The Riddle of the Sands by Geoffrey Knight
Title: The Riddle of the Sands 
Author: Geoffrey Knight
Publisher: Cleis Press
Length: Novel / 250 pages
Buy the book: Cleis | Powells
Blurb:
Hot gay tomb raiders!
Blackmailed by Jake’s nemesis–the vengeful Pierre Perron–Professor Fathom’s team of gay adventure-hunters is sent on a seemingly impossible mission. Will they uncover the legendary Riddle of the Sands in time to save one of their own from a rare and deadly poison? Is the Riddle a myth, a mirage, or the greatest engineering feat in the history of ancient Egypt?
Review:
Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether you like a book because it nudges up against your own particular ticklespot, or whether it’s genuinely a great read.
And sometimes you can like a book because it’s both.
Hands up, everyone who loved the Hardy Boys but wished they’d just come out of the closet already and admit they were after anything in trousers? Fabulous. Now, do I have the book for you: Riddle of the Sands, by Geoffrey Knight.
A race against time! A lost pyramid! A dead gay hero! Seven live gay heroes! Explosions! Hot sex and archeology! Reader, I loved it.
In fact, I devoured it, sitting and reading all the night through instead of preparing a budget presentation for work, but let this be a lesson to you all: choose your evening reads carefully.
Professor Fathom and his team of gay adventurers must race against the clock to find evidence of the Lost Pyramid of Imhotep, itself a forbidden legend whose every reference has been erased by order of the Egyptian government. The reason? The pyramid was in fact not Imhotep’s at all, but built by his gay son as an eternal resting place for him and his gay lover. According to surviving accounts, the pyramid disappears in a brisk wind (as you do) and that right there is the riddle of the sands.
Oh, just as a sidenote, the Professor’s team must provide the location of the pyramid to an escaped evil genius in five days or (preferably) less, or their youngest member, eighteen-year-old Sam, will die of the deadly and incredibly rare poison he’s been injected with, while he was kidnapped by the aforementioned evil genius.
Ready?
On your marks, get set, go.
It’s a romp. A highly sexed, thrills ‘n danger romp of the very kind I used to read under the covers with a flashlight. The team are all rugged and virile, and Will Hunter especially–
Oh no, no, they all have those kinds of names. It’s part of the convention. Will Hunter! Jake Houston! My hand to God: Shane.
Anyway, Will Hunter especially is a plucky little manwhore who never lets an opportunity to elicit valuable clues pass him by, and all the better if those clues come shooting out of someone’s throbbing cock. He is not a choosy lad.
Oh it’s fun. Think Indiana Johnson and the Dildo of Doom. They globetrot, they investigate, they fuck anything that’s longer than it’s wide and there’s the lovely romantic story of Imhotep’s poor doomed son and the lover his father stabbed in front of his eyes. Bad parenting for the win.
I had a blast. The writing is clean and calls absolutely no attention to itself, the heroes do what they are advertised as doing, mainly be all lantern-jawed and run around getting drugged and kidnapped and menaced by scrotum-targeting spikes and escaping and wiping a manly tear away and running around some more. And there are condoms, praise all that is holy in the ‘verse. Thank you, Mr. Knight.
(Okay yes, that last bit’s just my own personal bugaboo).
The plot has several intertwining strands, and the author manages to weave them together very well. The villains all cackle madly, and things explode at very opportune times, and there are hilarious little references to other detective fictions and I am so screwed for my presentation tomorrow because I stayed up all night reading this book.
It was totally worth it.
Posted in 5 stars, Action Adventure, Erotica, Fiction, Gay, Ratings, Reviews
I just got this from Tam. Looks like I need to plan wisely before starting it…
Oh yeah. I just could not put it down. And now I have to scour ebay for the first volume. All bad.
Great review. I ended up giving this 3.5 when I reviewed it because while I loved it… I never got to know any of the characters, which really frustrated me. It felt like I opened the book in the middle of a series and everything is established in a prior book. I think I’m too anal about series to pick one up like this in the middle.
That issue aside, the entire romp is hilarious, sexy, and absolutely tons of fun. Naked Tomb Raiders – total win.
I do agree that there were things that had obviously been established in the prior book, but for once, I felt like this was a series where picking up in the middle didn’t leave me all that adrift. And for me, the characters were delineated just the right amount. When someone’s chasing a dude across a continent with a blowpipe and deadly darts, I don’t want to stop and have an angst break with the man, I just want to know if he’s going to get away. And I really liked the Jake/Sam vibe.
Great book. Apparently there’s a sequel in the works and it is not yet here and that is making me gnaw things rar.
Did you read the first one? That helps set up who everyone is. But it’s hard to get so I have it going around (aka Chris and beyond).
Okay, your review made me laugh out loud in my office. Your paragraph about the Dildo of Doom killed me. I’ll give you a cookie for your funny today.
For some reason though I got to the part where Will’s father showed up and stalled out. I think I just knew how bad it was going to be and I hate to disillusion everyone, but diplomats, even American ones, do not make tons of money. Trust me on this, I’ve been one of those people with diplomatic plates on my car abroad and while I’ve worked with some assholes in my day, there were NONE close to that level. LOL but I suppose it’s like anything, when a character in your line of work is portrayed so “out there” it makes you batty, if he’d been a Dr. doing something out of character for Dr’s I likely wouldn’t have minded.
You just can’t take these books too seriously (no one ever ends up with scars despite stabbings, shootings, beatings), but it’s fun. I didn’t find there was tons of smexin’ in this one. Not once they got going anyway. Lots of nekkidness though.
I didn’t read the first one, no! I just grabbed this one, went, “Yes, please!” and then it was the next day. So I’m scouring ebay.
And yay for laughing out loud in your office! Offices need more laughter. Thank you for the cookie!
I totally did not think about the diplomat/money issue. I did have a little lurch of Oh No when it happened, because that first meeting of the two is kind of raw and painful, but then everyone started getting mightily imperiled, so there wasn’t a lot of time to think about family dynamics.
There was just enough smex for me here. I mean, it wasn’t a smex plot. There was an awful lot of running around and trying not to get killed, and I thought it worked to have sort of GO GO GO GO DODGE WEAVE JUMP GO GO and….SEXYTIMES BREAK…OMG! GO GO GO DODGE!
I really liked the pacing.
But yeah. No scars. Perfect abs for everyone. Honking big dongs. Heavily muscled everything. But that’s just the kind of book it is.
You really should try and read the first, it’s a shame that it’s not easily available anymore. I got mine from Book Depsitory I think. That one really explains who everyone was and Jake was a new addition to the team in the first book, before that it was just the 4 guys and you get more of their story so it makes more sense in the second.
There was enough smexin for me, but I think your description of the pace is accurate. Non-stop action.
I adored this book!!
I’m about to start reading Fathom’s Five… (Thanks, Tam!)
I love, love this series because it’s sheer escapism. I knew that it was a series so I read Fathom’s Five before this one, which set up the characters perfectly and gave readers a chapter on each of them.
Great job on the review. I can’t wait for the next book in the series which should be out anytime now, if it’s not out already.
Reading your review just made me push this to the top of the To Read list. It’s waiting there on the shelf, beckoning me! I had a few fairly minor issues with the first one, but it was so much fun it made up for any quibbles.
Oh and as an aside, that yumy cover is a vast improvement over the one on Fathom’s Five!
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