Review: Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are apparently 800 pages in this book. I've read books that long (and longer) many times before. That wasn't a stumbling block for me, but damn were those a long 800 pages.

First, let me say how happy I am that this is NOT a series and that the story is wrapped up (mostly) in just the one book. I didn't have to wait for ten more sequels to come out to figure out what was happening. I didn't have to slog through thousands of pages of bullshit just so someone could drag out the story.

A lot of other people have talked about the themes of this book and all the issues it explores in much more detail and probably better than I can. We have the fundamentalist Christian pastor who gets into bed with neo-Nazis, a female president who apparently most of the country hates, a kind of strange look at homosexuality, there's even a pretty brutal male-male rape scene that I was...seriously disturbed by. The sickness itself is disgusting, frankly. And there is a lot going on that is left up in the air as mystery for a very long time.

And I'll admit it - Wendig got me. I'm usually sitting here reading and picking out the "twists" that are supposedly so hidden but are actually pretty plain. Not with this one. At first I couldn't figure out the purpose of the walkers. When that was revealed, awesome, I was surprised (although looking back it's probably pretty easy to spot and I just missed it in all the science talk). There was a lot of blatant commentary on the people who weren't getting sick, so I figured that one out early enough. But the ending - I always suspected Black Swan of being more than just the "benevolent AI who wants to save the human race," and while I wasn't surprised about what happened, I can say I didn't see that exact scenario playing out. And Shana's part in the end of it all was definitely unexpected.

There were a few characters I grew "close" to - Marcy, Pete, and Benji. Once Pete got over his rockstar status and became an actual human I liked him very much. Benji was always just trying to do the best he could for everyone else. And Marcy was such a good-hearted person that it wasn't hard to love her. I do still wish we had been told exactly what had happened between her and the "glow" - Sadie mentioned that Marcy was a receiver because of the metal plates in her head, but how that made her more functional is beyond me.

There are two reasons this does not get a 5 star review - first, I am not one to shy away from swearing in books, but I feel like it was over the top in this one. There were a lot of random fucks interjected into conversations, thoughts, revelations, etc. It was too much for me to even feel like it was realistic. Second, the ending wasn't quite satisfying after all we went through to get where we were going. It came too quickly after all of that, and it felt cut off (although very sinister - good job at upping the creep factor at the end there).

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book. My opinions are my own.

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