RACE THE SANDS is Sarah Beth Durst's 20th book and perhaps her best yet. It's a lovely fantasy in which women prove their strength not physically, but through mental exertions.

Tamra and Raia each have escaped a tortured childhood in the desert kingdom of Becar and end up working with kehoks, monsters born with the souls of depraved humans who didn't deserve to come back in a human or animal body. Once reborn as a kehok, they are destined to be reborn as kehoks forevermore. It's eternal damnation. These monsters don't respond to love or kindness. They want to kill and maim and destroy everything because of their monstrosity.

"RACE THE SANDS is Sarah Beth Durst's 20th book and perhaps her best yet. It's a lovely fantasy in which women prove their strength not physically, but through mental exertions.... You will savor it while feverishly turning the pages to find out how it all ends."

Tamra, a former elite kehok rider, is desperate to find a kehok to train, along with a rider to race the kehok in Becar's national races and win. It's the only way she will be able to continue paying her daughter's tuition at the school for augurs. Augurs are elite citizens, and the only ones who can read your soul (aura) and tell you what you will be in the next life. It's all about life, death and rebirth. And the augurs control it all in Becar, where the emperor, Zarin, has died. His younger brother, Prince Dar, cannot be coronated until his soul has been located in its new vessel and protected. But the augurs cannot find Zarin in whatever new body he was reborn into, and time is running out. The neighboring country is amassing troops to invade, and important decisions cannot be made until there is a ruler.

Raia is running from unloving parents and an unwanted engagement to a man who killed his first wife. She is determined to make her way in the world, and if she can ride a kehok and succeed, so be it. What no one expects is how the newborn kehok that Tamra buys, an apparently unmanageable killer, reacts to Raia, and what happens when they begin to race together.

Tamra is an unusual main character. She is not beautiful, but rather scarred and determined. She is a wonderful mother, yet far from perfect. What she does have is an inner kindness and humanity. While other kehok trainers beat and starve their animals into submission, Tamra controls them with her mind, while treating them humanely. She is so powerful that she can control several kehoks using just her thoughts. Strong women in this book show the men in it that physical strength isn't always most important.

Durst forces us to question the status quo about religion and government. She opens our eyes to the corrupting forces that both power and money can bring. She makes us realize that no one is better than anyone else because of their position or their title. And those who would preserve their power at the expense of the freedom of others are monsters.

While kehoks are monsters, they are straightforward monsters. You know by looking at them what they are. Human monsters are a different animal. They walk among us, look like us and often have power over us, but underneath their human disguise, they are as ugly and venal as any kehok.

RACE THE SANDS will grab you and not let go. While the first few chapters move slowly because Durst is building the background and the world of Becar, the pace picks up to the point where you can’t put the book down. You will savor it while feverishly turning the pages to find out how it all ends. I actually reread it immediately, looking for and enjoying my favorite parts. The characters and their world will linger in your mind long after you have finished the story. It's a perfect book --- powerful, thoughtful, heartbreaking and impactful.