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SANDSTORM
Rollins, James
2004 42521 From the Publisher An inexplicable explosion rocks the antiquities collection of a London museum and the race begins to determine how it happened, why it happened, and what it means. Lady Kara Kensington's family paid a high price in money and blood to found the gallery that now lies in ruins. Her search for answers leads Kara and her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's curator, into a world they never dreamed existed. Evidence exposed by the tragedy suggests that Ubar, a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert, is more than mere legend...and that something astonishing is waiting there. The two extraordinary women and their guide, Omaha Dunn, are not the only ones being drawn to the desert. 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 and the trail is pointing him toward Ubar. What is hidden below the sand is more than a valuable relic of ancient history. It is an ageless power that lives and breathes. Many lives have already been destroyed by ruthless agencies dedicated to guarding its mysteries and harnessing its might. The end may be at hand for Kara, Safia, Crowe, and all of the interlopers who wish to expose its mysteries, as it prepares to unleash the most terrible storm of all... Performed by Dennis Boutsikaris From The Critics 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. Agent, Russell Galen. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. School Library Journal Adult/High School-A devastating explosion destroys an entire antiquities section of the British Museum and sets off a search for the source of the antimatter used. Scientist Safia al-Maaz and her closest friend and museum benefactor, Lady Kara Kensington, are joined in the search by Omaha Dunn, another scientist and adventurer, and Painter Crowe and his covert U.S. government team. Together they take on the desert of Arabia and relocate the legendary city of Ubar. As they search for the source of the antimatter, an evil cabal makes plans to use it for nefarious purposes. In the meantime, a tremendous sandstorm releases winds and driven sand with more force than a hurricane, while a rainstorm pushes in toward the site of Ubar and the search teams. The desert setting and the details of its environmental challenges conjure up clear pictures of the harshness of the area. The characters tend to be a bit stereotypical at first, but fit into the plot and support the action. And they evolve. Omaha Dunn, seemingly patterned on Indiana Jones, appears almost as a clone of the typical action/adventure character but becomes more individualized. Rollins mixes science, history, facts, and fiction into a thrilling swirl of an adventure HarperCollins Publishers 0-06-058066-6 / 9780060580667
Hardcover As New Condition New York
Price:
25.93 USD
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