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Sandymancer
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 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.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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 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.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
358 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 19, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 18, 2023
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
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
April 13, 2023
People live in a shitty 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.
I read an ARC, and the description honestly sounded cool.
I would have liked this better if the characters weren’t either flat or annoying, and if the plot was more robust. The Son had been planning on how to fix the world for centuries. Why does this feel so directionless?
I read an ARC, and the description honestly sounded cool.
I would have liked this better if the characters weren’t either flat or annoying, and if the plot was more robust. The Son had been planning on how to fix the world for centuries. Why does this feel so directionless?
February 7, 2024
I picked this book up not really expecting to like it that much. In reality, I really enjoyed it.
The main character starts off quite annoying. She's a teenager, and doesn't act her age. She has an ego; she's better than the people around her and knows it. But that *works*. It works especially well in the context of her meeting and interacting with an immortal god king that's stolen the body of her best friend.
The biggest strength and weakness of this book is its characters. You spend a lot of time with the main character and the god king (Son) she's awoken. I, personally, really enjoyed their dynamic and changes. If you don't enjoy it, or don't like the characters, you won't like the book.
This book did something I wish more novels did nowadays: focused on a really small cast of characters and built logical relationships between them. The characters grow and change throughout the book, in ways that show us more about their personalities. I really appreciate that. Whenever they feel like they're settling into a rhythm, the author introduces someone else to their merry band. It was well executed.
I also really like the setting of the story. The magic is interesting, the calamities facing the world real, and the vision the author presents of this humanity is fascinating.
The main character starts off quite annoying. She's a teenager, and doesn't act her age. She has an ego; she's better than the people around her and knows it. But that *works*. It works especially well in the context of her meeting and interacting with an immortal god king that's stolen the body of her best friend.
The biggest strength and weakness of this book is its characters. You spend a lot of time with the main character and the god king (Son) she's awoken. I, personally, really enjoyed their dynamic and changes. If you don't enjoy it, or don't like the characters, you won't like the book.
This book did something I wish more novels did nowadays: focused on a really small cast of characters and built logical relationships between them. The characters grow and change throughout the book, in ways that show us more about their personalities. I really appreciate that. Whenever they feel like they're settling into a rhythm, the author introduces someone else to their merry band. It was well executed.
I also really like the setting of the story. The magic is interesting, the calamities facing the world real, and the vision the author presents of this humanity is fascinating.
Read
November 21, 2023This 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.
Not for 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.
Not for me.
June 29, 2023
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/978076...
Sanderson, (n.d). First Law. Accessed via: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sand...
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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/978076...
Sanderson, (n.d). First Law. Accessed via: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sand...
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September 22, 2025
Is this the start of a series or an exercise in dialogue?
The planet is dying a slow death. Humanity barely survives in a desert-like world that formerly was lush and green. Culture, language, society, and technology have atrophied over 800 years of neglect and massive climate change. Into this dystopia, an unlikely band of misfits set out to fix the planet. Led, by a scat farmer, the team includes the ghost of a god-king, a demonically-possessed bumpkin, a wizard with dementia, a robot made from stone, and a possibly sentient flying carpet. It sounds both fun and funny; but the actors take themselves way too seriously. Their quest is obscure, the ending is short and sudden, a tangle of plot threads are left open. What the scat?
Caralee is a scat farmer. She feeds her beasts of burden - insect-spider hybrids - human scat by hand. Her village has no name. She has no future. But she has magic. And in a fit of frustration, she wakes up the spirit of a long-dead / undead god-king who destroyed the planet a millennia ago. He is impressed with her sass and spares her life despite her pledge to kill him. They start a quest to fix the world. Why did the god-king wait this long? Who knows. The point is not to focus on the broken world or the god-king, but to watch their long dialogues.
This character-driven story is good. I cannot relate to Caralee at all. How is she so comfortable with the bogeyman of her world? If I met Krampus on Earth, I would soil myself. Caralee meets two planet killers and faces both of them down. She is not a Mary Sue and her victory is more of an escape; but the fights are well done and I enjoyed the surprise. The dialogue is difficult and at times goes on and on. The team slowly grows and has quite a few adventures. Edison is both world building and character building. What for? Will he write a sequel? I hope so.
The planet is beautifully described. Each part of the broken world is detailed and imaginative. I have not seen this type of world building since the movie What Dreams May Come. Edison brilliantly shows readers the transformation from the ancient heyday to the ruins of the modern world. The god-king recognizes each place and remembers the past. Some of it is info dumping; but a lot of it is character building. The memories of the god king with his siblings would be irrelevant except readers know all along that he killed them all. He is a monster, a complex monster, who turns into an antihero, much like Darth Vader. The background shows him, rather than dumping a lot of information at once to explain the world.
The basic plot is that they will fix the world, first the sky and then the rest. But mainly they just walk around and have one adventure after another. Some things are explained. They add new team members. They make new enemies, or frenemies. They lose companions. The novel slowed to a crawl as the fellowship had little direction. In the finale, they are not fighting a monster, they are working together. That teamwork raises a lot of questions especially about the insane, but kindly wizard; but the plot is secondary to the characters. Everything is tossed up in the air at the end. Will they continue? What will they do now? I don't expect Caralee to go back to scat farming now that she knows how to use her magical power.
Overall, it is a very original work. It is set up as part comedy, but the reality of the broken world removes most of the humor. Yes, Caralee is feeding giant bugs her poop by hand....but that is how she survives. It is funny and terrifying. Much of the book is like that. Edison also starkly transitions between the god-king's back story (the way the world was) and the present (Caralee's story). It is one of the few times that an author brilliantly blends two parallel story lines across time. I wanted more. I want more. This is one of the few books that made me laugh, cry, dream, and rage. I think I liked it.
The planet is dying a slow death. Humanity barely survives in a desert-like world that formerly was lush and green. Culture, language, society, and technology have atrophied over 800 years of neglect and massive climate change. Into this dystopia, an unlikely band of misfits set out to fix the planet. Led, by a scat farmer, the team includes the ghost of a god-king, a demonically-possessed bumpkin, a wizard with dementia, a robot made from stone, and a possibly sentient flying carpet. It sounds both fun and funny; but the actors take themselves way too seriously. Their quest is obscure, the ending is short and sudden, a tangle of plot threads are left open. What the scat?
Caralee is a scat farmer. She feeds her beasts of burden - insect-spider hybrids - human scat by hand. Her village has no name. She has no future. But she has magic. And in a fit of frustration, she wakes up the spirit of a long-dead / undead god-king who destroyed the planet a millennia ago. He is impressed with her sass and spares her life despite her pledge to kill him. They start a quest to fix the world. Why did the god-king wait this long? Who knows. The point is not to focus on the broken world or the god-king, but to watch their long dialogues.
This character-driven story is good. I cannot relate to Caralee at all. How is she so comfortable with the bogeyman of her world? If I met Krampus on Earth, I would soil myself. Caralee meets two planet killers and faces both of them down. She is not a Mary Sue and her victory is more of an escape; but the fights are well done and I enjoyed the surprise. The dialogue is difficult and at times goes on and on. The team slowly grows and has quite a few adventures. Edison is both world building and character building. What for? Will he write a sequel? I hope so.
The planet is beautifully described. Each part of the broken world is detailed and imaginative. I have not seen this type of world building since the movie What Dreams May Come. Edison brilliantly shows readers the transformation from the ancient heyday to the ruins of the modern world. The god-king recognizes each place and remembers the past. Some of it is info dumping; but a lot of it is character building. The memories of the god king with his siblings would be irrelevant except readers know all along that he killed them all. He is a monster, a complex monster, who turns into an antihero, much like Darth Vader. The background shows him, rather than dumping a lot of information at once to explain the world.
The basic plot is that they will fix the world, first the sky and then the rest. But mainly they just walk around and have one adventure after another. Some things are explained. They add new team members. They make new enemies, or frenemies. They lose companions. The novel slowed to a crawl as the fellowship had little direction. In the finale, they are not fighting a monster, they are working together. That teamwork raises a lot of questions especially about the insane, but kindly wizard; but the plot is secondary to the characters. Everything is tossed up in the air at the end. Will they continue? What will they do now? I don't expect Caralee to go back to scat farming now that she knows how to use her magical power.
Overall, it is a very original work. It is set up as part comedy, but the reality of the broken world removes most of the humor. Yes, Caralee is feeding giant bugs her poop by hand....but that is how she survives. It is funny and terrifying. Much of the book is like that. Edison also starkly transitions between the god-king's back story (the way the world was) and the present (Caralee's story). It is one of the few times that an author brilliantly blends two parallel story lines across time. I wanted more. I want more. This is one of the few books that made me laugh, cry, dream, and rage. I think I liked it.
September 14, 2023
NEW DAVID EDISON NEW DAVID EDISON NEW DAVID EDISON I AM SHRIEKING!!!
Review
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.
Review
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.
September 16, 2023
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.
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.
September 15, 2023
**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.
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.
April 17, 2023
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!!
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!!
May 31, 2023
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.
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.
September 18, 2023
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
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
October 14, 2023
!!! So readable, perfect read. Main character is a powerful little girl that's on a hero's journey after accidentally summoning an evil god king from the sands, and impressing him enough that she doesn't immediately die. Think Tiffany Aching from Pratchett meets the big bad guy from Mistborn and you'll get the idea of it.
April 10, 2024
The book's comparison to a Miyazaki movie is accurate, I think. It's wild and rather zany at times, and still has a surprising amount of heart. Though definitely not perfect - the characters could use a lot of work, I think - it's still an enjoyable time.
July 29, 2025
Ehh. To be honest I kept waiting for there to be more THERE there. The main character Caralee was irritating and undeservingly powerful. I could glimpse some interesting world-building elements, but overall I just can't rate it higher. Too bad, as I had had high hopes for it.
September 27, 2023
2.5 / 5 stars.
December 21, 2023
Imagine Freeform and PBS had a child inside of the sketchy backroom of Blockbuster. That's this book.
January 1, 2024
Last book of the year!
April 6, 2024
Okay this is just silly...
January 2, 2025
Fascinating read.
I am a fantasy lover and this one was great.
I am a fantasy lover and this one was great.
April 9, 2025
An unwieldy, off-kilter smorgasbord of fascinating ideas and inventive concepts. If science fiction is candy, this book is a sugar rush. Mileage may vary, even from chapter to chapter.
August 29, 2025
They didn't even beat the devil with song!
August 10, 2023
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.
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