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.  Wendig’s tome compares fairly well. The prose is excellent, character development is strong, and the plot has plenty of surprises.  Wanderers might have been able to join the other two at the top of the mountain, but it does have a couple of faults.  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.

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.  The real focus of the story, however, isn’t the walkers themselves, it’s the reaction of the rest of the country to them.  Are the walkers carriers of a new disease?  A sign from God?  Messengers of the devil?  They become national news in an election year, and reactions vary from solidarity with the walkers to outright violence against the “devil’s parade”.   It 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.

There isn’t much to dislike in the book.  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.   This is truly a character-driven story.  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.  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.  The plot itself is an unusually complex take on the “end of the world” scenario, as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology play a part.  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.

The drawbacks to Wanderers are minor, but they prevent a good story from becoming a great one.  As noted, the final showdown between good and evil was a bit convoluted and didn’t really fit the rest of the story.  The real problem is the author’s use of stereotypes when it comes to his antagonists from the conservative side of the political spectrum.  These make the villains far too predictable in their actions and reasons.  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.  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.

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

Contains: violence, mild gore, racial slurs, rape

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Editor’s note: Wanderers was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.