Review
Where to start with this book?!
I really enjoyed The Book of Sand but I can’t say that I’ve really taken anything from it? I hope that makes sense. It definitely kept me reading because I wanted to know what was happening and I enjoyed guessing too. I’m just not sure the end was enough for me.
The book itself is quite a hefty one sitting at a comfy 600 ish pages. It’s split into two parts with the first half following two narratives which merge for the second half of the book. I will say, the first half of the book felt like a YA novel – it followed a teenager who didn’t belong – McKenzie dreams of deserts but when she starts having ‘hallucinations’ she meets Newt who says he sees things too. The other narrative follows a found family unit (focusing on a guy called Spider) who are searching a desert land for an object which isn’t explicitly explained but they are in competition with other ‘families’ to find it first.
I won’t go into the second half as it would be a spoiler!
The world building was interesting for sure in The Book of Sand. The desert world has several cities in it which are mostly buried in sand. So the family would travel between Dubai and Phoenix for example – it was strange to get my head around at first!
In terms of characters I’d say the desert family were more well rounded, even though there are a lot of them – the dynamic there was interesting and kept me invested.
Overall, I’ve rated The Book of Sand a 3.5 as it was very easy reading and interesting – it just seemed to drift off towards the end without finishing properly and I have no idea if that is how the author intended it or not as it has been published posthumously.
Feed Me Fiction 