Reader Reviews from Amazon and Elsewhere

Day of the Jumping Sun does just that.

It jumps into the readers’ thoughts and takes hold of their attention and doesn’t let go until the last page. It lets you imagine the horrors of a nuclear devastation, showing what could be if these foul weapons were used on a global scale. It’s a terrifying thought! A million years later it can still be felt in the pages, but so can love and its light, compassion, and knowledge. A fitting and necessary book with a message. For the human in us, all will feel the ink bubbling like lava.
This story of nuclear destruction is told in the far distant future where the aftermath is still felt. Four differing communities endeavour to come to terms with each other: The Shade People, The Sun People, The Prairie Dogs, and the Time Travellers from the author’s previous book, The Last Shade Tree.
Myth, poetry, song, and prophecy combine to bring life, struggle, and reason to these four groups, with The Prairie Dogs and their Queen Gitli at the forefront leading with technologies, medicines, food, and power. The Shade People are the remnants from time’s past who live in darkness to survive under Queen Gitli’s rule. The Sun People are the peaceful warriors whose love, acceptance and unity with nature bring them at odds with Queen Gitli and her dominance. The Time Travellers arrive and are treated with consideration by Queen Gitli, but are soon used with cunning to engage with her plans for total control.
A whole host of characters engage with each other to create a pictorial mélange of human, animal, and nature. Their acceptance of life, their labours, their joys, their plans and their downfalls combine to teach, to learn, and to create a new history for each other. There will always be toils, always shadows and always light, but as Sequoyah says, “We must put our humanity first and leave our brutality behind.”

Martin Shone, author of After the Rain and So the Spider Hangs, and other poems and short stories

Profound, funny, and timely

A brilliant and dazzling romp through a range of post-apocalyptic scenarios, combining biting satire with deep compassion, and covering an incredible timespan. A fascinating cast of wildly varied characters spring to life convincingly in this terrific read.

A time travel tale for today

Three families, survivors of a nuclear war in 2050, time travel a million years into the future. They find themselves in a society ruled by giant prairie dogs and populated by a cast of odd-ball animal and human characters. However alien that bizarrely transformed world feels to the reader, we connect to and identify with this small band of fellow humans as they confront challenges familiar to us—war, injustice, abuse of power, a degraded planet, cruelty and indifference to suffering, but also the values of loyalty, compassion, and the bonds of family. Panofsky invites us to engage and empathize in a fast-moving narrative that employs dark humor, unexpected juxtapositions and incongruities, and allusions to politics, history, and popular culture.

Evocative dystopian epic

Do yourself a favor and read this.
Through the power of time travel (an element that Panofsky handles extremely well), the characters embark on a journey through a perilous and unsettling landscape as they seek to unravel the mysteries of a world that is both familiar and yet utterly transformed. I am smitten with the memorable cast of odd and unexpected characters (giant talking prairie dogs!!) Panofsky has conjured a vivid, almost dreamlike picture of a world, of a time in which every moment is charged with tension, danger, and an element of enchantment. Her use of imagery and dialogue to weave the reader into this post-apocalyptic future is exceptional.
Honestly, this a genre-bending blend of thought-provoking themes (some of which are extraordinarily dark), whimsical and compelling characters, and beautiful descriptive prose. It's so difficult for me to feel like I can review such a wonderful book and do it justice without giving too much away ... like I said, just read it!!

A complex and fascinating world of its own

Reading Day of the Jumping Sun is like letting your imagination wander. From the very first chapter of the book, you are immersed into a world of its own. A complex and fascinating fictional world. But, counter to what we may assume, not everything about it is fictional.
I’m not a huge fiction reader, as I read mostly biographies or history books whose stories I can connect with easily, as I am already familiar with them, one way or another. What I noticed is that reading fiction books takes much longer than non-fiction, as you have to allow yourself to see the setting, let your imagination run wild while the locations, the characters and all the tiny details from the tale stand up in your mind. It takes much longer than a story set up in a world you are familiar with, but it’s even more rewarding, as it allows you to take a real break from your daily life by focusing on something that is entirely new, in all the possible ways.
But as a non-fiction avid reader, I tend to be naturally drawn to the non-fiction elements of the fiction books: meanings behind the choice of words, reflection behind the characters’ personalities, how they deal with their feelings and emotions. I was very happy to reconnect with old characters from The Last Shade Tree (and meet new ones) and it was thrilling to see where they were, see them grow up (for the youngest) and their personalities evolve. The subjects tackled in Day of the Jumping Sun are very current: nature, war, parenting, family, death, spiritual rebirth, adversity, love, heartbreaks, acceptance....
There is a universality to those subjects that feels comforting. In addition, you cannot help but empathize with the fictional characters, and connect with their humanity, even when most of them are non-human. The fictional characters are also strong at putting their feelings and emotions into words, and when those words are not spoken out loud, they are shared by telepathy. Reading Day of the Jumping Sun and discovering this special realm created by Margaret Panofsky will not only make you think and feel all sorts of emotions, it will also disconnect you from your immediate reality, and isn’t it what we are all looking for right now?
Here are some quotes from the book I wrote down to share with you all:
“Svnoyi snapped out of her reverie. The whole time she’d been trapped inside her whirling brain….”
“And another thing.” Svnoyi’s voice rose because she was about to make the kind of assertion she was so fond of. “You and everybody else have to stop thinking the Prairie Dogs are big animals who are dumber and less sophisticated than we are.”
“Aleta, I repeat again—what is the word? We must learn to appreciate each other.”
“The stories are thousands of years old, and who knows how they began. But they’re sacred to a lot of people and the Prairie Dogs, and we’d be wrong to close our minds.”
“At last he murmured, “It’s hard to give up old ways.”
“She asked Corlion, ‘Oh my darling, does everyone here live a life of complete happiness?’”
“How do we stop ourselves from unleashing our compulsion to conquer? We must learn a new trick that’s as old as wisdom, itself. We must put our humanity first and leave our brutality behind. And this holds true for how we treat ourselves, each other, everyone and everything we meet whether human or non-human, and our Mother Earth.”

Beautiful story!

It is impossible to label Day of the Jumping Sun in one genre. Part science fiction, part post-apocalyptic, part magical reality, part romance, and more, the book contains a bit of everything without becoming disjointed or too “busy.” The novel begins with a church group on a retreat in a series of caves when the nuclear war erupts, the world is destroyed, and the group realizes they are probably the only survivors. They struggle to make sense of what has happened while trying to survive. Fast forward one million years, the story picks up where The Last Shade Tree ends with Sequoyah’s family. We learn that humans are divided between the Shade People, those whose ancestors remained in the caves, and the Sun People, whose ancestors braved the outside. There are also the prairie dogs, led by Queen Gitli, who seem to hold all the power in this new world. Sequoyah’s family find themselves trying to prevent another war disaster as they carefully and diplomatically negotiate relations with each group. Themes of the consequences of nuclear war, colonialism, slavery, forgiveness, love, and hope are woven throughout the novel. I highly recommend it!

Imaginative, witty, and absorbing

This book is, amongst many other things, a particularly American depiction of religious extremism (à la “Handmaid’s Tale,” but somehow truer to life) and a truly original take on the post-apocalypse world. At its heart, though, it has great characters, human and animal — all of them with a very genuine mix of strengths, flaws, and quirks — and an unpredictable but satisfying story. Read it!

Imaginative dystopian romp

To say that this author has a fertile imagination is quite an understatement. The huge cast of characters encompasses every human gift and foible. There’s destruction, survival, time travel, courage, cowardice, honesty, and duplicity—the whole human comedy—just for starters.
It’s a mesmerizing read for those who love science fiction, dystopian novels, and big engaging reads.

Unique and enticing

The author weaves a very complex and intriguing tale filled with a multitude of fascinating characters that spans one million years — due to time travel via a bus! A book you won’t soon forget!

Wildly creative, brilliant

Day of the Jumping Sun starts off with me being confused (don’t worry, for me that’s normal). Questioning whether WWIII itself is fictional or nonfictional. Day of the Jumping Sun starts off with a fictional, yet highly anticipated concept of a limited number of survivors from WWIII. I’m guessing, like 90% of civilization considers WWIII inevitable, that it is an actual event (nonfiction) waiting to happen. Day of the Jumping Sun, written by the brilliantly creative mind (imagination) of Margaret Panofsky; changes its realm from fiction to science fiction. It is like a modern day futuristic revolution or evolution. Day of the Jumping Sun took me on a fun ride into a world, our world, a million years into the future. Sorry, I can only give Day of the Jumping Sun 5 Stars. If I had it my way I’d give Day of the Jumping Sun all the Stars in the universe. But I can’t because of all the radiation it would cause.