The Long Walk - The True Story of a Trek to Freedom - Slavomir Rawicz
The harrowing true tale of seven escaped Soviet prisoners who desperately marched out of Siberia through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.
I have read both "The Warded Man" and "The Desert Spear" and I love them both. If you have read the first book and disliked it, then do not read the sequel as the formula does not change. However if you did like the first book then I recommend this book highly. It has everything you liked from the first book and expands the plot by adding the demon princes in an interesting side plot. Jardir from the first book has added depth after we spend the first half of the book on him (don't worry the author did not forget Arlen).
In our world, the Mediterranean basin has dried up several times, only to refill. If it hadn't, it would have become a savage desert. But in his world, that's just the way mild-mannered Radnal vez Krobir likes it.
Placed in charge of the OSS's Pacific operations for the purpose of uniting warring interests, Fleming Pickering is directed to rescue Americans from the Gobi desert and set up a critical weather station there.
Shale is the lowest of the low-an outcast from a poor village in the heart of the desert. In the desert water is life, and currency, and Shale has none. But he has a secret. It's the one thing that keeps him alive and may save all the cities of the Quartern in the days to come. If it doesn't get him killed first... Terelle is a slave fleeing a life as a courtesan. She finds shelter in the home of an elderly painter but as she learns the strange and powerful secrets of his art she fears she may have traded a life of servitude for something far more perilous...