vested interest in Daniel or his journey.

Perhaps a reader with a different backgroud would have enjoyed this novel more, but I found it neither enjoyable nor engaging.