Stumbled onto this small work on a back shelf and bought it for a quick read 15 years ago. I have never stopped thinking about it. It is the personal journal of a young romantic on a personal quest seeking a rumored city lost in the desert of Morocco. The danger, pain and ultimate loss of his life to illness far from home is punctuated by his momentary view of the ruins, which to the true romantic, overshadowed all else. You can put yourself in his place on every page and feel his pain and exhiliration. The book is testimony to his brother who followed his trail to find the truth after his failure to return, and found the journal with the nuns who nursed him till his death. It is truly a gem in the travel book genre.

An amazingly real account from the journals. Steeped in the romantic tradition of solo travel, the account begins in hope and ends in the still silence of illness where no words can be written, though the flicker of hope undoubtedly held on in this man's breast till the end. It is as honest and immediate account of a personal adventure of great risk and pain as can be found in the twentieth century. All travelers should read and admire.... though none should follow.

Ted Edwards is one of the last great adventurers, as his experience shows in full detail. Armed with a love for life and what he hoped to be sufficient supplies, he set out across the Sahara, deepening his already-full respect for the desert and its inhabitants (whether they be scorpions, nomads, or camels). His is a fantastic story, which will bring any reader's yearning for exploration to the surface! I recommend it to anyone who has a zest for truly living.

Everything you read in the other reviews about cliches, stereotypes, and a hoaky storyline is true. Believe me. The first three chapters are horrible. I only kept reading because I kept hoping it would get better. And amazingly enough, it did! Not that the characters got more three-dimensional, no, I just got completely absorbed in the story. Once Ball's caught you, it's getting harder to notice the shortcomings of this book. Maybe it's because it's so simple: You've got your three or four evil characters, you're rooting for Moussa to win and for Paul to come to his senses again, and everything is set in faraway lands... you could easily make this book a successful Hollywood motion picture. The formula is there. All in all, if you look for a book with deep moral struggles or an excellent, believable plot, look elsewhere. But if you have a few hours left and want to fill your mind with pictures of exotic places and people, read the book. It reminded me of the wonderful adventure stories of my childhood and left me wishing for more.

David Ball's book Empires of Sand was a great read. I picked it up one day and read it straight through to the next because I couldn't put it down. It's extremely descriptive, and I've felt like I myself have journeyed to the Sahara Desert because of Ball's extraordinary description. The book starts out with two couts Moussa and Paul DeVries. The time is the early 1870's, and the French and Prussians are in war. The boy Moussa is both French and African, and gets taunted by many during the book. Moussa's uncle, Jules and his wife Elizabeth, and his other wife Serena are all forced to take actions that will separate the boys for 10 years, until they meet again in the dangerous and yet beautiful Sahara Desert. This book is about love, adventure, despair, and betrayal and I would recommend it to anyone.

Okay, so there's some predictability, but David Ball has written a novel so completely fun and absorbing that one simply doesn't care. From 1870's Paris to the limitless expanse of the Sahara, Ball takes the reader on a remarkable journey that is truly extraordinary.

The novels main characters, cousins Moussa and Paul DeVries, battle invading Prussians, corrupt clergy, treacherous relatives, and merciless bedouins in an attempt to establish lives separate from the tragedy of their youth within the French nobility. Moussa, his father a French count and his mother a Taureg noblewoman of the Sahara, is forced to flee Paris for Africa with his family. His cousin Paul is left behind with his own ghosts to exorcise. The two find each other again years later caught in the confrontations endemic to the European colonization of Africa. What ensues is a purely spellbinding tale of love and hate, life and death, beauty and utter ugliness.

Empire of Sands is an excellent novel. I thought of it often between the times I was forced set it down until my next opportunity to continue. For anyone who enjoys a captivating historically-based tale they will find few books far better than this. As a huge fan of historical fiction, I give it my highest recommendation.