The book gods have been kind to me lately, and Race the Sands by Sarah Beth Durst is no exception. It’s a strong, fast-paced fantasy standalone about two women involved in the world’s most dangerous competition (monster racing!!) who unwittingly get involved in imperial and religious intrigues while they try to take top prize. It’s a classic sports underdog narrative that morphs seamlessly into a burn-the-whole-world-down-to-save-it story. I found the combination of fantasy sports and more typical geopolitical fantasy machinations to be quite fun.

In the desert country of Becar, one of the most popular sports is kehok racing. Kehoks are basically bloodthirsty chimera nightmares who were human in a previous life but did such horrible things that they have been reborn as monsters, and will be reborn as monsters forever (more on this later). Every kehok racing team includes a kehok (known as a racer), the person who rides them (the rider), and a trainer who teaches the rider how to control the racer without getting killed.

The book follows Tamra, a former kehok rider-turned-trainer who is desperate for cash after a string of mistakes and misfortunes that have left her reputation in shambles; and Raia, a young woman who has run away from her truly awful parents and scary fiancé and plans on using whatever prize money she can get from the races to buy her freedom from her family. Tamra agrees to become Raia’s trainer, hoping they can win enough races to meet their various financial obligations.

Tamra and Raia were both excellent characters. Tamra is an iron-willed survivor who has seen her youthful success dry up, but remains unbent. She clearly loves kehok racing partially because it is so terrifying and dangerous, and she is unashamedly interested in the glory that comes with being a kehok-racing champion. She does not suffer fools, and most of the fools around her are men; watching her take down ego-tripping dudes left and right was delightful.

Tamra’s primary motivator throughout the book is her daughter, Shalla. Shalla is training to become an Augur, a priest-like figure who can “read” souls. If Tamra cannot pay her tuition, the Augurs will take Shalla away to live in the temple. (Because children tearfully separated from their parents make suuuuuch better students, right??)

Tamra is steely and can even seem merciless at times, but she has a strong core of integrity. While many kehok trainers and riders control their kehoks through violence, Tamra does not allow her students to do this. She tells them,

‘”The ability to show kindness and mercy to those who do not deserve it is a strength! And that strength will give you an edge in the races.”

I loved Tamra because she was one of the most multidimensional portrayals of a maternal character I have seen in fiction. The book does a great job showcasing that she is both a hard-edged, blunt person and an incredibly loving and nurturing figure for both Shalla, her daughter, and Raia, who she adopts during the book.

I think there’s frequently an idea (in fiction and otherwise) that women who are really ferocious, ambitious, and cold-seeming in professional situations or otherwise must also be that way as mothers, when nothing could be further from the truth. Conversely, warmer mother characters in fiction are often portrayed as unidimensionally nurturing and stereotypically “maternal” at all times, regardless of context. Race the Sands allows Tamra to be multifaceted; being a loving mother is important to her, but it’s not the only thing that is important to her, and being gentle and affirming is not a big part of her day-to-day personality outside of her interactions with Shalla and sometimes Raia.

Raia has what feels like a more typical fantasy heroine arc as she grows from a timid young woman who only wants to run away to a purposeful champion who wants to actively make the world a better and more just place. While Tamra really stole the show for me, I did still enjoy seeing Raia blossom throughout the story. It was also very satisfying to see her set boundaries with her horrible gaslighting parents and fiancé and get the emotional support she always craved from her natal family from Tamra and Shalla. The chosen family aspect of this book made me feel many soft and tender feelings in my heart.

The secondary characters were also a strength. Most notable among these is Tamra’s patron, the noble Lady Evara, who at first seems like a fickle and vapid aristocrat but is revealed to be razor-sharp and a genuine ally. She also has the best dialogue of any character in the book. When Tamra first comes to her to request additional funds to purchase a new kehok, she says:

“You want. Isn’t that why you always come? Your wants. Your needs. Your dreams. But does anyone ever ask what I want and need?”

Oh, spectacular. It’s going to be one of those visits. “What do you want and need?” Tamra asked dutifully, though what she really wanted to ask was how could Lady Evara need anything, living in such splendor? Her every whim was catered to. She’d never known true need. Maybe want, though. Even the rich had wants.

“Absolutely nothing. All my dreams have been fulfilled.”

I’m cackling.

Tamra and Raia’s sports story takes place against a backdrop of mounting country-wide chaos in the land of Becar. The whole empire is a powder keg because the new emperor can’t be crowned until his predecessor’s “vessel” is found and appropriately honored (the vessel being whatever animal form the previous emperor has been reincarnated into). The previous emperor’s vessel can only be identified by an augur. The augurs of the empire cannot find the vessel, so nothing can get done, so unrest is building.

I realize this sounds like a LOT going on, plot-wise. However, the two disparate plot threads end up joining and flowing together beautifully. I never felt lost. In fact, in the first third or so of this book, I remember thinking that the major twist was pretty obvious. As I kept reading, it became clear that what I thought was supposed to be a twist wasn’t actually intended to be a twist at all, and I did end up being genuinely surprised by some of the late-game reveals. The combination of sports action and more tense suspense related to the intrigues of the emperor’s court kept me fully engaged throughout the book.

In the end, there’s very little I would change about Race the Sands. The plot was tight, the pacing was on point, the action sequences were exciting, and I was invested in the characters and their relationships.

The one thing I wanted more of was a slightly wider lens on the world. This may seem like a strange critique, given that the plot ultimately centers on the fate of an empire and there are about 10 different POV characters in the book (though most of the book is from Tamra and Raia’s perspectives). However, the action and plot end up having a pretty tight focus on a narrow set of circumstances, while I wanted there to be a little more exploration of the implications of the reincarnation system.

In this world, all beings are reborn as different animals based on their deeds in their immediately preceding life. But kehoks are doomed to be reborn as kehoks forever and ever no matter what. Except, each year, whichever kehok is part of the champion rider-racer team in the Becaran Races gets ritually killed using magic in such a way that they are reborn as a human.

The cosmology of this world takes for granted that most beings can progress or regress through reincarnation. I did not feel that the book fully explored what it means within the context of this cosmology that people can essentially screw up so badly that they lose the chance to ever progress again, which seems rather extreme. I found myself being distracted by a certain amount of sympathy for the kehoks as they were beaten, hunted, and abused as part of a sport, even though we are told and shown repeatedly that their fundamental nature is violent. (Things are different with Tamra and Raia’s kehok for spoiler-y reasons I won’t get into, but in a way that actually made me less satisfied with the way the other kehoks were handled).

For a book that otherwise deftly explores what it means to live a moral life under all of our everyday constraints, I did find it a little strange that no character ever considered that regardless of one’s evil deeds during one lifetime, eternal suffering with no chance of reprieve might not be a just punishment, and there might be some kind of moral imperative to use the ritual magic to free other kehoks in addition to the annual winner. (Frankly, it was also not clear exactly why Becarans decided that the winning kehok gets to become human, given that they are purportedly meant to be subject to eternal punishment for some kind of irredeemable evil).

Basically, I felt that the implications of the major premises of this world were spun out about 90% of the way to their logical conclusion instead of 100%.

My only other very minor critique that while I enjoyed the way Tamra was portrayed as a mother, I found Shalla, her daughter, to be a slightly too preternaturally poised and wise in a way that was a little bit plot moppet-y. However, I would say that a solid 85% of all child characters annoy me, so that might be on me.

I want to flag a couple of things that are not critique of the book but may inform your choice to read or not. First, there is very little in the way of romance. There are two teensy weensy itty bitty romantic-ish subplots and one of them ends tragically, so don’t go into this book looking for anything in the way of sweeping passion.

I also want to flag that there’s a fair amount of violence in this book. It’s mostly monster-on-person and person-on-monster and it’s not described in overly graphic detail, but if you are on the squeamish side, it may be too much.

Critiques aside, I still loved this book. I found the premise intriguing and the world-building richly rendered. I loved the characters and relationships. The plot was tight and the emotional beats hit hard. If you love unusual heroines, sports narratives, explorations of morality, monster stories, and/or standalone fantasy novels, this book has something for you.