Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Sandstorm - James Rollins

Talk about your mixed emotions. I was predisposed to not like this book: it’s too long, and the author is too successful. (Writers are just as prone to sour grapes as anybody else.) On the other hand, James Rollins is a veterinarian in real life, or at least used to be, and seems like a nice guy, so it’s hard to envy him for his success. And he’s admitted in interviews that he’s a big fan of the Doc Savage novels, my all-time favorite pulp series, so in that respect I was predisposed to like the book. The verdict: I liked it. Quite a bit, actually.

It opens with an explosion at the British Museum that destroys a display of Arabian artifacts, but it’s not the terrorist attack you might expect. Instead, it’s a natural occurrence caused by the convergence of an electrical storm and something hidden inside one of the artifacts. This sends a large and varied cast of scientists, explorers, billionaires, and spies racing off to Oman in a quest to find a lost city buried under the sands before the natural catastrophe that’s developing threatens the continued existence of the entire world. Of course there’s action aplenty along the way, as well as a smidgen of soap opera.

I hardly ever even attempt to read a book that’s almost 600 pages long anymore, and when I do I usually make it thirty or forty pages and then decide that I don’t like it well enough to stick with it for the five or six days it’ll take me to read it. Usually there’s nothing really wrong with the book; it just doesn’t compel me to make that investment of time. That never happened with SANDSTORM, though. I was able to stay with it without any problem . . . although it wouldn’t have broken my heart if it had been a hundred pages shorter. Still, there’s a lot of plot in it, and Rollins seems to be very good about planting things that don’t pay off until two or three hundred pages later. He also writes decent action scenes and has good characters. Things get a little far-fetched now and then; Rollins leads the reader right up to the edge of saying, “Oh, come on!”, but doesn’t quite get there. And he winds up with at least semi-plausible scientific explanations for everything.

I liked this one enough so that I’ll certainly read more by Rollins, and if you like big, epic adventure novels, I think his books are worth a try.

9 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I've read a couple of his, most recently Amazonia, which was pretty good. I don't feel compelled to pick up others but once in a while I'll read one.

Randy Johnson said...

His latest, The Last Oracle, arrived yesterday. It's considerably shorter than six hundred pages.

Juri said...

My only experience with Rollins (aside from a short story in the Patterson edited THRILLER) has been the Indiana Jones novelization he made, but it's pretty dull. The story in the anthology was quite good, though, lots of shooting.

James Reasoner said...

Yes, I should have mentioned that it was Rollins' story in THRILLER that made me decide to try one of his novels. It's taken me a while to get around to it, but as I recall his story was one of the best in that anthology.

Mark Terry said...

I like his books quite a bit although I tend to think they run a little too long. Amazonia is good. Sand Storm may have been my favorite.

And that short story in THRILLER was fabulous.

I've interviewed him and he does seem to be a really nice guy. Also, in case you don't know, he also writers fantasy under a pseudonym.

James Reasoner said...

Yeah, I picked up the first of the "James Clemens" books the other day and intend to give it a try.

Randy Johnson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

The trend towards 600 page books has put me off a lot of writers. It's nice to see that I'm not the only one who feels extra long books are asking too much from the reader.

It's interesting, too that a book with clearly science fictional elements isn't marketed as science fiction.

Even though I'm not a bot I've got to say that the word verification letters to type in are darn neigh unreadable. And serious, do you really need that much site security?

James Reasoner said...

Blogger added that word verification step a while back, and it never occurred to me until now that I could turn it off. I've done so, because I'm not sure it's necessary. I can always delete any spam comments that get through.