The Wanderers series, Book 1
Chuck Wendig
Del Rey
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
Themes: Apocalypse, Artificial Intelligence, Biohazards, Cross-Genre, Diversity, Epics, Fungi, Religious and Spiritual Themes, Stardom
****
Description
The end of the world started with one teen girl inexplicably walking out of her home, apparently sleepwalking, though her father and sister try everything to wake her up. Then a neighbor joins her... and another... With experts stumped and efforts to stop the walkers ending disastrously - they become highly distressed, and if restrained too long they will literally explode from internal pressures - politicians and conspiracy theorists inevitably weigh in, turning the growing "flock" into a flashpoint that could tip an already fractured America over the edge into violence and anarchy. But worse is on the way, and unless a handful of individuals - a disgraced scientist, a misled pastor, a damaged ex-cop, the sister of the first walker, an over-the-hill rock legend, and more - can keep their heads, not just America but the whole of the human race itself could vanish in a matter of months.
Review
It took me some time to consider what I ultimately thought of this book, an epic apocalyptic tale clearly inspired by
recent political occurrences (though predating the COVID pandemic). It has an intriguing premise and some decent
characters going through very harrowing, even gruesome events, mildly let down by an ending that didn't quite
deliver.
From a prologue that foretells disaster with the discovery of a comet (traditional harbinger of change and disaster,
further underlined by the inexplicable death of the discoverer), the tale starts fairly quickly with the farm girl Nessie
walking out of her home, pursued by elder sister Shana, who takes a little too long to work out that this isn't just a
prank by a spirited young teen but a serious problem. From there, the tale introduces the rest of the core cast in turns,
from the former CDC scientist contacted by an agent from a mysterious top-secret AI through the small-town man of the
cloth Matthew struggling to reconcile his faith with a disintegrating home life and new pressures to explain the
inexplicable and a faded 1980's rock star still clinging to his faded glory days and party persona long past their
usefulness. As the walkers grow more numerous and attract more attention and conspiracy theories, a second threat pops
up that dovetails neatly with the first to set the stage for a true end-of-the-world scenario... and, inevitably, kick
off fresh waves of paranoia, xenophobia, and violence, fueled by opportunistic fringe politicians and supremacist
militias. Interludes add glimpses of how the greater world reacts to the unfolding crises as civilization slowly
collapses into chaos. The core story moves decently, with a few lulls (and a couple times where characters didn't behave
particularly intelligently given the situation and what they knew), pulling off some interesting twists on its way to
the final showdown for the fate of the world and future (or lack thereof) of humanity high in the Colorado mountains.
Then there is a wrap-up that felt oddly weak and short-changed some characters and a couple storylines (plus a
late-stage "twist"), perhaps explained by the fact that there is a sequel.
I wavered on whether to shave a half-star for the ending. Even with a sequel, I felt it could've done a better job
sticking that landing with what it had, plus it failed to make me especially interested in continuing, as it seemed more
like Wendig ran out of steam rather than the author had a whole second book's worth of material to explore. I ultimately
decided to keep the solid fourth star, but only barely. It was, overall, a fairly solid story of an unfolding apocalypse
and the horrors, and small glimmers of hope, that come with the end of the world.