Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

If The Stand got together with 2001:  A Space Odyssey and had a night of wild sex, Wanderers would be their love child.

Shortly after a comet passes near the earth, certain Americans begin to exhibit signs of a sleepwalking sickness.  Their family and friends are unable to awaken them (when they try, there are disastrous consequences), and the walkers gradually form a group walking west, with the numbers increasing by ten or twelve people every day.  Where are they going?  How can they exist without water, food, or sleep?  More importantly, is it contagious?  Aided by an artificially intelligent computer called Black Swan, a team of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control race to find answers while trying to combat political agendas, the media, and the conservative right wing.

I got bored around page 300 and started skimming.  Too many unnecessary characters and side plots, too much repetition (white people are bad, religion is bad, conservatives are bad, Republicans are bad, etc.), too many stereotypical characters (e.g., the Homeland Security guy is one step removed from a gorilla, the evil rural redneck who rapes another man, etc.).  The storyline did get more interesting once we got inside the walkers heads. 

(Personal rant:  This is something that I complain about a lot – don’t publishing houses employ editors anymore, and if they do, what are the editors doing?  Editors used to identify the parts of the manuscript that needed to be re-written or cut out.  If you don’t believe me, read Furious Hours by Casey Cep – in the section about Harper Lee, there is a part about how the editors at Lippincott sat down with Lee repeatedly and told her what had to be changed, until Lee did it, and created an American classic.  Wanderers does not need 800 pages to tell its story – a good editor could have cut out about 200 pages without damaging the narrative and made it a much better book.)