The Sands of Argurumal by S.J. Sanders

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With the expectation of a three-year pregnancy, Terri assumed that she had all the time in the world before she had to face the realities of upcoming motherhood. Time for adventures, travel, and working side by side with her mate. She had been particularly looking forward to the latter now that Veral had relaxed from overbearing to merely aggressively protective—and she could work with that! 

When her baby starts to suddenly grow abnormally fast, she suddenly faces the grim reality of going to the one place she never wanted to visit: Argurumal. Although she must work to evade the council and a mysterious someone who is attempting to ensure that she never leaves Argurumal alive, she is wondering being a mother might not just be the most challenging one especially when Veral suddenly begins to pull away from her.

Veral had never planned to return to Argurumal, but with his mate’s pregnancy advancing unnaturally fast he will have to face those he left behind and an unknown threat. His enemies have underestimated him. He will ride the sand dragnar across the Great Dunes to the capital if required. There is none more dangerous than an Argurma defending his mate and young. He will do all that he can to protect them, even if that means he cannot be by their side.

The Sands of Argurumal

Terrific Finale to the Trilogy

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💛💚❤️
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: 😋🙂😁😛
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Duet Narration

Characters & Plot Summary

This is the third and final book following Terri and her cyborg Argurma mate Veral’monushava’skahalur, and it picks up right when things should be settling down for them. Terri thought she had the full three-year Argurma gestation period to enjoy before motherhood hit, but instead her pregnancy suddenly accelerates, thanks to some interference from her gymotakin symbiont. That forces Veral to take her somewhere he swore he would never go back to, his home planet of Argurumal, so they can get proper medical care from someone in his own bloodline.

The problem is that Argurma society has never dealt with a hybrid pregnancy before, and the ruling council sees Terri and the baby as a research opportunity rather than a family. On top of that, someone on the planet wants Terri dead before she can leave. I loved how the book weaves in Veral’s cousin Kaylar, who is caught between loyalty to Veral and his obligations to the council, and how that tension plays out as the story builds toward the reveal of who has actually been hunting Terri.

Highlights & Limitations

The scene that got me the most was the birth. Terri is attacked and goes into labor in the middle of it, and the panic and adrenaline of that moment landed exactly the way it should. I also have to mention Krono, Veral’s massive beast companion, who gets a genuinely great action moment using his jaws to help protect Terri later in the book. He has been comic relief for most of the trilogy, so seeing him turn dangerous felt earned. The blessing scene for their daughter, where she is essentially marked by prophecy as someone who will leave Argurumal and eventually return as a powerful figure, gave me chills and made me wish there was more time spent on Argurma spiritual tradition in general.

Where the book stumbles a little is pacing. The middle section, once they arrive on Argurumal and start meeting Veral’s extended family, drags compared to the first two books. There is a lot of political maneuvering with the council and a lot of family introductions, and I found myself waiting for the plot to pick back up.

I also wish Terri’s symbiont had been given more teeth, pun intended. It gets set up as this mysterious, possibly dangerous thing, and I kept expecting it to become a bigger weapon or defense mechanism for her, but it mostly stays in the background. That felt like a missed opportunity given how much narrative real estate was spent introducing it in the previous book.

Narration & Performance

Jessica Threet and Christopher Boucher are what elevate this book from good to great. Threet’s Terri is warm and grounded, and you can hear her fear during the labor and attack scenes without it ever tipping into melodrama. Boucher’s voice for Veral is low, controlled, and just simmering with protectiveness, which is exactly right for a character whose entire arc is about learning to let his mate share the danger with him instead of shielding her from everything.

The scenes where they trade dialogue back and forth, especially the quieter moments between the action, have a real chemistry to them that I do not always get from dual narrated romance. Boucher also handles the family and council characters distinctly enough that I never lost track of who was speaking, which matters a lot in a book with this many side characters.

Final Opinion

As a closer to this trilogy, this book delivers the emotional payoff Terri and Veral have been building toward since book one. The ending, with the traitor reveal and the prophecy for their daughter, gave me the send off I wanted for this couple. I did wish the middle stretch had moved faster and that the symbiont subplot had gone somewhere more dramatic, but neither of those complaints stopped me from being fully invested by the final chapters.

If you have been with Terri and Veral since the salvage ship crash landed them together in book one, this is a satisfying way to send them off, and narrators Threet and Boucher make sure you feel every bit of it. I loved the fact that this trilogy had three books with wildly different plotlines, it made each book almost like a standalone while making you really feel for the characters.

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