Sandstorm

Sandstorm is the first Sigma Force novel from James Rollins, published in 2004 and launching the long running thriller series that would become his most successful franchise. The premise is built around the discovery of a strange meteorite at the British Museum in London. When a fire breaks out in the museum’s Kensington gallery, the meteorite explodes with such force that it kills several people and destroys substantial portions of the building. The investigation that follows turns up evidence that the meteorite is connected to the legendary lost city of Ubar, the ancient Arabian metropolis sometimes called the Atlantis of the sands, which was supposedly destroyed by divine wrath in the centuries before Islam.

The response to the discovery brings together the original Sigma Force team. Painter Crowe, the head of the covert DARPA unit. Painter is teamed with the British heiress Lady Kara Kensington and her American friend Safia al Maaz, the museum curator whose research on Ubar had been continuing in obscurity until the explosion forced everyone to take her work seriously. The novel follows the team across the Saudi Arabian desert as they search for the actual location of Ubar and confront the various factions who want to control whatever ancient power the city’s ruins might still hold.

Rollins established the Sigma Force formula in this opening volume, with the elements that would become reliable across the series. The historical or archaeological mystery as the central hook. The covert DARPA scientific commando unit as the protagonist team. The action sequences that move at thriller pace through exotic global locations. The villains drawn from secret societies, ancient cults, or rogue factions of legitimate organizations. And the documented sources at the end of each book that show where the speculation begins and ends.

For readers who came to the Sigma Force series later in its run, Sandstorm offers the chance to see how Rollins set up the universe that would later expand to include Gray Pierce, Kowalski, Seichan, and the other team members of the contemporary entries. For new readers, this is the natural starting point for what has become one of the more dependable franchises in modern thriller fiction.