The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands
by Sarah Brooks
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted June 15, 2024
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One thing I love about being a reader is discovering new writers, and being able to get advance review copies is equally great. Sarah Brooks' debut novel, The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, was originally scheduled for July, but then its publication was moved up a month. It will be available in three days, June 18, my review copy courtesy of Edelweiss. It is excellent, highly recommended. I just hope I can give you a few reasons to read it without spoiling too much. Perhaps to start I will say it brought to mind a few other books (and movies).
Imagine Jeff VanderMeer's Area X mashed up with the Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, along with its film adaptation, Stalker. Also other books and media set on trains, such as Christopher Priest's Inverted World. The Strugatsky book mainly because half of this one takes place in Russia, but it is an alternate history. The book begins in 1899, with a journey on the Trans-Siberian Express out of Beijing, which is south of the wall that has been built to contain the Wastelands. I am not positive, but it could be the Great Wall enlarged and fortified into a much taller structure, or it could be a completely new wall. The Chinese also advised and helped Russia in building their own wall north, or maybe west, of the Wastelands. The history of the great train that traverses the Wastelands goes back several years, not sure how many, but at least twenty. The title of this book is also the title of one written by Valentin Rostov, first published in 1880. Since Siberia is mentioned as part of the trip, and the destination is Moscow, I envisioned the Wastelands to begin in Mongolia, but they encompass even more land, since Lake Baikal is within the Wastelands, as well as quite a bit of territory beyond that. I don't know where the Russian wall is, how close to Moscow.
Written in third-person, the perspective shifts between characters from chapter to chapter, sometimes even within a chapter. So who should be considered the main character? Each of their back stories could be the basis for other books, or at least a collection of short stories. The first we meet is Marya Petrovna, a widow travelling back to her home in St. Petersburg. She is very inquisitive, asking many questions about the previous train journey, which for reasons not revealed had caused a cessation of travel for many months. If the Captain's name was ever revealed I missed it. She had begun her career by cutting her hair and disgusing herself as a boy, working her way up through the ranks of train tasks. She didn't reveal her gender to the owners until they named her Captain. By that time she had proven herself worthy, so they had no recourse but to stand by their decision. Zhang Weiwei is known to many as the Child of the Train, having been born on the Express, her mother dying while her daughter took her first breath. She is now in her mid-teens. Her good friend, Engineer Alexei Stepanovich, is only a few years older than her. Grigori Danilovich had made a life on the train through many journeys, and along the way became Weiwei's teacher and mentor. She may or may not know his name, but she just calls him the Professor. Cartographer Suzuki Kenji becomes friends, and perhaps more, with Marya. Dr. Henry Grey is a disgraced naturalist from England, suffering the ignominy of a false identification of a fossil he had found off the coast of Wales. He wants to redeem himself by collecting samples from the Wastelands, to be displayed at the Moscow Exposition.
There are many more, some named, others not. A Countess and her maid, businessmen, scientists, explorers, or just rich people not averse to skirting danger. They are all cautioned not to look out the windows, since the Wastelands could be mesmerizing. At one point Weiwei startles Marya by bringing her out of a trance, saying she was afraid Marya was "disappearing." Another important character is a stowaway, who identifies herself as Elena. It doesn't take Weiwei long to realize Elena came from the Wastelands, but it isn't clear if she had been a previous passenger on the train who disembarked, or if she had been born there, and if so, how long ago, and how had the Wastelands changed her? Marya is not actually a widow, and her reasons for being on the train is to unravel the mystery of the last trip, one which all involved claim to not remember. Another mystery she wants to solve is the identiry of Artemis, a frequent contributor of articles to a journal published by the Society of the Wastelands. Almost everyone was puzzled why the Company decided to resume their train runs so soon, but not too puzzling for modern readers. PROFIT. They made their money not just from passenger tickets, but buying and selling products in both China and Russia, and selling to many other markets across Europe, and probably everywhere they could. The Society wanted more information about the Wastelands. So did Marya, and so did the Professor, and Dr. Grey. A few others were afraid of learning more, they just hoped to continue their jobs, also praying another disaster could be avoided.
I won't reveal more about the Wastelands, what the crew and passengers saw, nor will I tell you who left the train, their reasons for doing so, what happened to them, or who were able to reboard the train, or what they experienced after that. It is possible this is a stand-alone novel, but as I said earlier, the back stories would be interesting. The ending was a lot more positive than I expected, and thinking about what comes next will be on my mind for a while. Even though this is Sarah Brooks' debut novel, it is not brand new. Originally written during her studies at Cambridge, it won the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize in 2019, and a Northern Debut Award from New Writing North in 2021. Sarah lived and worked for a time in China, as well as Japan and Italy, returning to England to pursue a PhD on classical Chinese ghost stories. She also edits for Samovar, an online magazine for translated speculative fiction. She is now on my radar, and I look forward to more books and stories, whether they are about the Wastelands, or something completely different.
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