Wanderers: A Novel, Hardcover – July 2, 2019, reviewed

By @SimonCocking review of Wanderers, available from Amazon here. See more book reviews here.

A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world’s last hope. From the mind of Chuck Wendig comes “a magnum opus . . . a story about survival that’s not just about you and me, but all of us, together” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For as the sleepwalking phenomenon awakens terror and violence in America, the real danger may not be the epidemic but the fear of it. With society collapsing all around them—and an ultraviolent militia threatening to exterminate them—the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart—or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

As Leonard Cohen said, you want it dark? Well Chuck Wendig aims to give it to you darker. This is a long and epic tale of the ultimate death and destruction of a large percentage of humanity, partly through their own doing. Some characters stand up more strongly than others, and, interestingly, one of the most compelling ones, the well named AI called Black Swan is one of the best. Black Swan AI is both the saviour and possibly also the destroyer of humanity. Various characters believe it is acting as a tool to help them, but ultimately everyone has to question who is in control, and in whose interests they are acting in.

In this day and age, with Climate Change becoming an ever present concern you could say that this is, to some degree, an ecological thriller. Humanity’s impact on the earth is a key element in this story, with a good level of knowledge given about previous pandemics and their impact on the human race. Several other reviews compare this book to The Stand by Stephen King, and the reference is even made within the book. This meta-referencing of other fictional works seemed to damage the story a little for our taste. Maybe it is all very breaking the fourth wall to have fictional characters referring to other fictional stories, but it seemed to break the illusion a little for us.

In some ways too the story seemed to suffer by having a Clinton like president and a Trump-like, redneck, opportunist, rich, challenger. When reality is too bizarre and concerning fiction faces a challenge to take us to completely different scenarios, rather than merely replicating and taking to a slightly further extreme what we have in reality. Especially when our current reality is frequently a gross caricature of anything that has preceeded it in US politics.

If you like your future dystopias dark and apocalayptic then this is the book for you!

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