Empires of Sand

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

FYI: According to the publisher, Ball has made four journeys across the Sahara, inspired by the true story of the 1880 French expedition that attempted to establish a railroad through the desert. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

It's 1870, and Moussa de Vries, son and heir to the explorer and adventurer Count Henri de Vries, enjoys an idyllic boyhood, hunting and building castles and forts with his cousin Paul on the grounds of the Chateau de Vries outside Paris. One year changes it all forever: schoolboy taunts teach Moussa the pain of being both African and French, the Prussians lay siege to Paris, and everyone in the de Vries household is forced to make choices that will change their lives. Moussa's uncle, the rigidly honorable soldier Jules; Jules's seductive wife, Elizabeth; the dashing Count de Vries and his fiercely protective wife, Serena, a noblewoman of the North African Tuareg--all are forced to take actions that will separate the boys for a decade, until they meet again in the vast, dangerous, and beautiful Sahara. Ball's debut, intricately plotted and beautifully written, is a saga of love, betrayal, adventure, and despair that will delight all readers, especially those who thrilled to Beau Geste.--Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Ron Franscell

Ball...writes with a traveler's sense of place and a journalist's penchant for detail....In this sweeping yet precise epic, Ball has created a swashbuckler for urbane readers....And it's not just what he says, but how he says it. His storytelling style is literate and graceful, erudite but adventurous.
— Christian Science Monitor

Kirkus Reviews

Debut historical novel that, Ball says, keeps close to the facts. The story begins in the Valois countryside in 1866 during a hunt when a spectacularly hideous boar is wounded by a huntsman and races off, crashing madly and zigzagging, finally killing the huntsman and charging two children, Paul deVries and his cousin Michel, also known by his Saharan name of Moussa, whose lives are the twin poles of the plot. With Paris under siege by the Prussians, Paul's father, Ugari, a world explorer and balloonist, crashes on the desert while sailing for Morocco and on the sand meets and then marries the brilliant, beautiful Tuareg noblewoman Serena, eventually returning with her to a shocked Parisian society. Their son Paul grows up to be a soldier, while a tragic turn of events forces Michel/Moussa to flee to his mother's homeland. Later, when Paul follows him there with a French expeditionary force, he and Paul become enemies. Outstanding here is a description of the stark and terrible beauty of nomadic life among the majestic Saharan Tuareg, a race of poets and romantics, which only underscores the horror of their doom as shining but feeble swords and shields meet French rifles. Altogether grand.