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Theo Clare

The Book of Sand Hardcover – 6 Jan. 2022

by Theo Clare (Author)

216 ratings

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'Shocking and satisfying ...a compelling, absorbingly different quest fantasy' Guardian

'An utterly original novel from an extraordinarily creative mind' Karin Slaughter

'Unique and fearless' Mark Billingham

'I inhaled it! It's beautifully written and utterly compelling' Harriet Tyce

'Audacious, extraordinary and absolutely awesome' Alex North

'Fearless and compelling, lyrical and devastating by turns, the story never slackens pace. A stunning introduction to a wholly original world' Jane Corry

'A future classic that exists between darkness and light. I was completely entranced by it' Christopher Fowler

'A huge and brilliant and engaging read. It feels like a place I have been to rather than words on a page' Alice Jolly

'A remarkable achievement' Shots Magazine

'What we have here is a fantasy about faith and the search for spiritual certainty... [an] ambitious religious parable.' FT
_____

SAND. A hostile world of burning sun.

Outlines of several once-busy cities shimmer on the horizon. Now empty of inhabitants, their buildings lie in ruins.

In the distance a group of people - a family - walk towards us.

Ahead lies shelter: a 'shuck' the family call home and which they know they must reach before the light fails, as to be out after dark is to invite danger and almost certain death.

To survive in this alien world of shifting sand, they must find an object hidden in or near water. But other families want it too. And they are willing to fight to the death to make it theirs.

It is beginning to rain in Fairfax County, Virginia when McKenzie Strathie wakes up. An ordinary teenage girl living an ordinary life - except that the previous night she found a sand-lizard in her bed, and now she's beginning to question everything around her, especially who she really is ...

Two very different worlds featuring a group of extraordinary characters driven to the very limit of their endurance in a place where only the strongest will survive.

Print length

608 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Century
Publication date

6 Jan. 2022
Dimensions

16.2 x 5 x 24 cm
ISBN-10

1529135850
ISBN-13

978-1529135855
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Andy Weir
92,259
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Hervé le Tellier
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Mo Hayder
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Mo Hayder
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From the Publisher

Product description

Review

An utterly original novel from an extraordinary creative mind, The Book of Sand is an absolute standout that's impossible to put down. -- Karin Slaughter

Unique and fearless, Theo Clare had that rare ability to lead her readers into places that were genuinely terrifying and to conjure images that would linger and continue to disturb. The Book of Sand is no exception. -- Mark Billingham

I inhaled it. It's beautifully written and utterly compelling - I was completely subsumed in the Cirque and the fate of the family -- Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange

I didn't want it to end. Audacious, extraordinary and beautifully written ... it's absolutely awesome. -- Alex North, author of The Whisper Man Published On: 2021-10-16

Fearless and compelling, lyrical and devastating by turns, the story never slackens pace. A stunning introduction to a wholly original world. -- Jane Corry

About the Author

Mo Hayder left school at fifteen. Gifted with intelligence, determined to shape her own future she worked as an actress in tv and film, barmaid, security guard, filmmaker, hostess in a Tokyo club, educational administrator, and teacher of English as a foreign language in Asia. She had an MA in film from the American University in Washington, DC, and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University, UK.

She wrote eleven crime novels under the name Mo Hayder, and her fifth novel, Ritual, was nominated for the Barry Award for Best Crime 2009 and was voted Best Book of 2008 by Publishers Weekly. Gone, her seventh novel, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. Two of her books, The Treatment and Ritual have been made into films and her novel Wolf, was nominated for Best Novel in the 2015 Edgar Awards and is currently being adapted for the BBC.

Prior to her diagnosis with Motor Neurone Disease in December 2020, she had completed The Book of Sand under the name Theo Clare, as well as the first drafts of three more books in this series of speculative fiction, from which she took her greatest personal writing satisfaction. She passed away in July 2021 as a result of MND. She lived her life as a creative artist, never afraid to challenge her personal boundaries or those set by the establishment. She leaves behind a husband and daughter, a powerful legacy of books, and an incredible number of people who loved and admired the many facets of her diamond personality.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Century (6 Jan. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 608 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1529135850
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1529135855
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.2 x 5 x 24 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 249,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 3,142 in TV, Movie, Game Adaptations
- 3,668 in Post-Apocalyptic
- 4,319 in Contemporary Fantasy (Books)

Customer reviews:
216 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

216 global ratings

5 star		55%
4 star		25%
3 star		11%
2 star		5%
1 star		3%

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becca

This gets better as it goes along

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 December 2022

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Bit of a slow start for me but once I got into this book I couldn't put it down. I'm a fan of Mo Hayder and so this was an obvious choice for me to read, sadly after her death. It's a bit more YA than I'd normally read and I found the McKenzie character irritating with all the teenage buzz words and like this and like that language that seems to try too hard to capture the way young people speak and interact, but apart from that, and in spite of a rather repetitive style of writing, the premise is good and the twists and turns are quite brutal. There are hints of an 'afterlife' but not the blissful one you'd expect, and I'm guessing it's more like the tests of purgatory that must burn away the remnants of physical and psychological burdens before the soul can be fully released. But others may see this differently. There is a book two to this to be released in 2023, and you can see by the rambling nature of the prose that the author perhaps didn't have the time to properly edit it to her usual tight style of writing. It would make a good movie.

Helpful

A compelling and immersive world

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 22 March 2022

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This is probably going to be a Marmite book for a lot of people. I can totally see why some people wouldn't like it. It runs to 600 pages and although quite a lot goes on, it's of a repetitive nature and not much actually happens. A lot of the time, you're thinking 'where is this going?' or 'what's it all about?', yet I found it totally engaging and immersive. The first 330-odd pages are split between the world of the Cirque where a family (really a group of thrown-together individuals) navigates a dangerous world in an attempt to find a hidden object - the sarkpont. At no point do we know what this object is; just that it's crucial to the family's survival. This alternates with a more real-world narrative, involving a girl called Mackenzie who has strange visions of a lizard and is inexplicably drawn to all things desert-related.

I probably found Mackenzie's scenes more compelling - I was keen to find out what was going on (was it due to some government experiment that she was having visions? Was she remembering a past life?) - eventually, I did have an idea where it was going (and was correct), and the two narratives eventually converge.

There are quite a lot of repetitive elements to the novel - the family's existence centres around the times when it is safe to go and search for the sarkpont - this is during longer hours when night doesn't fall for a couple of days; as during dark nights, beings called djinni will try to attack and kill them. For this reason, they live high up in a tower-like building called a shuck. There is a lot of wandering through the desert to different places - each represents something familiar e.g. Dubai, Phoenix etc. It is through this altered reality that the family needs to hunt, and there is quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between the shuck and various places, but I felt engaged the whole time. I particularly loved the relationship between Spider - one of the family members who is portrayed as both tough but empathetic, with a hidden past - and Camel. Literally a camel!!

I don't want to say much more about it, as I feel it's a book that needs to unfold for a reader. However, there is no resolution at the end, just the set-up for book two. So if you're not the sort of person who enjoys investing in 600 pages, only to have to read another however many pages for a resolution, this won't be for you. I wonder, a little, if it takes a year for book two to be released, how inclined I'll be by then to find out what happens - but I think I will. For some reason, The Book of Sand got under my skin. I've finished it but am still thinking about the characters. It resonated with me - maybe partly because the author (who also writes under the name Mo Hayder) is someone whose novels I've admired, and I was so sad to hear that she passed away last year. This book makes you think of bigger things and greater connections, and there was a beauty to that. A feeling, while reading it, that the author has created a beautiful swan song. It will be interesting to see how it resolves - and how it answers many of the questions that remain e.g. why was this particular family thrown together? What is the reason for real-world cities making up the Cirque? What are the exact timelines involved between hunts for the sarkpont (it's clear that time moves slower there than it does in our reality)? And, most of all, whether the ultimate 'why' is answered - i.e. what, really, is it all about? I really hope the next book tackles those things and leaves the reader with a sense of a tied-up ending, even if some elements are still open to interpretation.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

An extraordinary novel of great power and complexity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 11 January 2022

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‘The Book of Sand’ by Theo Clare is an extraordinary novel that left me stunned by its originality and complexity. An unusual hybrid incorporating elements of science fiction, fantasy, adventure, mystery, and literary fiction.

Theo Clare is a new pen name of author Mo Hayder and the two novels that she completed prior to her recent death are being published posthumously. I have been a great admirer of Hayder’s thrillers, so was very keen to read this new work of speculative fiction.

‘The Book of Sand’ is an unusual story set in a world of shifting sands and blazing sun, of abandoned cities and unseen invisible deadly threats. A small group, who have been instructed to treat themselves as a family, are engaged in a quest to find an object hidden somewhere in the surrounding cities. The Sarkpont is the key to their escape. Yet they are not alone as other families are seeking it.

In an alternative narrative stream, McKenzie Strathie is an ordinary teenage girl living an ordinary life in Fairfax County, Virginia. She is fascinated by sand and the desert. After she has a vivid waking dream of finding a sand-lizard in her bed, she overhears her mother sadly saying to her father: “You don’t think it’s happening again, do you?” Soon McKenzie begins to question everything around her, especially who she really is ... No further details to avoid spoilers.

While the family faces constant threats in their struggle to survive, their cooperation and love for each other is an uplifting message. The novel incorporates elements of philosophy, religion, and spirituality.

Given the author’s knowledge of her mortality, it is perhaps not surprising that themes such as the meaning of life and death are also explored.

I found this an amazing novel and feel that I have only touched the surface of this powerful, contemplative work with my initial reading. It is a novel that I have every confidence that I will be rereading.

The second book, ‘The Book of Clouds’ will be published in 2023. I look forward to seeing how this visionary story continues.

Very highly recommended.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

T. Hacker

Bit of a disappointment really

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 26 August 2022

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Interesting initial concept but one that was not then properly explored later in the book. And even allowing for the fact that this was one of a series, I felt that greater detail or rationale was needed to satisfy the reader. I understand that the author has passed away so don't want to be too harsh; maybe subsequent volumes would make up for what this first one lacks.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 27 March 2022

Verified Purchase

I loved this writer when they wrote crime novels, this is a totally different genre and was a good read. It was a long book and would have been just as good minus 200 pages. That said the character building and the two stories in different time lines was excellent. I hope there is another book as it was a cliff hanger ending

Helpful

eileen carmichael

Confusing to start with

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 22 August 2022

Verified Purchase

Couldn't understand what this book was all about at first but as story went on I got it. Can't wait for next one

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The Book of Sand Hardcover – 6 Jan. 2022

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