Book Review – James Rollins’s “Sandstorm”
Last night I finished reading James Rollins’s novel, Sandstorm, the first book of his SIGMA Force series.
Sandstorm beings at a British Museum in London, England.
A security guard is making his rounds one night when he spots what looks to be an intruder in the prestigious Kensington Gallery, a section of the museum that deals with Arabian artifacts. He follows a mysterious blue light towards one of the museum pieces when suddenly there’s a tremendous explosion. The guard is instantly killed by some sort of unknown blast that originated inside the Kensington Gallery.
Dr. Safia al-Maaz, curator of the Arabian artifacts in the British Museum, is awakened by the explosion. She heads over there and tries to understand what happened and why most of the priceless artifacts were destroyed. Lady Kara Kensington, billionaire and sponsor of the gallery in her late father’s name, arrives at the museum and is equally devastated by the sudden destruction. Safia and Kara are childhood friends, both of them growing up in Oman on the Arabian Peninsula.
Both of the women study the surveillance tapes from the security cameras. What in the world was that blue light, and how could it have caused such an explosion? Did it have anything to do with the thunderstorm that was over the city at that time?
Over in the U.S., Painter Crowe of the elite SIGMA Force, a division of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – part of the Department of Defense), is working a case with his partner, Cassandra Sanchez. Crowe is posing as a security guard in a hotel casino while trying to capture a Chinese hacker who recently stole classified information. The operation goes sour and Crowe is forced to leap into action, using his firepower and help of the police force to stop the hacker from escaping. After stopping the hacker, Painter Crowe learns a sickening secret — his partner and trusted friend, Cassandra, was a traitor and tried to help the hacker. She’s hauled away in handcuffs though we later learn that she escaped from police custody.
Painter Crowe is called back to SIGMA for an emergency meeting with his boss. Word had already spread about the explosion in the British Museum, and Painter Crowe was being assigned to research it. It doesn’t make much sense until it’s explained that the source of the explosion may have been antimatter. What little evidence of the explosion at the British Museum is quickly lining up with the mysterious Tunguska explosion that occurred in Siberia back in 1908. One of the theories about the Tunguska explosion is that the comet fragment was actually composed of a small amount of antimatter which caused the tremendous explosion over northern Russia.
If the explosion at the British Museum was caused by antimatter, then there may be more of the extremely powerful material elsewhere in the world. More importantly, it must also be in a stable form as antimatter normally explodes when it comes in contact with matter. If the U.S. could acquire the antimatter, the energy potential from such a material would be virtually unlimited. If antimatter of any size were to fall into the wrong hands, the effects could be catastrophic.
Painter Crowe is assigned a new partner, Dr. Coral Novak, and the two of them make an immediate flight across the Atlantic Ocean to London, England.
Meanwhile, back at the British Museum, Kara Kensington is having her people conduct a thorough sweep of the museum. One of the workers using a metal detector notices some strange readings from an ancient sandstone statue that was damaged in the explosion. Safia “operates” on the statue and discovers that inside the statue’s chest is a metallic, anatomically correct heart. Inscribed on the heart are ancient letters that spell the fabled lost city of Ubar, the City of a Thousand Pillars.
What makes the discovery more compelling is that the statue dates to about 200 B.C. It was discovered by Kara’s father on a previous expedition in the Omani coastal town of Salalah. The tomb that the statue was guarding was for Nabi Imran, the Virgin Mary’s father.
Painter and Coral soon arrive at the British Museum and begin their investigation. Sure enough, their machines detect the presence of radiation associated with antimatter. While they’re doing their investigation, a small team of mercenaries strikes, killing several people while trying to steal the heart that Sofie discovered. Sofie is nearly killed in the process, but Painter saves her and chases off her would-be murderer.
It’s time for another expedition out to Oman to track the mystery of the metallic heart and a search for the mythical city of Ubar. The group is joined by Dr. Omaha Dunn, a fellow archaeologist and former lover of Sofie al-Maaz.
After arriving in Oman, the expedition is constantly hounded and attacked by a deadly and well-funded mercenary group led by Cassandra Sanchez, Painter Crowe’s former partner turned traitor. She uses her expertise to stay one step ahead of Crowe’s team, tracking and attacking them as both teams trek across the desert and follow clues to the city of Ubar.
As we discover, there’s more to the connection with Safie and Kara than meets the eye. In addition, Safie has a much more powerful connection to not only the desert of Oman but an ancient race of people as well. She will unlock her own inner secrets as she discovers her true identity of not only herself, but her mother as well.
The final confrontation in the lost city of Ubar is a thriller as the two expeditions fight to the death while trying to avoid an electrical disturbance so devastating that it was thought to decimate an entire city thousands of years ago.
As a whole, James Rollins’s Sandstorm is a fantastic adventure story that takes place in an exotic land. There’s plenty of action here as battles not only take place in a museum and out in the desert, but on water and even underground as well. Through in the fury of a massive sandstorm and an incredible electrical disturbance that kills many people, and there you go.
Part of what makes Sandstorm so interesting is that the story involves so many science facts and theories. Rollins’s work reminds me of one of my favorite authors, the late Michael Crichton. The attention to detail here helps keep the story solid, and the mythological aspects help keep it interesting.
The paperback version of Sandstorm may be an intimidating 569 pages, but the story keeps moving fast starting at page one. Once you’re hooked it’ll be hard to put down the book until you finish the final page.
