Fiction Reviews
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands
(2024) Sarah Brooks, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.99, trdpbk, 373pp, ISBN 978-1-399-60754-4
‘Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation goes steampunk’ may be a wee bit reductionist, but it is a fair summary of The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands.
By the end of the nineteenth century Asiatic Russia from the Urals to China has become an uncanny place, not just a wilderness of transformed animal and plant life but something stranger, inimical to humankind. China has repurposed the Great Wall and Russia has built another, in order to keep the strangeness at bay and preserve civilisation.
The only safe way (and barely safe at that) to cross this wilderness is by heavily armoured train, sealed from outside influences. This, for first class passengers at least, comes with Orient Express-style luxury and five-star service.
And, like a classic locked-train mystery, on this particular journey from Shanghai to Moscow come many passengers (and crew) with their own agendas. Marya, investigating why her father’s special glass didn’t stop the wasteland penetrating the train on its last journey; Henry Grey, the scientist looking to redeem his reputation by investigating the wasteland; Weiwei the foundling child adopted by the crew and now a sort of dogsbody-cum-cabin girl.
A sense of entropy hangs over the entire enterprise: the last journey having been particularly bad, leading to a lengthy pause in service. The crew are weary, caught between a professional façade and the fear that this run might be the last, while a brittle end-of-the-party atmosphere prevails in first class. And everyone tries not to gaze too deeply into the wasteland, lest… well, you know how it goes.
Sarah Brooks gives us some nice world-building around the edges of the narrative – the guide of the title is something of a traveller’s bible and is quoted at the start of each section (the author has of course mysteriously disappeared after his trip). We also get little insights into the interests of The Company which runs the train along with the insights of the academics and amateurs who attempt to study this uncanny place, usually at one remove.
There’s clearly a lot of writing craft on display here in The Cautious Guide and the overall concept – moving Vandermeer and Ballard into the decadent dog days of the Victorian era – is grade-A. Given that the story starts in China and many of the characters are Chinese or East Asian, it is great that Brooks’ academic background is in this area, with stereotypes and clichés being deftly avoided. And steampunk works best when shorn of any imperialist triumphalism and the book certainly manages that.
That said, despite my usual enjoyment of weird fiction, I found myself curiously distant from the novel. It is a slow build and I am not sure the inflection points of tension or oddness are correctly placed, for my sensibilities at least. I also struggled to connect fully with the characters.
Cautious respect, then, for this Cautious Guide into unknown territory and the ambition it displays. And a qualified recommendation for fans of psychological steampunk and period weirdness.
Tim Atkinson
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