LRRC Week 4
I may have made it through this week's books by doing some reading at work during off-hours. Shh, don't tell anyone.
#7: WANDERERS by Chuck Wendig
Okay, here it is: the monster. As always, avoiding spoilers as much as possible.
Despite the fact that this book is 830 pages on my ereader (although!! Hey Chuck?? Mr Wendig???), I actually read it pretty quickly. The writing is tense and exciting, the characters are interesting, and the drama is compelling. Straight up, I was almost always in a state of wanting to know what happens next (due in some places to some kind of bullshit chapter cliffhangers, but REGARDLESS).
I'm gonna start off with some pretty major content warnings for the book, because I kind of believe that my duty as a reviewer is to pass those on. Obviously, this book is about a disease-based apocalyptic scenario. If you have a lot of anxiety about the world ending and/or pandemics, this probably isn't the book for you.
[CW cont] There's also a lot of graphic violence, and graphic gun violence in particular. There's one scene of semi-graphic rape. There's references to suicide. There's also the use of several slurs, including the t slur, the f slur, and like half of the n slur because apparently that's the one that Wendig didn't want to fully write out. (If you want any more details about any of this to make a decision about reading it, feel free to DM me on twitter!)
This book elicited a lot of strong feelings in me, both good and bad. There was a part where I legitimately had to take a break from reading because it was getting close to bedtime and I was getting a little bit too distressed. Take from that what you will. I'm gonna go top to bottom.
A lot of this book is about people helping each other in the absolute worst of scenarios, in a variety of ways, and I was really here for that. It's about people being helpful and self-sacrificing and compassionate to their loved ones, but also to strangers. The characters feel very real, and their relationships build organically, and there were a couple of times that I was genuinely tearful.
There's also a pretty realistic depiction of the darker parts of society. The book doesn't shy away from the rampant white nationalism and fascism that's on the rise in today's world, and which an apocalyptic event would only make worse. The evil felt incredibly recognizable, which only served to heighten the stakes and the fear that the story was generating.
On the not-so-good side, there's a couple of plot threads and characters (not insignificant ones!) that are built up and then just dropped, or waved away with no payoff.
Obviously, in the real world not everything gets wrapped up, and to a certain extent this is forgivable in a novel like this (i.e. I believe that a character could go off and nobody would ever find out whether they lived or died) but there's enough of them that I find frustrating.
One of these in particular I found to be completely unforgivable, especially given the SIZE of this beast. Also it felt to me like the queer characters and non-queer women got the short end of this particular stick, and I have some sour grapes about it.
The other not-great thing, in my opinion, was the ending. Without spoilers, the book ends on a plot twist/cliffhanger than ended up leaving just a really odd taste in my mouth? The twist isn't bad in itself, it's just that there's no real time to respond to it before the book is over, and it makes me walk away feeling like a) the book wasted some of my time misleading me and b) this is not an ending??
[Slight spoilers] It re-contextualizes a lot of the story, which is a weird thing to do on the LAST PAGE, imo, especially when you're selling the book as a hopeful story. Unless, of course, he's writing a sequel? Which to my knowledge he is not? [end slight spoilers]
Also, c'mon, man, it's 2020, can we really not show that the bad guys are evil bigots WITHOUT writing out slurs???
I would say that I did ultimately enjoy Wanderers, and it certainly kept me flipping pages, but I would have some very serious reservations about recommending it to others. Also, check in with me in a few weeks and see if I've mellowed or just grown more angry.
#8: A HUMAN STAIN by Kelly Robson
I paired the monster with what I think was the shortest book on my Kindle, which ended up being this fun novelette (maybe? I still don't know how to use these words) by Kelly Robson.
If you like weird, grotesque horror stories, you'll probably like this! My tastes tend to run towards stuff with a little bit more explanation than this particular story has, but the description is vivid and horrifying and the atmosphere is so good that I cared a lot less than I usually do about needing to know what was going on, which is definitely cool.
Not much I can say without spoilers, but if your tastes in horror run towards something visceral and perhaps not extremely logical, then I heartily recommend this. Hell, even if you're a bit more like me, I think you'd probably still get a kick out of this. Also, it's fun to just see casual queerness in things!
NEXT WEEK'S AGENDA:
#9: The Tyrant's Tomb by Rick Riordan
#10: Marriage of Unconvenience by Chelsea M. Cameron