Howey has done it again: Sand is another engrossing dystopian sci-fi adventure.

This book appears to take place in a different universe than his bestseller, Wool. The main characters here are three siblings who live in a desert wasteland. Buried deep below them in the sand are artifacts from a lost technological civilization. There's money to be had in scavenging these artifacts, and one of the most potentially lucrative professions is sand diving. The diver rigs him- or herself up in a suit that uses electricity to flow the sand away from and around the diver. The best divers can go a few hundred meters deep. The eldest of the siblings, Vic (short for Victoria), has figured out a way to stage air tanks in a dive so she can go much deeper. Connor, the youngest of these three, shows promise. But it's Palmer, who is between Vic and Connor in age, who is destined to discover the greatest find of all -- the fabled lost city of Danvar -- and almost gets himself killed. For the men behind the search for Danvar care only about a certain kind of artifact -- the kind that can level a civilization -- and they don't intend to let anyone who learns their secret survive.

The mood in the first section of the book is so intense that I had to put it aside for a little while. I just knew things were going to go badly for Palmer and his buddy Hap. It also didn't help that I very quickly figured out where Danvar was in our time (mainly because I happened to be reading the book in that very city!). But once I got past that, I enjoyed the story immensely. My only quibble was the ease with which people traveled between towns. I've driven from Denver to Pueblo, and it takes several hours -- not the hop-skip-and-jump these folks make it out to be, unless their sarfers can go a lot faster than I think they can. But overall, Sand was a great read. I highly recommend it.

Books like this are the reason why I try to take books out of the library first before actually buying a copy, because had I bought myself a copy of this I would've tried returning it less than a quarter of the way in.

This book is a mess, to sum up it quickly. The intrigue it promises from the summary is so mangled by poor writing that it leaves little room for patience to figure it all out. And figure it out I tried.

In the beginning we're introduced to Palm and Hap and given a general sense of the world we will find ourselves in - a world totally covered by sand. For some reason the people of this world have a term called "sand divers" who, quite literally, dive under the sand. Sounds promising enough. But this term is never fully unraveled and by the end I'm still left wondering just what exactly is it about being a sand diver that is so prestigious and why they do it in the first place, beside the fact that they can say they're a sand diver. Once this term was so vaguely established it wasn't surprising that the rest of the book continued in the same spirit. There's a lost city of Danvar located somewhere below the desert that people look for, which is what Palmer has become involved in, much to his peril. Why this city is so important I'm not sure either. You get your standard explanation that it has minerals and other resources that can be scavenged, but besides that you're left with the need to go along with the premise. And all of these things accumulate: the terror-like group that ends up attacking Shantytown, the people that are living somewhere there on the other side, even the explanation of just WHY the whole world (or at least this particular part of it - the book doesn't specify how the situation applies) is covered in sand. The world building is poor and I struggle to think of another book that did this as poorly.

Adding to this was the conundrum with the characters, the sheer number of them all fighting for a speck of the reader's attention yet all falling flat and melting into the equally-lifeless background of the unnamed desert world. The author tried to give the characters some flesh, I'll give him that, but the end result was really not good. Each had some kind of attribute that can be pinned to them - such as Vic being the angry older sister that softens up a bit at the end and vows to bring change - and that's about it. Cookie cut-outs, each of them. There was nothing that allowed for any sort of connection to form, nothing memorable or human about them that creates an appealing protagonist.

And all of this fit into the main problem: the plot. About half way through the book I had one guess as to what the plot was, but then it took a sharp turn and went in a totally different direction that wasn't much better. How was this split into five separate books? Each of the five parts in this book was so short and limited that to separate them is a disaster - it's like ripping out a tiny piece of canvas from a Monet and making someone tell you what the painting is and what the artist was trying to say/show with it. The plot is incredibly forced and dry with nothing to reinforce it.

So far this book sets the bar for disappointing reads of the year. There truly have been few books that have bored me as much as this one and did so without even having the basics, such as good characters, in place. Shame.

Sand: Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey

Published by Random House on 2014-02-27
Narrator: Karen Chilton
Genres: Fiction, General
Size: 252
Format: Audiobook
Source: Provided by Publicist
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PJV Rating:

 

PJV Quickie: The Sand Omnibus by Hugh Howey was a hit on audiobook. I have not had the pleasure to read Howey’s WOOL series, so for me this was a first look. I thought his take on the dystopian world was stunningly real and his portrayal of life in this world, both haunting and thrilling at the same time. This is a great audiobook pick with narration by Karen Chilton whose clipped and mature voice gives depth to the story.

 

Review: The world of Sand is far in the future in a world covered in Sand and a desert landscape. The residents of the area make a living by diving into the sand, digging for treasures and artifacts of the world before, where the buildings touched the sky and food came in cans. The world Hugh Howey created was richly portrayed, each description of the world made it more real, until finally, I could image living in a world where houses were sinking into the sand slowly and people were afraid of what lived over the dunes.

 

The beginning of the tale covered the concept of sand diving, where men and women strap on contraptions and fins that bring them deep under miles of sand, to push their way into the buildings and towns that they scavenge for goods. The goal is to find the mother load, the big score. Whispers of an area called, Denver (Den-var) are what sand divers dream about. The score of score and which Palmer, thinks he is about to become a part of. Once we are introduced to Palmer, the story pans out and encompasses Palmer’s family, his older sister Vic and their younger brother Connor. It also briefly portrays their mother and father, who have both abandoned their children.

 

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I must argue that 250 some-odd pages does not an Omnibus of novels or even novellas make, unless you are a speshul snowflake SPA.

After the runaway success of his “Silo Saga” series, Hugh Howey must have been under pressure of sand-dune proportions to come up with a worthy follow-up to his blockbuster. That his new, five-story “Sand” omnibus comes on the heels of the last “Silo Saga” installment was a stroke of marketing genius by Howey. He put the proverbial glassblower in the oven while it’s hot by releasing another series sure to bask in the glow of the “Silo Saga.”

Therein lies the weakness in the new “Sand” series – it feels rushed and reads like a vague retelling of the author’s other works. The “Sand Omnibus” comes off as an above-surface version of the silo world introduced in Wool. Although the “Sand” series has some notable distinctions from the “Silo Saga,” the similarities are too obvious to ignore. Both are set in post-apocalyptic versions of what was once the United States, featuring a changed environment created long ago by self-destructive ancestors. Ageless technology from a bygone era keeps survivors alive in hostile landscapes. Both series feature several protagonists’ points of view that jump from character to character as the storyline progresses. The reality of both worlds shatters when two worlds collide. What was new and refreshing in the “Silo Saga” leaves the reader with a “Sand” aftertaste like grit in one’s teeth.

The omnibus does break some new ground for Howey. His imaginative, “Max Max”-style take on how people adapt to living on the surface and sand diving in a desert world is fuel for the imagination. He delves deeper into human relationships as told through a dysfunctional family almost torn apart by the sands of time. The author’s portrayal of love, loyalty, and camaraderie among family and friends is uneven but a gripping story. His depictions of humans using vibrating dive suits to move through sand like water seems unique in literature, as are other adaptive technologies harnessed by post-apocalyptic humanity.

Although the “Sand Omnibus” is well written, its storyline and pace suggests that the author should have slowed down and spent more time tightening the plot to avoid questionable coincidences and tidy conclusions. Had the series not been published in the aftermath of the ground-breaking “Silo Saga,” it might have elicited a better response. I give the book four stars and recommend it to anyone who enjoys dystopian science fiction.