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.
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HERE HE IS in the furthest corner of an antique desert, just one of a string of people who move silently across the sand. THE FAMILY, 1
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(@PenguinUKBooks, 6 January 2022, 601 pages, copy from the publisher via # NetGalley)
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I knew I had to read this book when I read the blurb, it sounded right up my street and something I could get lost in. I liked the different stories woven across the book, that of Spider and his family in a world where sand is dangerous and that of McKenzie, a seemingly normal girl with visions of deserts and lizards who starts to believe something strange is going on and her family are keeping secrets. McKenzie's story held my interest the most as there's so much mystery and so many questions are raised. I was impressed by the world building and how the places Spider and McKenzie inhabit felt so real. I was gripped from page one.
