Empires of Sand [Hardcover]

David Ball (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 1999

From the mysteriously beautiful, richly hued landscape of the Saharan mountains to the sumptuous splendor of nineteenth-century Paris, Empires of Sand is a novel that takes us on an extraordinary, powerfully emotional journey. In a clash between two civilizations, two men of common blood discover that in war, love, and even family, they are both destined to be outsiders....

The year is 1870. The proud Republic of France is crumbling under the onslaught of the Prussian army. Paris is under siege. Too young to understand the shifting fortunes of the empire, two boys forge a bond with their breathless adventures in the tunnels beneath the threatened city. Paul deVries is the cousin and constant companion of Michel deVries--called Moussa--whose world-explorer father shocked Paris with his marriage to a noblewoman of the Sahara. Moussa will inherit the title of count; Paul is destined to be a soldier like his father. But tragic events will send Moussa fleeing to his mother's homeland, with its brooding mountains, its hidden caves and fortresses. And the two boys who have been the closest of friends are fated as men to become the bitterest of enemies--victims of history and the scheming of scoundrels.

They meet again on the Sahara's blazing sands, one as part of a foolhardy French expeditionary force, the other with the nomadic Tuareg, a majestic race of veiled warriors who live and die by flashing swords and a harsh desert code of honor. On this unforgettable, ever-shifting landscape, Paul and Moussa are swept into another war, one far more brutal than anything they have experienced.

Paul is obsessed with a quest for personal vengeance and honor. And Moussa, in love with a woman betrothed to an implacable Tuareg warrior, searches for the peace he knew as a child in France. Now they both face a challenge of sheer, harrowing survival: whether to follow the call of their shared blood...or the destiny written in the treacherous sands.

Empires of Sand is a grand novel of adventure in the best tradition of historical fiction. With its astounding scenes of the desert and its rich cast of characters--soldiers, lovers, slaves, and zealots--this is a reading experience to be treasured and remembered long after the final page is turned.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What a find! David Ball's first novel packs the wallop of a good old-fashioned adventure movie, with historic sweep to please any James Michener fan. The action starts with a wounded wild boar's attack on two French boys (convincingly told from the points of view of the boar, the boys--Paul and Moussa--the terrified mom, and an evil bishop who watches and prevents his coachman from shooting the beast). The pace never slackens as the scenes flash past: invasion and class war in the streets and underground quarryways of Paris during the 1870 siege, moonlit sneak attacks in the desert the Arabs call "the Land of Thirst and Fear," and an epic French attempt to drive a railroad through the Sahara--a mad plan opposed by the dunes and their no less implacable inhabitants, the Tuareg.

The Tuareg are the coolest--they're known as the blue men because they wear head-to-toe wraparound indigo-dyed clothes that scarily obscure their faces and stain their skin. Their rivals call them blue devils, and they have lots of rivals. Even though their dads are brothers, the French boys are fated to fight as tribal rivals in Saharan nomad's land because Moussa has a Tuareg mother. His dad, Count Henri deVries, crash-landed his balloon at her feet, and she followed him back to Paris. Racial oppression and bad bishop behavior provoke justifiable homicide at the Paris Opera, occasioning a hairsbreadth balloon escape and southern adventures too numerous to enumerate here. The prose is purple but handsome, the plot pulpy and propulsive. Check out these sentences: "He fell to her from the sky"; "Bashaga's howl haunted them until it was swallowed by the wind"; "As Moussa's stabbing knife pushed up through to his brain, Abdul ben Henna's last thoughts were of revenge." If these make you burn to read on, read on! You won't be disappointed. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

inspired by the true story of the 1880 French expedition that attempted to establish a railroad through the desert.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (August 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553110144
• ISBN-13: 978-0553110142
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #473,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Good Desert Adventure, June 10, 2002

By 

Paul McGrath (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Empires of Sand (Mass Market Paperback)

Here is the skinny on this one: it is a novel about a couple of Parisian lads who have adventures in war-torn 1870's Paris, then grow up and meet each other as enemies in the Sahara desert. It's a lengthy, epic, page-turning adventure tale which ultimately overcomes some early clumsy writing and ends up being very enjoyable.

The book is almost evenly divided into two halves, the first taking place in Paris. The two lads in question--Paul and Moussa--are cousins, with one of them the son of a Saharan Tuareg woman. (Moussa's father, a count, met her while exploring North Africa.) They live together on the count's estate and get into some interesting adventures, particularly after the advent of the Franco-Prussian war. The author is terrific at creating scenarios and maintaining dramatic tension. For example, there are the boys spying from the attic on an elegant party; there are the boys hunting rats in the tunnels underneath Paris; there is Paul's father, a colonel, leading a cavalry charge against brigand French.

Good stuff, but the first half, at least, is marred by some absolutely horrible, out-of-place, modern-day colloquialisms. The author describes Bismarck's boldness by saying he had, well, a common English epithet for male genitalia. A wounded French soldier speaking to the colonel says, "Gosh, Colonel, sir, I've never been this close to a real officer before," and, "we whomped them," in speaking of a meeting with the Prussians. Since when does a bumpkin from Huckleberry Finn show up in the French army? And sure enough--you can see it coming--one of the French officers insults another by resorting to the standard ignorant comment: "... you." Come on, we're reading about the French in 1870: can't the author at least try to create a little verisimilitude? These are good examples of sloppy writing, and are very off-putting. Several times, and despite the compelling plot, I was on the verge of giving this book the old heave-ho.

But oddly, after a couple of hundred pages or so, these jarring anachronisms pretty much disappear. And the second half of the novel, the part which takes place in the Sahara, becomes even more exciting than the already-interesting Parisian adventures. Moussa, you see, has to flee there with his mother after some difficulties with the French authorities, and becomes a leader of the desert-warrior Tuareg tribe. Paul becomes an officer in the French Army, and sure enough, is sent to the Sahara with the historical ill-fated mission to seek a railroad route to central Africa. As with the first half, exciting and numerous adventures abound. Most exciting to me were the descriptions of a desert ostrich hunt; and also the slave camp, in which the slaves are forced to dig long tunnels and work underground to get at what little water there is in the scorching desert. There are also some terrific battle scenes between the French and the Tuareg, and of course, the tale culminates in the inevitable meeting between the two long-lost cousins under very trying circumstances. It's very exciting.

There do continue to be a few minor problems, however. Some of the characters--most notably the nun, the bishop, and Mahdi--are a little too one-dimensionally evil, and the ending fits together just a little too neatly. But I can forgive it these faults. It is a romantic adventure after all, in the style of Dumas or Robert Louis Stevenson, and one must expect at least a little of this sort of thing. It ends up being a very satisfying read. Too bad there wasn't an editor around to clean up the earlier parts a little bit.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bad but great, December 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Empires of Sand (Hardcover)

Everything you read in the other reviews about cliches, stereotypes, and a hoaky storyline is true. Believe me. The first three chapters are horrible. I only kept reading because I kept hoping it would get better. And amazingly enough, it did! Not that the characters got more three-dimensional, no, I just got completely absorbed in the story. Once Ball's caught you, it's getting harder to notice the shortcomings of this book. Maybe it's because it's so simple: You've got your three or four evil characters, you're rooting for Moussa to win and for Paul to come to his senses again, and everything is set in faraway lands... you could easily make this book a successful Hollywood motion picture. The formula is there. All in all, if you look for a book with deep moral struggles or an excellent, believable plot, look elsewhere. But if you have a few hours left and want to fill your mind with pictures of exotic places and people, read the book. It reminded me of the wonderful adventure stories of my childhood and left me wishing for more.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing short of outstanding.........., August 10, 2002

By 

nto62 (Corona, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Empires of Sand (Hardcover)

Okay, so there's some predictability, but David Ball has written a novel so completely fun and absorbing that one simply doesn't care. From 1870's Paris to the limitless expanse of the Sahara, Ball takes the reader on a remarkable journey that is truly extraordinary.

The novels main characters, cousins Moussa and Paul DeVries, battle invading Prussians, corrupt clergy, treacherous relatives, and merciless bedouins in an attempt to establish lives separate from the tragedy of their youth within the French nobility. Moussa, his father a French count and his mother a Taureg noblewoman of the Sahara, is forced to flee Paris for Africa with his family. His cousin Paul is left behind with his own ghosts to exorcise. The two find each other again years later caught in the confrontations endemic to the European colonization of Africa. What ensues is a purely spellbinding tale of love and hate, life and death, beauty and utter ugliness.

Empire of Sands is an excellent novel. I thought of it often between the times I was forced set it down until my next opportunity to continue. For anyone who enjoys a captivating historically-based tale they will find few books far better than this. As a huge fan of historical fiction, I give it my highest recommendation.