Simply put, this one wasn't for me. There was nothing wrong with the prose or the plot, I just wasn't sucked in the way I hoped.

This was a DNF from me.

The main character is in the archetype of the clever and foul-mouthed street urchin, as in Arkady Bones from the Rook & Rose trilogy or Lift from the Stormlight Archive. But that kind of character needs to be used judiciously, which wasn't really the case here. Throw in that the *entire* book is written in her internal cant, and it's just plain difficult to read.

And it's just plain difficult to take a character seriously when they swear all the time in made-up-for-the-book obscenities. It works for Lift because we're not supposed to take her too seriously; it doesn't work here.

I have enjoyed this book so much more than I expected. The start was a bit slow and not much has happened until the second third of the book where pace picked up and I couldn't stop reading it. Everything was amazing. It was entertaining, characters were relatable. Plot twist was surprising and unexpected. I loved this book so much and I hope to read more from this author soon.

There's a lot to love in this story. A well developed world building, interesting characters, and an unusual magical systerm.
It took a bit to get used to Caralee way of speaking but she grew on me.
This a dystopia, a fantasy story and a coming of age.
Liked it, hope to read soon other books by this author
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

While it took me a bit to get used to the way Caralee spoke, and that she didn't really act like a 16-year-old... at least not like the type of 16-year-old I'm used to reading, once I did and when we reached the point where we meet Sunnyvine/ the Son I really began to enjoy the story. It's definitely unique and a bit weird, but it did suck me in, and I really enjoyed the ride.

I loved the chapters we get from the Son's past, I love seeing what the world used to look like and how he became the man from the stories. I also loved how Caralee grew into her own, she is stubborn, and determined, and made some surprising friends along the way.

I think the only downside is that this definitely reads like the beginning of a series, and left everything very open-ended. However, I could find nothing that indicates we are getting more books. If there are more I would absolutely read them, I find I'm very curious to see the Son and Caralee working together again to fix whats broken, and I would love to see more of what their world used to look like.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books for the eARC of this title.**

My actual rating is closer to 3 stars but I am rounding up because it was a new-to-me author and maybe he just isn't my style. I liked the concepts and the synopsis definitely grabbed my attention which is why I wanted to check this one out in the first place.

With that being said, this did feel like a young adult novel to me, not the "genre bending mashup" that I was promised from the synopsis. I just couldn't relate to the characters at all and found them to be a bit dull in general.

I also didn't love the development of the story and the amount of pages I read for how little information I received. I feel like I read the first part of a series that I have no intention of continuing unfortunately. I would recommend this one for readers that like YA sci-fi and very open ended stories.

HIGHLIGHTS
~the sky is broken
~the metal people broke it
~sci fi masquerading as fantasy
~I really wish this had been a different book

Sandymancer is one of those books where you watch the remaining page count get smaller and smaller, with a sinking certainty that there isn’t enough room left for everything that needs dealing with to get dealt with.

And that sinking feeling is completely correct.

As far as I can tell, everything about Sandymancer promised it was a standalone. It’s not. It’s the start of a series – or at least, it had better be, because Sandymancer is all set-up with no pay-off, and the book ends with almost every thread we started with still left hanging.

And the thing is, if it had been presented to me as the start of a series, I would have gone in with completely different expectations. My entire reading experience would have been very different. There are things that are huge no-nos for a standalone that are acceptable, or even great, in a series-opener…and because I thought this was a standalone, they landed wrong for me. Sandymancer didn’t leave me excited to see what happens next; it left me frustrated as hell with all my unanswered questions, and a pretty pathetic milk-sop of an ending.

To be honest, it worries me GREATLY that I can find no mention online of Sandymancer being a series, of there being a sequel planned. Because you know how there are books that could stand alone just fine, but also leave room for the author to come back and write a sequel if they want and are able to? Sandymancer is not that book. Sandymancer does not stand alone in any way, shape or form. It is incomplete.

I have not encountered this particular kind of set-up many times, but it’s familiar enough: a post-apocalyptic world that looks back on the civilisation before the Fall/Rending/insert-your-term-of-choice here as mythically perfect. When inhabitants of this world encounter workings of the ancients, they call them magic, but they’re not magic, just very advanced science. This is Caralee’s world, and it is dry and dusty and pretty dead, because eons before the Son of the Vine ruined it all.

And then Caralee meets the Son of the Vine. Who is still around – in a manner of speaking. And who, inscrutably, decides to try teaching Caralee rather than killing her with a wave of his hand, as he could absolutely do. She will accompany him on his mission to do…things.

Thus begins a good long trek across a fairly dead landscape, where we hear about various critters and monsters but don’t see them, encounter several Rather Alarming mysteries that do not get resolved, and endure a whole lot of telling-not-showing. Often literally, since the Son is given to lecturing.

There’s probably a name for stories that are basically just people travelling from point A to B to C – where the moving is the only real plot – and I don’t know what it is, but you can slap that label on Sandymancer. There are a few tiny sub-plots that delight – like the carpet, and the memory-songs, and I thought Caralee drawing everything she thinks into her miraculous-to-her notebook was quite sweet. But mostly, things are encountered, and then the characters move on, without anything really happening. The sky is broken! There are metal people! The world-sustaining Vine is dead! All of that is touched on, and then the narrative sort of…wanders off from the point. We don’t get to sink our teeth into any of the potentially Very Interesting bits, and it’s maddening.

The part of the book I adored, though, were those chapters written from the Son’s point of view, where he’s looking back on the world he knew and the events that led up to him doing what he did. Those were powerful, full of intrigue and emotion and magic (if you can make plants grow out of your head, dude, I’m calling it magic), with the hints of a truly glorious, strange, and wonderful world sketched in around the edges. I wanted more of that so bad. To the point where I pretty quickly came to resent the main story, because the main story was one I didn’t care about; I wanted the Son’s story, and specifically the world he grew up in. I think, for Sandymancer, keeping Caralee as the main character and making the Son’s chapters few and short was the right choice – but I wish we hadn’t had Sandymancer at all, but a different book entirely, one set in that past. That I would have been glued to.

Caralee…there’s a little bit of comedy – or something, comedy doesn’t seem like the right word, but I don’t know what else to call it – in how limited Caralee’s understanding of things like biology and physics are, at the very beginning of the book. But that effect – comedic, or charming, or whatever it is – runs out fast, and then it just becomes kind of tiring. I liked Caralee as a character a lot – I loved how determined she was, and how hungry for knowledge, and how few fucks she had to give for anyone trying to scare her or make her feel small. But the smallness of the story is made even smaller through her perspective on it, and not in an interesting Unreliable Narrator kind of way.

The Son was my favourite kind of villain, right up until he wasn’t. Seriously, the whole Thing of the ending was so pastel and perfect and Friendship Is Magic that I just Cannot, okay? I Cannot.

I will not.

Final point: I recognise that I am a prude, and I want my SFF to be pretty. I’m shallow like that. But what is the obsession with faeces here??? It’s one thing to replace ‘shit’ with ‘scat’ as a curseword; that’s fine, whatever. But it’s everywhere – as a curse, it feels like it’s every third word out of Caralee’s mouth, and hi, her laughing while the giant bugs who eat scat are ‘licking’ all over her face is disgusting. Way, WAY too much of that, did not need it, did not want it, do not care if you call me a prude for it. Just: nope. Stop. Why???

I adored Edison’s debut, The Waking Engine, and I will pounce on future works of his – but probably not any sequels to Sandymancer, if we do in fact get any. There were so many great individual bits and pieces here, but they were lost and overwhelmed by what I can only call the vagueness of the story. It fails as a standalone, and honestly, it doesn’t impress as a series-opener either.

Skip it and read something else.

Caralee is your typical teenager living on a dying planet. But she has a secret. Her secret is that she is one of the few in her world that can control the elements. While out with her foster brother, Caralee draws too much power and sets free, the last thing she expects. Who did she set free? The god-king who broke the world over 800 years ago and who has now taken over the body of her foster brother. Caralee would do anything to get her foster brother back, including accompanying the god-king on his journey to fix the world. But there are obstacles in the way. With the help of an aging sandymancer and a sentient protector, Caralee and the god-king will travel the world to right the wrongs. Can they do it? Can the god-king and Caralee fix the world and restore her foster brother to his body? Or will everything they have gone through be for nothing?

When I read the blurb for Sandymancer, I was intrigued. I have a soft spot for fantasy books involving teenagers, reawakened gods (or kings or both), magic, and dying worlds. Based on what I read, I decided to read Sandymancer. I won’t lie and say that I liked the book, but at the same time, I won’t lie and say that I disliked it either.

The main storyline for Sandymancer revolves around Caralee, The Son (the god-king), and their journey to fix the world. It was a meandering storyline that left me with many unanswered questions. There were references to The Son’s ancestors coming from space and terraforming this planet but not where they came from (I assumed Earth). There were references to The Beasts but no explanation of how they came to be. It was frustrating because everything was left hanging. But there were some parts of the storyline that I did like. I loved the spidermoths that Caralee’s foster mother owned. I liked seeing the Jewish culture represented in the book. And I liked that the author included how The Son rose to be god-king before he was taken down. And the magic, let’s remember that. I found it fascinating.

I wouldn’t say I liked Caralee. I found her to be very annoying throughout the book. She was almost too much in parts of the book, and I wished that the author had toned her down a little. She also seemed to forget that she was the one who caused Joe to run off, and that caused him to get possessed by The Son. It was her temper tantrum that freed The Son in the first place. I did like that the author took her unlikableness and used it to thwart the Metal Duchy. But, even I got an eye twitch when reading her interactions with Elinor.

The Son started as an exciting character that morphed into one that bored me. He gave long-winded speeches about magic and physics. I also found it funny that he thought he was god’s gift to people and expected people to fawn all over him. His family fascinated me, and I liked that the author took the time to explain his backstory. What he had to do was heartbreaking. Did he want to do it? No. Did he have to? Yes.

I liked the fantasy angle of Sandymancer, but I wished the author had explained more about The Son’s magic or even Caralee’s. I also wish the author had explained more about the critters and people that lived on Caralee’s planet.

The end of Sandymancer was left up in the air. None of the storylines (except for The Son’s backstory) ended. I was left with more questions than answers about what the heck happened.

I would recommend Sandymancer to anyone over 16. There is mild language, violence, and sexual situations.

Many thanks to Tor Publishing Group, Tor Books, NetGalley, and David Edison for allowing me to read and review Sandymancer. All opinions stated in this review are mine.

I wasn't expecting this to read so much like a post-apocalyptic dystopian. I just never jive with the narrative choice that I can only describe as playing telephone with things that are common to us but have faded into history in the story (ex. Rainbow becoming rainybow; alright becoming all-a-right) I didn't get far enough in to have anything to say about the actual plot, so if you do like this narrative choice, it might be great.

Sandymancer
by David Edison
Dystopian Science Fiction
Ages: 18+
NetGalley ARC
Release Date: September 19, 2023
Tor Publishing

Sixteen-year-old Caralee Vinnet has magic, but nobody in her small, no-name village cares or even believes she will ever be able to do more with the sand but create a rabbit, even a traveling Sandymancer laughs at her abilities, announcing to all within hearing that all Caralee will do is have babies.

In anger, she lashes out, screams at the desert, and summons the god-king who broke the world 800 years ago. He needs a body, and Caralee's best friend's body will do.


Caralee is an angry girl, and while I can understand why, I didn't like her. She was introduced swearing like a spoiled bratty teenager. Yes, she is only sixteen and is picked on, but she's picked on because of how she acts, and this is when, within the first fifty pages, I wanted to stop reading, but I hoped with the introduction of the god-king things would get better.

They didn't.

The idea of being able to control dust, and then having to deal with a crazy god-king sounded like action, but it wasn't. It was a dragging through the desert as she whined and threatened and he returned her threats.

I did not enjoy the language lessons, I skipped right over those, they were boring, but the magic system had potential if more thought/detailing had gone into it. For the most part, I feel that it was brushed over, but then again that could be because I found myself bored to the point where when I wasn't falling asleep, I was skimming.

The Son's backstory was the most interesting part of the book, but it was still dull. But I did have two favorite characters, the beetles, they, I think, had the best and most engaging personalities.

1 Star

This book had such an interesting premise, but it might not have lived up to the expectations. I am glad I read it, but, for my personal collection, I don't think I will be purchasing it.

Incredible world building, Edison has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the logistics of this world. From the moment I started reading, I wanted to know more about the world, and what problems were going to arise. However, the story failed to engage with me for the first hundred or so pages, meaning that it was hard to continue reading. As I persisted, however, I found Sandymancer to be a fairly pleasant story. Perfect for fans of Dune who are looking for another epic Sci-Fi book.

SandyMancer
David Edison

Blurb

A wild girl with sand magic in her bones and a mad god who is trying to fix the world he broke come together in SANDYMANCER, a genre-warping mashup of weird fantasy and hard science fiction.

All Caralee Vinnet has ever known is dust. Her whole world is made up of the stuff; water is the most precious thing in the cosmos. A privileged few control what elements remain. But the world was not always a dust bowl and the green is not all lost.

Caralee has a secret—she has magic in her bones and can draw up power from the sand beneath her feet to do her bidding. But when she does she winds up summoning a monster: the former god-king who broke the world 800 years ago and has stolen the body of her best friend.

Caralee will risk the whole world to take back what she’s lost. If her new companion doesn’t kill her first.” (Macmillian, n.d).

Magical Systems

There are several books, series and films about magic. Fantasy is a very popular genre and with it comes magical systems ranging from Harry Potter, to Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson explains that magic must have rules, because otherwise plots can become contrived (Sanderson, n.d). Imagine if every fantasy books problems were solved by a wizard, waving their wand, staff, or hands and muttering abracadabra, and everyone lived happily ever after. Imagine a Lord of the Rings where Gandalf could have used magic to destroy the ring. A Wheel of Time series where Rand could click his fingers and banish the dark one out of the world. Magic has to have limitations and rules and I was eager to see what Edison did with sand magic. But as I went deeper in, I saw Caralee executing her “sandy sense” without even as much as a drop of sweat. She conjured apparitions and tremors with nothing more than a desire. What was the cost? What were the rules to this system? If Caralee can do anything with the sand, for however long and for whatever reason, I began to fear of a contrived plot. As I continued to read I was growing confused with the system, was a sandymancer a type of wizard, or a wizard? Caralee refers to herself as a wizard, and I began to wonder what else she was able to do. The phrase sandysense was often used, to explain how Caralee called upon her magic. It kept making me think of spiderman. We are told by a sandymancer that they use sandysense to sing down the wind, drum up water, call out to fire and summon the sand. Powerful wizards then. What could Caralee not do? Where were her limitations?

Genre

I was drawn to SandyMancer by its promising premise. Wasteland dystopian fiction has it’s fans and I am one of them. So a world covered in nothing but sand, and those with the power to control it? I could not resist. When turning over the first page I immediately recognised it as YA fiction. I did not expect this, as its described as a “genre-warping mashup of weird fantasy and hard science fiction”. Maybe there are those that would argue it is not YA fiction, the pigeon English used by the characters is used to emphasise the destruction of society. However, the main character is a young adult and there are a lot of young adult tropes thrown at the reader. The older boy love interest, the community who doesn’t understand you, the intelligent girl surrounded by idiots… I felt a little cheated. Where was the hard science fiction I was promised?

World Building

Edison wrapped up his “world building” in expositional monologues told as “stories” by characters. It just felt like disguised information dumps. The concept I was most looking forward to, the “Sandymancer”, a spin off of the more commonly known “necromancer”, was thrown at me quickly in a short paragraph that just felt rushed. I was told about alpha dunderbeats, sandfishers and other dangers of the waste. I would have prefered if Edison showed me. Why could he not show me a scene where Caralee was practicing her sand bowls and a sandfisher was lying in wait? Why could I not be shown the cracked land which had been ruined by the old king? Instead I was told. One of many questions I wanted the answer to was, if Caralee was a sandymancer and all sandymancers studied in the sevenfold redoubt, why was she not there? I got my answer, she had hidden her talent from the sandymancers, but it was strange that after learning about her power, apparently she would never be accepted by them. I became more interested in my own imagination. Thinking about rogue sandymancers, turned away from the only school of magic and what would they become? I lost interest in Caralee standing up to a preposterous magician, why would they turn any student away? With power came challenge and any magician would want to teach and instruct students in their own principles, not have rogue mages wandering the land. We see a Caralee who can cause tremors, who could devastate populations if she wanted to, and another sandymancer dismissed her with little fear. I began to ask more and more questions, but not out of interest or mystery, rather out of confusion.

Conclusion

This is a book with an interesting premise which led only to boredom. The hard science fiction was non-existent, instead SandyMancer morphed into a YA novel, whose world building, writing and characters offered little in comparison to all the others which sit on the shelves beside it.

Interested?

Published on September 19 2023

References

Macmillan, (n.d). Sandymancer. Accessed via: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765379603/sandymancer

Sanderson, (n.d). First Law. Accessed via: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/
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Caralee barely survives in a dusty hungry world. Very little is left alive. She discovers she has magic in her and her life changes. It's an interesting book by Edison. I look forward to his next novel.

Cozy dystopian sci-fantasy candy.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sandymancer and devoured it in two nights. It dares to flip certain tropes on their heads and maturely delivers others in detail rich pros that are enjoyable to mull over. It feels like a hard fantasy until about ½ way through when it starts to reveal scifi layers that preexist those fantasy elements and it ties both genres together neatly.

One of the main characters presents as queer and I wish there had been more pronouncement of whatever details are there in their story. The only time you really get a sense of that queerness is when they are being intentionally vulgar to scare off another character. While it is nice to see a queer character be something other than ridiculously sweet or overly callous, I wish there had been more about their queerness, especially in those flashbacks.

The magic system is solid and the holes that do exist around it throughout the first parts of the book make sense by the end and lead to even bigger things going on in this universe. The details during channeling sequences are unique and exciting to read through and present a magic that is both old and yet new at the same time. Was very fun to follow as it unraveled.

This is cozy dystopian sci-fantasy candy, and you have to enjoy those elements to really get into this book. It is sweet and emotional when it needs to be and brutal only when there is reason.

Who would be into this book?

People who want an easy and entertaining read with uncomplicated characters who have big backstories.

People who enjoy walking around in a dystopian wasteland.

People who like love but not all that lusty stuff.

Sandymancer is a weird book. And I like it for that.
Although fitting in the sci-fi genre, in this novel the civilization has regressed, leading to an age of superstitions and ignorance, starvation and fight for survival. In this desert-like and dying planet, we meet an ambitious girl who has other goals than just surviving: she wants to see and learn more about the world she lives in. And she gets that chance when she mistakenly summons the god who broke the world.
The world-building is so lushly and vividly described that makes you believe you are in it, side by side with the characters. The lore behind is a masterful mix of science fiction and weird fantasy features, all of which I found being a breath of fresh air. The world feels alive particularly thanks to the focus on the language, on its evolution, or rather its involution, and the use of said language not only in the dialogues but also in the narration.
The characters are well-rounded and their interactions were quite entertaining at first, but after a while they got repetitive and a little bit boring, alongside with the plot. What, in fact, made it hard for me to finish reading this novel was how monotonous and dragging the narration became after reading a few chapters. The pace was so slow, I would have completely lost interest if it were not for the world-building and the lore. It didn’t help that, besides the major goal, we are oblivious about everything else: we don’t know where they are going and why and because of this I couldn’t fully grasp the stakes at play.
This novel still has some aspects done well, that I truly enjoyed while reading, such as the world-building, the lore and the characters, and it raises some thought-provoking ethical dilemmas.

Thank you Tor and NetGalley for providing me with this ARC for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

The story is a YA Story done right. It is all about this species of magic users called the sandymacers and the New Magik they use. With a lot of back and forth, the story tries to deliver a world of its own. And it did. More from the characters then anything else. They were very believable and kept me on the edge of my seat the complete while. I enjoyed the thoroughly.
But being a person invested more in the plot of the story than its characters, I felt the book was a bit under. That is why I gave it a 3 star. If the plot had been a lot more explosive like the characters, this would've easily been a 5 star read for me.
But that is not to say that there isn't a lot to love here. The characters, the flashbacks, the protoganist. Really, a great read.
JUST PICK IT UP!!

People live in a shitty, excuse me, scatty world they forgot how to turn on. The janitor is woken from his nap, and shenanigans ensue. An idiot plot on an idiot world.

There are a lot of spoilers…

Caralee is an obnoxious ingénue, Sonnyvine is a predator, Eusebius/Saz/Joe aren’t real people and are there merely to serve Caralee and the Son, as is every other cartoon populating the world.

Why is Caralee interested in Joe, someone who regularly dismissed her interests as frivolous? (turns out she likes dumb guys :| )

Joe is remarkably stupid and these hard-edged people ought to have projectiles to kill people who do stupid things like Joe

How have people not died off from malnutrition? I suppose the cable plant (which I'm guessing from jump is part of the Vine) just happens to have all the required nutrients to keep people breathing

Why was Caralee so rude to the sandymancer instead of trying to get into their organization and learning this thing she cares about? Does she have any actual plans on leaving her village?

How old Caralee is. 11? 12?? (16??? Really?)

This seems to be a post-racial world. We learn that Joe has pink nipples and Sonnyvine has brown nipples, which is diversity.

How are people having multiple children? Is contraception a lost art?

Why didn't Sonnyvine kill Caralee? There is really no comprehensible reason to keep her around. He could get the information she has from anyone. Especially after she attempts to kill him, and asserts her intent to try again. Is he bored, or lonely? Whether or not he likes killing, he shows over and over again to have no real compunction. In the end there is something for which they need two sandymancers, but there is no explanation of why that’s the case. Or why Eusebius can transfer souls, which he does immediately after the Beasts of Blood and Wind are split, but can’t move water around. Like, isn’t the water thing easier than soul transference? Is the Son just throwing Caralee a bone every time he has her perform a sandymantic feat?

Why is he called a god-king? There is no religion attached to him. Even in his flashbacks he and his forebears are called gods without showing what that actually means.
Why would they not set a watch during night in a wasteland filled with monsters and thieves? And where are all the monsters and thieves?


"All of nine, Esk-Ettu would not leave Besset’s weighty breasts alone, but kept grappling with her big nipples that no amount of fabric seemed to be able to conceal." - the fuck? Like, I know kids can get fixated, but 9 is really old for it. Why are adults not setting boundaries? Why even include this? You could not have a child "grappling" a woman, it wouldn't change the story at all.

Sonnyvine being crass is, like, his thing.

“So young, so ready, so full of hormones…I imagine it’s capable of all manner of buggery." - Old man on the body he has taken over.

He does that thing where you mime a dick in your mouth. Dude is 800+ years old and his only audience is a teenager.

There's a scene where Caralee, 16-year-old girl, stares at the Son’s dick flopping around and ruminates on "wet cunnies." Caralee is, in general and with regularity, sexualized. Happily, it stops after about 200 pages.

When Caralee isn't soaking her burlap sack with prurient musings, she's being instantly good at everything. Though she's never drawn a day in her life and only knows her letters, she can easily replicate her mental images and stays up all night filling her journal. She takes to Auld Vintage (the Son's language) like a burden-critter to scat. She knows when people are lying. She just knows. She wishes really hard and magic happens.

Sonnyvine says he knows nothing of the current world, but he's been hopping bodies for centuries and knows who the Patchfolk are and speaks the language better than the locals. He also never really asks about the current world.

Not a fan of how the character’s talk, this sort of ultra-whismical Appalachian thing? I mean, the title says it all. Sandymancer, Sonnyvine, rainybow wheel. It doesn’t help that the people occupying this world are universally ignorant. They got their shit-eating burden-critters and their cableshine liquor. Very quaint.

I liked the echoes of Jewish culture and mysticism: the matzeba, challah (called challah bread, I guess for readers who don’t know that it’s bread?), shekels, the significance of numbers. Could’ve been more.

“Scat,” in its various iterations, is used 154 times. Scat, scathole, scatty, shatterscat, human scat, bird scat, scatting, but also plenty of shits and butt and asses, to a coprophilic extent

There’s a language lesson in chapter 4 that goes nowhere. I mean, they don't use Auld Vintage to do anything, it's just sort of there for worldbuilding? I don't think a chapter devoted to it was needed. I can't even remember why they went to Comez. They just wandered around town, observed some things, and did nothing with the information. It was very blatant foreshadowing for me, the reader, but flew right over the characters' heads. Like a harpy.

Caralee gets a journal. You'd think the language and the journal would be important, but no. Maybe in the sequel?

"Wood was expensive enough that whatever lay below must be important or dangerous or both" - wood is also very easily broken, as is quickly demonstrated after this line. Why would someone use wood when their main building material is stone?

They get attacked by a harpy and despite being the most powerful sandymancer or whatever, the Son tosses Caralee out the cart, watches the cart and their spidermoths get gutted, and takes action only after Caralee attempts suicide-by-harpy. And the thing had been stalking them for hours. Dude turns it into lava in like a second flat. No one addresses why this wasn't an option before their scat got buggered.

After this small tragedy, the Son proceeds to lecture Caralee on atoms. For half a chapter.

The plot is fueled largely by stupidity. Caralee has a tantrum and accidentally summons the Son. Joe ignores people screaming at him and runs into an obvious trap he has been warned of his entire life. Caralee, stupidly, follows him. Caralee and th4 Son learn there's a harpy around, ignore the giant bird-like thing following them, and as a result have to visit the crittertender who very conspicuously gets a blood sample from the Son and loudly explains his broodcritter's ability to clone using hemolymph (blood).

They have a selectively employed, do-anything magic which can, seriously, pretty much do anything. Make pillars of sand, conjure fire, perform MRIs, you name it. (I wrote this immediately before they acquired a flight-capable carpet). I'm not into "hard" magic systems, but I don't like how the magic they can do is arbitrarily ignored. Why couldn't Atu be a flying critter? Like, I'm halfway through the book while writing this, and one of the obstacles they face is a giant crack in their atmospheric enclosure/sky. The Son has shown both facility with sand and the ability to melt steel. How about they take the magic carpet, sandymance a few tons of sand, and fly up to seal the crack shut? There is one sentence where Caralee mentions this possibility, and it is never brought up again.

So much of this book is the Son delivering a series of 101 lectures while traveling between plot points.

The dynamic between the Son and Caralee is appalling

“Stay away from it, Caralee.” The Son’s voice held a sudden tension.
“What is it?”
“I said stay away.”
“But I wanna see what it is,” Caralee whined.

Shit like this, Caralee acting babyish, happens regularly, which is why I thought she was much younger than her stated age. It also makes the various scenes sexualizing her more off-putting.

And of course the Son who is, again, a man who can melt steel with his mind, who has lived for centuries, and who is the god-king of this bizarre little terrarium, just watches Caralee act like a fool without intervening. He'll alter her burlap sack dress to give her more cleavage, but won't use his control of the elements to stop her from falling off a cliff. Priorities, right?

So, compared to Oz. Idk, I've only seen the movie, and Return to Oz. Caralee does collect man-like things - a mobile fossil, a brain damaged sand wizard, and a chubby robot. The world is zany, it's odd to think of people living in those conditions. I guess the harpy is like a flying monkey? When I was a kid I uncritically accepted how weird Oz was and the fairly simple story. But, Oz is a children's story, which Sandymancer decidedly isn't. Even if there is a literal road made out of yellow bricks.

I thought the end was really anticlimactic and cheesy. It sets up a sequel, which based on the name must have something to do with Thomb the crittertender and his broodcritter clones.

I resent how much time was spent fucking around instead of working on the Son's save the world to-do list. Like, the one thing they do fix is something they stumble upon while moping around a mountain with some bones in it.

Overall, idk. I wasn’t a fan of the writing, or the characters, or the plot. I think the world itself is interesting, though obviously created by idiots if its functionality relied on the continued existence of a singular bloodline. The Son mentioned redundancies repeatedly, but there wasn’t any for the Son of the Vine? Is that the sequel? Is there a secret Son of the Vine? Is it Caralee? Atu? An Amaunti clone? Some other named character?

I would have liked this better if the characters weren’t either flat or annoying, and if the plot was more robust. The Son has been planning on how to fix the world for centuries. Why does this feel so directionless?

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.