Review: A Story Built On Sand
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 26, 2014
Rush used to be a sand diver. What is that? I'm still not terribly clear on that, but then again, I haven't read Hugh Howe's SAND yet, so I was kind of flying blind through this novelette. Whatever it is, Rush used to be pretty darned good at it before his son died and his marriage all but fell apart. Nowadays he pretty much pushes a mop in a brothel, but one day an unsavory gentleman shows up and solicits his services for one more job. Now there's a setup that's easy enough for a genre mutt like me to get behind, and Tim Ward does a fine job in putting Rush on display for the reader, as he tries to do right by his family--what's left of it--and manage to hang on to what integrity he has left amid a world that seems to be pretty shy on such qualities.It is a brisk slice of action with an emotional core that feels genuine rather than tacked on. And with the familiar setup in another writer's world, Tim Ward made "Scavenger" all his own. An adequate enticement to read Howey's novel and a promising sign that I should keep a look out for Tim's work in the future, too.