Not nearly as good as I expected...,I read & loved Map of Bones, Rollins most recent release, so I picked up this book thinking it would be just as good. I moved backwards to this predecessor because I had not heard of Rollins before. Mistake!I cannot start a book & not finish it & I don't like to read more than one book at a time; personal quirks I live with. Usually I read a book a week, because I usually find good reads based on reviews, research & sales. There was nothing to suggest that I wouldn't like this. Reviews of the book were good, sales were good, & the story seemed enthralling. My formula did not work. This was a month long marathon of torture. I felt like I was back in high school or college reading a book that I hated but had to read to complete a report or take a test to pass the course.What a disaster of a novel. The book is over 500 pages long for 1 very simple reason: this guy can drag out the description of a piece of dirt for at least a page. It would also appear that Rollins pulled out a thesaurus the day he started writing this book, picked out five to ten words that are not often used in conversation, & regurgitated those five to ten words over and over again. Why? I don't know.The story and the facts supporting it are promising, intriguing. It involves anti-matter (yes, the same stuff in "Angels & Demons"), the lost city of Ubar (the queen of Sheba and the Garden of Eden), & the potential for world domination based on some long-buried secret. A good formula for a scientific & historical thriller. Right? Wrong!To top it off, Rollins attempts to add a love story (you could call it a love triangle) to this train wreck of a novel, which only further bogs down the story.Some of the characters (described in full as if they will be a major player) exist for no apparent reason other than to add a line of dialogue, and the dialogue is bad throughout. One character, who appears in the first chapter & is described with enough detail that you can assume he will be a key character, never returns. Why? It's a muddled mess.The main characters are unemotional & unresponsive, almost lifeless, considering that they are facing life-and-death situations.The dialogue is ridiculous: calm conversations about scientific realities & falsehoods in the midst of a gunfight taking place under the so-called sand-storm of the century; attempted witty banter between two characters that have not had an ounce of chemistry; run-on, endless dialogue about scientific facts without a pause or interruption.I was thoroughly disappointed in this book & I won't be reading any of Rollins' earlier works. I may attempt the follow up to "Map of Bones", if one is released. Maybe that was the turning point for Rollins, the place where he found his writing niche. I'm not sure if I will, but I might.I am sure that there are many people who truly enjoyed this novel, but I found it to be trite & cliche, a drudgery. I hope anyone who buys this book enjoys it, I just want to let you know that you may want to think twice before believing the great reviews.For the sake of relativity, I will provide a list of some of my favorite books in this genre so you can decide whether or not my opinion matters to you: The Last Templar by Khoury, The Third Secret & The Romanov Prophecy by Berry, Obsessed by Dekker, Brethren by Young, Labyrinth by Mosse, and The First Horseman & The Genesis Code by Case.
I was hungry for some action and adventure when I remembered this series was suggested by a friend. I noticed here in Goodreads that readers who enjoyed this book also liked Matthew Reilly and Andy McDermott so I checked it out. This is the first book I've read from James Rollins and it's one of those riveting, fast-paced, action-packed novels with mysteries worth exploring.I simultaneously read this with Andy McDermott's "The Hunt for Atlantis". I'm what the author calls an "armchair traveler", and given the different locations I felt like I traveled already. The author referenced the use of some facts here and I appreciate that. The descriptions of the settings were vivid and he painted the pictures with words.It's obvious that I enjoyed this book because of the 5 stars I gave it. I had to ask my friend from USMC about some weapons used so I could have an idea what the firepower looked like. The characters were diverse and flawed. I was mystified by the magic that's within the Rahim. I don't want to spoil anything here, but I'm fascinated with the paranormal and it has this and that.The love between Safia and Omaha never faded despite their broken engagement, the life-and-death situations reignited the spark between them; and it's a balance amidst the war. All wars are ugly and the author saw the need for romance without trying too hard.He wrote this novel masterfully because I found myself engrossed and losing sleep. A lot of effort and research has been devoted into writing this and it clearly showed through the science part, the antimatter, and how Mr Rollins's imagination blended well with fiction. Map of Bones is definitely next!
What do You think about Sandstorm (2005)?
Sandstorm started out in London with a literal bang and ended with a storm of supposedly epic proportions in an ancient desert city. But by the time it did, I didn't care anymore. All I saw was a swirly world of sand, glass, and static electricity populated by cardboard characters. The good ones would probably survive and the bad ones wouldn't and so what. What happened in between was pedestrian and predictable thriller fare with too many guns and action and not enough thrill.Anti-matter? Bucky balls? Parthenogenesis? Underground cities? It all adds up to too much to suspend disbelief. More like 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls' than 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', if you want an Indiana Jones comparison (and Rollins apparently does, naming one character 'Omaha' and having another repeatedly calling him 'Indiana').The characters never really clicked for me, although the settings were pretty vivid. The plot started unraveling for me when the big puzzle turned into a simple map to a city that wasn't lost, but sealed. If you intentionally hide a city, why do you leave a map to it? And if you do, why do you make it a puzzle? In the end, there was absolutely no point for anyone to go there, anyway. Which is pretty much how I felt.
—Bill
Sandstorm is the fifth book I've read by James Rollins. It's a stand-alone adventure novel although it does set up the "Sigma Force" novels featuring the recurring character Commander Gray Pierce. James Rollins writes in a page-turning style, mixing action sequences with exotic locations and cutting-edge technology. Sandstorm is no exception as we follow a good mix of characters, including Painter Crowe, the future director of Sigma Force, traveling from London to the Arabian Peninsula in search of the lost city of Ubar. Along the way we get to experience the British Museum in London and several archeological sites such as the Crypt of Nabi Imran, the Tomb of Ayoub (Job from the Bible), and the town of Shisur. We also get to learn more about anti-matter, buckyballs (having to do with ball lightning), molten glass, and one hellacious sandstorm. I find reading James Rollins books to be the closest thing to an Indiana Jones movie I've yet to experience. In fact, he was even selected to adapt the screenplay from the last movie into book form. I found this book to be an interesting read although at over 550 pages, it did seem about 75 pages too long. The author is adept at bringing his characters to the edge of a cliff and then finding creative ways to push them off but it seemed to happen a bit too much in this one. The bad guy character, a female, was competent, which I like in a bad guy, and displayed some truly evil aspects, but somehow was not all she could be. Pretty good characterization for this kind of book, and a sort of love triangle aspect that worked nicely. Onr other note: my copy is a limited edition mass market paperback and came with a hard "lenticular" front cover, giving it a 3D effect. I suppose that looks nice in a book store and might well entice a customer to pick it up, but it makes for difficult reading/handling, especially in the first few chapters. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I prefer to stick to the regular paper covers.
—Benjamin Thomas
I thoroughly enjoyed this fast paced, action-packed thriller/adventure novel that is the first in his series of the SIGMA Force and Painter Crowe.This one begins with an explosion of an antiquities collection of a London museum. Lady Kara Kensington's family paid to found the gallery that is now in ruins. In search of answers, she and her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's curator, embark on a quest to Ubar, a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert. But these two women and their guide, Dr. Omaha Dunn, are not the only ones in search of answers; Former U.S. Navy SEAL Painter Crowe, a covert government operative and head of an elite counter-espionage team, is hunting down a dangerous turncoat whose trail is pointing right toward Ubar. I love how Rollins seamlessly blends facts with fiction, and creates a highly entertaining and engaging story. Perhaps some of his plot devices are a bit difficult to chew, but if you’re a fan of Indiana Jones, or a reader of Clive Cussler or Micheal Crichton, I think you’d enjoy this tale of adventure. Like I said, I always enjoy Rollins books, and I will certainly be reading more in the future
—Maurean
