Cast in Sand

Atlas: Shattered Vessels

By: Dustin Porta

Narrated by: Rocky Taylor

Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

On a failed expedition to the heart of an ancient space station, Edwina wakes in a land of fierce warriors and drifting sands, in a mechanical body that is not her own. With no memory of why or how many bodies have come before this, one thing is clear: She’s trapped, and time is running out.

An ancient citadel looms over the barren land, and a cruel sultan rules the scattered people. Edwina finds a new body - one real enough to feel human and strong enough to challenge the sultan. But the android body comes with human weaknesses, and like the others, it has a mind of its own.

When her allies begin to quarrel, Edwina must find a way to make empathy and hatred work together. To do that, she may just have to listen to what the android is telling her.

This is Station Atlas, where the fall of humanity is long-forgotten, where history becomes fantasy, science becomes magic, and basic survival is high adventure in a strange, fragile world.

©2017 Dustin Porta (P)2020 Dustin Porta

This tale could easily be the first in a series

Beautifully narrated and set in a mysterious, yet still familiar background, Cast in Sand delivers a well written and unique story. I found myself drawn to the twists and turns along with all the different possible directions the story could go. This first book has the feel of introducing the listener to the world of Atlas, defining the rules of the universe, and delivering multiple unknown mysteries that can (and I hope will) be explored in subsequent books. All this, while delivering an interesting story and revealing important tidbits of Atlas' history and people. This is an interesting listen and worth a credit.

Love this narrator!

Good story. I’ve got to say, the audiobook narrator really did it for me- great storytelling and voices! I hope there are more to come!

Smashing, Riveting, and Surprising

I took this book up after a friend recommended me a fiction book as I exclusively read non-fiction.

Wow! Consider me a convert if other fiction is like this. The whole time I kept thinking I was so smart and I could guess where the story was going... nope!
The voice /writing style of the author or narrator is fantastic -- they kept me engaged like I was reading a Malcolm Gladwell or Nassim Taleb nonfiftion book. Cheers!

Entertaining Story

An entertaining story. The characters are fun and interesting and fully developed.
The interaction of human, robot, and various cultures kept me involved until the end.
My only disappointment was when it ended. I wanted more.

Fun little story with great narration.

The narrator is magnificent. The story is engaging, creative and subverted my expectations. The symbolism of the main characters predicament and the hunt to find life’s meaning in the materialistic late capitalist existence of the 21st century is not lost on this reader. I’m going to set this screen down to go stare at another one. Send help.

great narrator!

great narrator! love the different character voices, especially all of the royalty, thanks for the fun listen!

listened straight thru

jumped right in never let up(i may still have a few questions about the story). but good job. would like a before and a after book.


i got a free copy of this book.

Scifi with gorgeous worldbuilding

The strength of this book is definitely the worldbuilding! It's a gorgeous, intricate, and mysterious set of societies on a far future space station that we don't know much about. Information about this world and future is doled out in small bits, and there's always surprises popping up that make everything richer. I absolutely loved the moment when I was able to put the cover illustration together with what was happening in the book.

Where I struggled, though, was connecting with the characters--in particular, the main character. Edwina is cold, distant, and comes across as non-empathetic to those around her. Maybe it's a symptom of her strange robot-body-hopping condition, but I just found I couldn't connect with her because of it. The body hopping compounds this, switching out the characters she interacts with so that it takes a while for all the threads of the story to build. The first 1/3 of the book is very slow, with everything happening to a mostly helpless Edwina vs her actually doing anything on her own. It does pick up a bit after that, but not much.

The narration was great, and I think the narrator did a good job of portraying the feel of the character and world.

Again, the strength here is in the worldbuilding. The world almost is a character in itself--if you love strange and beautiful worlds, you will probably like this book! But, if you read more for character interactions, this might not be your jam.

I was given a free review copy of this book at my request and voluntarily left this review.

Abstract story line

The context of the story line is very abstract and unique.
Without giving any plot away it was a very interesting listen.
I'm looking forward to the next installment.

I received this audio book for free in exchange for an unbiased review.

Great

A great cast of characters and storyline. The author was very descriptive in her writing which I really appreciated. It was easy to picture what was happening. Definitely enjoyable to listen to and kept my interest.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.