Summer Reading Project, BookLikes Satellite

Maha Akhtar’s Footprints in the Desert had so much potential. T.E. Lawrence makes an appearance and blows up trains and tracks. The Ottoman Empire is fighting against Faisal ibn Hussein‘s Arab Revolt. The main characters are on the run from Ottoman agents in Cairo. What’s not to like? In all honesty, this book has only its setting to recommend itself. The characters were, if not outright caricatures, shallow and one-dimensional. The dialog is dreadful. The pacing is all over the place. Most of the protagonists have miraculous escapes (except when a minor character is sacrificed to make the story more believable). I’m sure the only reasons I finished this book were the fact that I was tired after a week of library conferencing and trapped on a plane for a couple of hours. I didn’t have many brain cells to spare for anything better...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.