The Cautious Traveler's Guide to the Wasteland by Sarah Brooks

Summary - The Cautious Traveler's Guide to the Wasteland by Sarah Brooks is a historical fantasy novel. Set in a world where a large section of both Russia and China has been reduced to an uninhabitable wasteland full of dangerous air and hostile creatures. To combat this, humanity has constructed a train meant to travel the Wasteland, going back and forth between China and Russia.

The story follows several characters: Marya, a woman pretending to be a widow who's searching for answers; Henry Grey, a disgraced scientist looking for redemption; Weiwei, a young girl who has lived her entire life on the train; along with a few others.

Thoughts - The vibe of this story is a mix of incomprehensible horror and untapped wonder. Sarah Brooks does an amazing job of shifting between the two, but unfortunately, that's also something of a detriment. That incomprehensible, Eldritch horror that filters through the book can make things hard to understand.

Without spoiling anything properly, the final ten percent of the book was hard to follow. There were so many different things happening all at once across several different characters. Though, to clarify, the chapters themselves were comprehensible, but everything around the main characters and their actions just melded into a blurry mess. Which does feel like the intention.

There's a big focus on the chaos of nature; how things grow and evolve beyond our understanding and potentially without meaning. When it all comes to a head, that focus comes to fruition in its truest form, but that's the rub. It's very difficult to take chaotic nature and make it understandable to the reader, which is where the story falters for me.

Beyond that, the core of the story is about casting away responsibilities. Characters spend so long focusing on one specific thing that drives them and haunts them in equal measure, then at the end, they realize it doesn't matter, that there are more important things than their responsibility.

Character-wise, no one stands out too strongly to me. They're solid characters, don't get me wrong, but none of them super jump out at me as a character that I love and adore. Not a bad mark per se. I think the point of the story lies in its plot more than its characters, which is a rarity these days.

Overall - While the story does its job well, I don't think this one was for me. It's a solid read and a nice 300 pages or so, which is on the lower end. I'd recommend this to people who like more poignant storylines and eldritch horror.

Scoring - 7.1/10

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