Sand: 1 (Sand Chronicles)

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He's dead at the end, right? Certainly. Right? I mean, they don't say that he is or even imply that he is. At all. But he has to be, right? This isn't a Disney animated children's film. There's no way he's not dead or in a coma dreaming that ending up, right? Guys?

Chanani, Nidhi. "Portfolio". Everyday Love. Nidhi Chanani. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Bernard is elevated to mayor and eventually replaces Juliette with his own choice for sheriff, Peter Billings. He also trains a man named Lukas to become his successor, and teaches him the secrets of IT: the IT department is the true power in the Silo, and records of knowledge from the old world have not been lost, but confiscated and sealed in a hidden chamber. However, Peter's honesty and pursuit of justice makes him difficult for Bernard to control, and Lukas has no interest in perpetuating Bernard's agenda. Bernard finally finds a pretext to condemn Juliette to a cleaning, but one of Juliette's friends in Mechanical, Walker, secretly arranges for her protective suit to be made out of quality materials, unlike all previous protective suits which were secretly designed to fail and constructed of intentionally defective materials. When she exits the Silo, Juliette realizes that her suit's visor contains a high-resolution display, and is deceiving her. Instead of cleaning the sensor, she becomes the first cleaner to walk out of the sensor's range of sight.So. I reread the Sand Omnibus before diving into this and I did appreciate it more and feel more invested in it than I did on the first read. However. As exciting as it was to have a new Hugh book (like really, whaaat), this next installment didn’t really do it for me. In a way it further de-mystified some of what happened in the end of Sand 1, and I felt like its mysterious nature was one of the best things about it. The plot in ATS also dragged major. Like I mentioned above, so much time was spent on the sarfers (sand sailboats) which was a downer for me twofold: the time it took to physically move people around beyond multiple times took forever, and the amount of sailing/boating jargon made me legit cross-eyed.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Sand follows an estranged family across--and sometimes, quite literally, deep into--a land that is very much the antithesis of the claustrophobic, totalitarian world of Wool. Pirate-esque figures sail vessels across expansive dunes that hide buried cities. Worn villagers chew on grit and dig endlessly to keep their homes from turning into graves. And divers--well, you'll see.Meanwhile, Juliette discovers that all Silos possess a tunneling machine that, when activated, will connect them to a place designated "Seed". Silo 17's machine requires more fuel than is available, so Juliette and the other survivors try to walk to Seed over the surface. They emerge from a wall of dust and realize the world has already healed itself. The Silos are enshrouded by an artificial veil of toxic dust, but beyond them, there is breathable air, clean water, and a thriving ecosystem. When Juliette and the survivors arrive at Seed, they find it is a sprawling bunker replete with food, materials, and plant seeds, everything needed to rebuild civilization. Charlotte encounters the group, and Juliette invites her to join them.

His talent is a given at this point--not to mention his imagination and work ethic, judging by the rate at which he puts out quality work--but it is his heart that truly elevates his writing and, I think, defines his style. It’s the little tangents and connections that make Howey’s writing special to me. For instance, here in Beacon 23 our protagonist, who mans a “lighthouse in space”, studies his favorite picture pasted on wall above a porthole. This picture depicts a keeper standing before a lighthouse (the kind we are all familiar with here on earth), and behind him, a massive wave looms that will certainly wipe the building and the man right out existence. I couldn’t help but wonder if this picture hinted at what’s to come next.

Publication Order of The Dystopia Triptych Books

Hugh’s books are full of these kinds of moving passages, pictures that show us our world in his and make us want to take the journey toward happiness that his characters are on.

Hugh Howey's Sand sequel, Across the Sand, was gifted to me in a Goodreads giveaway by the publisher, Harper Collins. I was very excited to receive it since I loved his Wool trilogy immensely. The Wool Omnibus and the Sand books are set in a post-apocalyptic United States. The timeline is fuzzy, but it is long past our era. I finished Sand this morning and was surprised to find a tear. I’ve wanted to cry from reading a book before, and did at the end of listening to 11/22/63, but never have while reading someone else’s fiction. Sand Omnibus did that. I’m not sure I could give a stronger recommendation. Sand is King of the Hill for 2014’s reading crops, and while it’s early, I expect it to be up there for a good while. In this one the world is buried under sand and water is scarce. The daring and (maybe a bit crazy or stupid) use specialized equipment to dive deep under the sand and recover anything deemed valuable to be traded for money and supplies and just to get by.

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A world covered in sand. Cities buried hundreds of metres below, in silent sandy graves. Fortunately for the people of this land there are plenty of things to salvage from its sandy depths. Sand divers risk their lives to "dive" down to these cities, making a living from the loot they find there. Unfortunately, that is about the only positive of living in such a desolate world. The land is harsh and unforgiving. The community battles daily against the ever-advancing wave of sand which threatens to bury their small towns. The story focuses on one family who have been struggling to survive ever since their father took to no mans land years earlier, never to be seen again. Alter, Alexandra. "Wool: Sci-Fi's Underground Hit— WSJ.com". Online.wsj.com . Retrieved March 8, 2013.