Sarah Brooks’ The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands is a brilliant and unique story of a train journey that changes the world.
In 1899, on the eve of a new age of industry and progress, the Trans-Siberia company runs the great train that crosses the mysterious and dangerous Wastelands – a wild, uninhabited landscape between Beijing and Moscow. The train crosses between the two cities, passing through the Great Wall on the Chinese border to carry passengers and goods over the thousands of untamed miles to the wall at the Russian border.
But as the journey progresses it becomes clear that this crossing is different, no matter how much the Company representatives insist that the great train is impenetrable and cannot be stopped. Weiwei, an adolescent who was born and raised on the train, wholeheartedly believes in the machine and the people who run it – they are her family and the train is her home.
Marya, a young woman in disguise, is determined to find out what happened to her father after his work on the train and subsequent slow demise. And Henry, the disgraced English naturalist, believes that presenting specimens of the unstudied Wastelands flora and fauna at the Great Exhibition in Moscow will redeem his career, and he is willing to break every rule of the train to achieve his goal.
This is a truly unique and brilliant story; the journey through the Wastelands is fraught with danger from both within and without, the landscape a vast and unsettling force that passengers are encouraged to ignore and look past so they do not develop the terrifying Wastelands sickness. The protagonists are each searching for something that they hope to find during the journey, despite the many dangers and the high price they must pay to the train, the land and each other.
This is a story of finding the truth, of unravelling lies and silence to find the beating heart within. It is a story about accepting growth and change, and making way for it, even when it is at great personal cost. This book is perfect for fans of spec fic, lovers of mythology, and even readers of psychological thrillers – the ever-presence of the menacing Wastelands pressing into the train from all sides will give you pause whenever travelling through a vast landscape.
This review was first published on ArtsHub.
