Sandstorm - Harry Potter 6 Books

Product Description

An inexplicable explosion rocks the antiquities collection of a London museum, setting off alarms in clandestine organizations around the world. And now the search for answers is leading Lady Kara Kensington; her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's brilliant and beautiful curator; and their guide, the international adventurer Omaha Dunn, into a world they never dreamed existed: a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert. But others are being drawn there as well, some with dark and sinister purposes. And the many perils of a death-defying trek deep into the savage heart of the Arabian Peninsula pale before the nightmare waiting to be unearthed at journey's end: an ageless and awesome power that could create a utopia . . . or destroy everything humankind has built over countless millennia.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8776 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-01
• Released on: 2005-04-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 608 pages

From Publishers Weekly
If he weren't such a good action writer, Rollins might make a dynamite climatologist. Each of his thrillers has featured as a central character an extreme environment, most recently the Arctic ice (Ice Hunt, 2003) and now the hot sands of Saudi Arabia. But while Rollins writes settings and scenes that sizzle, what's caught in the heat are usually familiar characters grappling with far-fetched threats, and so it is here. That one male lead is a danger-courting archeologist named Omaha Dunn seems less parodic than tired, and the novel's premise of a hoard of antimatter hidden in the legendary city of Ubar is almost as ridiculous as the idea that this cache has been guarded for millennia by an order of women who propagate without men, via parthenogenesis. Rollins writes less like Michael Crichton than Stan Lee. Most of his readers won't care, though, because there's just enough scientific gloss on the nonsense to make it palatable, and anyway, what they want, and what he delivers, is action, as Omaha and an American military agent, Painter, join forces with two Mideastern women, one a scientist, the other a billionaire, to locate the steadily destabilizing antimatter before it's snatched by a villainous cabal, or worse, blows up the planet. And that's why they'll buy this book in numbers big enough to have it flirt with national bestseller lists.
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About the Author

New York Times bestselling author James Rollins holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine and runs his own practice in Sacramento, California. An amateur spelunker and a certified scuba enthusiast, he'll often be found either underground or underwater.

From AudioFile
The multiple elements in Rollins's plot border on the absurd: the quest for antimatter; women who reproduce without men; two women in search of Ubar, a legendary city buried in the Arabian Desert; the Queen of Sheba; and the prophet Job. Narrator Dennis Boutsikaris seamlessly switches genders, accents, and rhythm and systematically notches the tension higher and higher. His performance is flawless, yet it doesn't hide the thin plot and stereotypical characters. Still, the nonstop pace manages to keep the listener involved. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

A lot of excitement
I only recently got turned on to James Rollins, and I wonder what took so long! Sandstorm is the second of his books that I've read, and it's quite a ride. The characters are real and compelling. The events, while completely out there as far as reality goes, SEEM real and plausible. I do like how the author notes at the end of the book that certain aspects are factual and certain theories have actually been bandied about. It lends a little more credibility. You can tell he puts a lot of effort into his research.

I bought this book because one of the main characters is a world adventurer named "Omaha Dunn". Another main character (and there seem to be a lot of them) repeatedly calls him "Indiana". (And of course, Mr. Rollins wrote the adaptation of Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which I own but haven't read yet.) I couldn't resist that name, and I'm glad I bought it.

I'm also reading Shadowfall by James Clemens, who is the same person. I'm not sure where this author finds the time to be two people and a vet. If he's as good a vet as he is an author, he must be phenomenal. I look forward to reading more of his books.

Not recommended reading
After reading Map of Bones and Deep Fathom by James Rollins some time ago, I decided to try another book by this author and chose Sandstorm. That was my first mistake. Sandstorm is in stark contrast to Map of Bones and Deep Fathom which I really enjoyed. Mr Rollins seems to have gone downhill on this one. Not only was the plot so slow that I could have skipped half the book and known what was going on, the characters were laughable at best. I kept waiting for something exciting to happen and some reason to finish the book, but it never came. After taking months to work my way through this, I made my second mistake and finally decided that it was time to just be done with it. So I dropped everything else I have been reading and worked my way through a convoluted mess of plot, character, and outlandish science fiction and finished the book. There are very few books that I'm just glad when they are over, but this one is definitely at the top of my list.

Check out the reviews by Ava Stelteri and Yakfish. Both sum up my thoughts best and had me laughing when I read it because it is so true of this book. While I would recommend other books by James Rollins, this is definitely not one of them.

Overall rating: D

Romantic Dribble & Poorly Written
I just finished this audiobook. I love action books and don't mind a little romantic interlude with the story line. This is the first James Rollins books I've listened too.It's gong to definatly be my last.

First the plot is so transparent a five year old knows exactly where the author is going throughout. Second the continous ramantic 2nd class dribble is beyond endurence for the listener. Old five cent love novels have better dialog. The over the top lines and the constant need to present contrived romance is stupid. If you have half a brain buy a comic book, it'll be better written. Also the abridged audio is only 6hrs long. The unabridged version is 15hrs. BUYER BE WARE. This is not worth your time or money.