{"id":7401,"date":"2020-04-10T12:59:32","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T16:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=7401"},"modified":"2020-04-11T22:21:06","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T02:21:06","slug":"book-review-wanderers-by-chuck-wendig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/book-review-wanderers-by-chuck-wendig\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Wanderers by Chuck Wendig"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Wanderers <\/em>by Chuck Wendig<\/p>\n

Del Rey, 2019<\/p>\n

ISBN: 978-0-399-18210-5<\/p>\n

Availability: hardcover, audiobook, ebook<\/p>\n

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It’s inevitable that any 782 page magnum opus about the end of the world like Wanderers<\/em> will get compared to the two titans of the apocalyptic pantheon, Stephen King’s The Stand<\/em> and Robert McCammon’s Swan Song.<\/em>\u00a0 Wendig’s tome compares fairly well. The prose is excellent, character development is strong, and the plot has plenty of surprises.\u00a0 Wanderers <\/em>might have been able to join the other two at the top of the mountain, but it does have a couple of faults.\u00a0 The story sputters to a muddled conclusion at the finish line, and the author’s insertion of his own political beliefs into the stories detracts from the strength of some of the characters, reducing them to stereotypical cardboard cutouts.<\/p>\n

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14 year old Nessie one day starts walking down the driveway in an unresponsive trance, leaving the home she shares with her older sister Shana and her father. Others with the same symptoms soon join her, and soon there is a pseudo-parade of walkers and supporters marching across the country, although no one knows where they are going.\u00a0 The real focus of the story, however, isn\u2019t the walkers themselves, it’s the reaction of the rest of the country to them. \u00a0Are the walkers carriers of a new disease?\u00a0 A sign from God?\u00a0 Messengers of the devil?\u00a0 They become national news in an election year, and reactions vary from solidarity with the walkers to outright violence against the \u201cdevil’s parade\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0It becomes a race for medical professionals to find the cause of the trance-walking, set against the backdrop of a country on edge due to its own political beliefs about the walkers.<\/p>\n

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There isn’t much to dislike in the book.\u00a0 The author writes extremely well in a tight-but-loose fashion, the story peppered with numerous asides and pop culture references that give the book a unique feel.\u00a0\u00a0 This is truly a character-driven story.\u00a0 It’s not so much about what the characters do: how they think, feel and respond to their own lives, and the world falling apart around them is what keeps the story flowing.\u00a0 Summing up the actual actions of the first 500 pages could be done in a few sentences, but that would miss out on the richness of the characters’ thoughts and emotions.\u00a0 The plot itself is an unusually complex take on the \u201cend of the world\u201d scenario, as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology play a part.\u00a0 It is partially a detective story, and it’s not an easy puzzle to figure out, especially with the final twist inserted in the last few pages.<\/p>\n

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The drawbacks to Wanderers <\/em>are minor, but they prevent a good story from becoming a great one.\u00a0 As noted, the final showdown between good and evil was a bit convoluted and didn’t really fit the rest of the story.\u00a0 The real problem is the author’s use of stereotypes when it comes to his antagonists from the conservative side of the political spectrum.\u00a0 These make the villains far too predictable in their actions and reasons.\u00a0 Author Wendig also has a bad habit of inserting his own liberal beliefs into the story as narration asides, not as part of the character development.\u00a0 That damages the narrative, when it is written from the author’s point of view to make a political case, and not to further the story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Overall, Wanderers <\/em>is a well-written, epic saga of the end of the world, and well worth the time investment to read its almost 800 pages.\u00a0 However, conservative readers will have to put aside their own feelings and viewpoints to enjoy reading this.\u00a0 Otherwise, they will probably get mad and quit within the first 100 pages.\u00a0 Recommended.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contains: violence, mild gore, racial slurs, rape<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: <\/strong>Wanderers<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig Del Rey, 2019 ISBN: 978-0-399-18210-5 Availability: hardcover, audiobook, ebook   It’s inevitable that any 782 page magnum opus about the end of the world like Wanderers will get compared to the two titans of the apocalyptic pantheon, Stephen King’s The Stand and Robert McCammon’s Swan Song.\u00a0 Wendig’s tome compares fairly well.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[907,2474,357,4399,4400,3042,2863,226,4398,3765],"class_list":["post-7401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apocalyptic-fiction","tag-book-review","tag-bram-stoker-awards","tag-chuck-wendig","tag-pandemic-fiction","tag-political-fiction","tag-racism","tag-science-fiction","tag-wanderers","tag-white-supremacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7401"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7480,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401\/revisions\/7480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}