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    Land of the Burning Sands
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    Land of the Burning Sands
    Unavailable
    Land of the Burning Sands
    Audiobook15 hours

    Land of the Burning Sands

    Written by Rachel Neumeier

    Narrated by Paul Michael Garcia

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Gereint Enseichen of Casmantium knows little and cares less about the recent war in which his king tried to use griffins and fire to wrest territory from the neighboring country of Feierabiand...but he knows that his kingdom's unexpected defeat offers him a chance to escape from his own servitude.



    But now that the griffins find themselves in a position of strength, they are not inclined to forgive, and the entire kingdom finds itself in deadly peril. Willing or not, Gereint will find himself caught up in a desperate struggle between the griffins and the last remaining Casmantian mage. Even the strongest gifts of making and building may not prove sufficient when the fiery wind of the griffins begins to bury the life of Casmantium beneath the burning sands...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Audio
    Release dateDec 24, 2010
    ISBN9781400189724
    Unavailable
    Land of the Burning Sands
    Author

    Rachel Neumeier

    Rachel Neumeier, the author of The Mountain of Kept Memory, started writing in graduate school as a break from research, but years ago allowed her hobbies to take over her life. Along with writing both adult and young adult fantasy, she now gardens, cooks Indian food, breeds and shows Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, and occasionally finds time to read. Her most recent young adult novel, The Floating Islands, was a Junior Library Guild selection and was selected by Kirkus Reviews as a best book of the year. Her most recent titles include House of Shadows and Black Dog.

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    Reviews for Land of the Burning Sands

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    • 4/5
      The griffins are in the background as the action moves east of the mountains in this second book. The griffins' agreed-upon seizure of a northern town gives geas-slave Geraint, a powerful maker, the opportunity to escape his cruel master. Geraint makes an appealing viewpoint character, as he tries to make his way in the world as a free man. The other viewpoint character is his benefactor's daughter, herself a powerful maker, engineer, and natural philosopher. Their story would be absorbing enough, but the last cold mage intervenes because there is trouble in the north.Could be read alone, but even richer if you've read the first.
    • 4/5
      For a day, a night, and a day slave Gereint hide in the two story deep basement while the desert claimed the newly abandoned city of Melentser, hoping to lose the geas connection he felt to his master. On the second night Gereint sat in the broken sandy city and watched the sun set. As he did, he saw the bright griffins fly over him. Feeling no pull on his geas, Gereint heads North East, opposite of the other refugees and his master. Only to fall under geas to another man and see more griffins fly by.We start off with a whole new story. We follow Gereint through his journey after the destruction of Melentser. We learn more of his life, how he fell into the trap of slavery of the geas. But most of all, we learn of the person Gereint is. I started to understand more of the country Calmantium. If you read the first book, you will remember this is the country where the Griffins first resided, and now have come home.Through the book you get the feel for how the people and Cold Mage are apposed to the griffins. In more than just dislike. Their is a deeper feeling that these two different magics don't mix very well, and this is shown to you through the acts and feelings of the characters. I learned more of the Cold Mage and of the Makers that are from Calmantium.This book struck me as it could be read on its own, not having to have read the first book in the trilogy since we are placed in Calmantium instead of Feierabiand and the story doesn't revolve majorly on the happenings of the first book. I felt this book was a story of its own. We do start to touch on the happenings in Lord of Changing Winds around page 72, but remember the people of Calmantium really don't know what happened in Feierabiand, and what you need to know for this story is given to you.I didn't interact much with the griffins in this read. They are a constant and are visual through the book. But not much interaction between the characters and griffins until close to the end of the book. In this way there is some suspense built to wonder what they are doing and what will happen.Along with the griffins there is a few characters who come back in this one. The one main character, which I enjoyed in Lord of the Changing Winds, was Lord Bertaud. And we have many new characters. I came to enjoy these new characters very much by the end of the book.In all I enjoyed this read and will look for the third book of this trilogy. A wonderful classic fantasy style with a new element...griffins.
    • 4/5
      Land of the Burning Sands is the second book in Rachel Neumeier's new Griffin Mage Trilogy. Sophomore books are hard. You've written the first book, and now the freshness and newness of your stuff as a writer is gone. You have to come up with a second act, and have something new to say, and, worse improve on your previous book. If you are writing a series, especially a trilogy, and your sophomore book is the *middle* book in the trilogy, that is really putting yourself behind the eight ball. Even high class writers have trouble with middle books in trilogies. Still, given the promise of the first book (Lord of the Changing Winds), I picked up this book with the hope that Neumeier would be able to carry the story and world forward well enough, even given the disadvantages and problems outlined above. I need not have worried. Land of the Burning Sands takes place, temporally, not long after the battle at the end of Lord of the Changing Winds. The focus, however, is no longer on Feiebriand, but rather on Casmantium, the antagonists of the first novel. We are introduced to Gereint, whose crime has made him a magically bound servant, and who has the opportunity to take advantage of the triumph of the Griffins in book one to work his way toward freedom. Along the way, he meets allies, a romantic interest (who is far more than just an ornament for the hero), and surprisingly, not as many Griffins as the first book... But that last part is all right. This book is something different than the first. Rather than focusing on Kes and Kairaithin (the latter appears, but only in the climax of the book), this book focuses on Gereint, the Amnachurdan family, and Beguchren, the (now) last real cold mage left in the entire kingdom. We also see Lord Bertaud from Feiebriand, and the Arobern, but otherwise there is no overlap between the two books in terms of character scope. This second novel is a book that focuses tightly on these characters, as they react to the consequences of the battle of the first novel, and the Griffins desire to punish Casmantium by taking excessive advantage of their victory. Advantage enough to possibly destroy the kingdom entirely, or change it beyond recognition forever. Without the problems of logistics and battles that I had in the first novel, many of the weaknesses that I found in the first novel simply are not an issue in this second book. This novel plays to Neumeier's strengths in a stronger way than the first novel did, although I don't think that this novel is really readable without reading the first. We get to see more and new magic, and like the first book, learn that when people in Neumeier's fantasy world come to terms with burgeoning magical power, they can literally move mountains. And characterization, a strength of the first novel, here, helps humanize and personalize the antagonists of the first novel, and puts them front and center as real human beings with their own concerns and problems. We learn just why the relations with Griffins are so strained, providing a dose of complexity to the relationship between the earth aspected humans and the air and fire oriented griffins. I loved it. Neumeier has reduced and eroded my concerns about the first novel, broadened and filled in her world, and made me excited to see the conclusion to this unique trilogy. I will definitely buy and read the third novel in this series. As for you, I suspect that if you read and enjoyed the first novel, you have already picked this up for your to-read pile. If you have not, I recommend reading Lord of the Changing Winds, first, to provide better context and impact for the events in this second Griffin Mage novel.
    • 4/5
      The Griffin Mage Trilogy is about magic, politics, loyalty and griffins. It has excellent worldbuilding, lovely writing and characters I immediately cared about. Each book in the trilogy has different protagonists (which I was not expecting from a trilogy published in one volume!) and moreover, protagonists who are different ages, have different abilities and come from different places.So I was surprised by how tightly connected these stories actually are.Land of the Burning Sands takes place immediately after the events of Lord of the Changing Winds - in Casmantium, which is an interesting shift after seeing Casmantium as the enemy of the griffins and Feierabiand. Gereint, a middle-aged geas-bound prisoner with a gift for making and an interest in philosophy, takes advantage of the expanding desert to escape a cruel master.I found this one the most compelling in the trilogy, because Gereint’s new-found freedom is so precarious and the personal stakes are so high. He also presents an interesting challenge to his new friends: Is breaking the law to help him the right thing to do?And I loved Tehre. Tehre stayed up a long time, sketching by candlelight. She found griffins creeping into her sketches, flying above and through and blow the cliffs and chasms and bridges that flowed out of her quill. The fierceness of the mountains she drew and the fierceness of the giffins informed each other, so that sometimes when she meant to draw a jagged cliff she instead found herself tracing the savage line of a beak or the clean-edged sweep of a wing or the taut curve of muscle beneath a lion’s pelt.