Adrienne Martini Reviews The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, Sarah Brooks (Flatiron Books 978-1-250-87861-8, $28.99, 336pp, hc) July 2024.
Trains make great narrative devices. You can get all of your characters in the same place and keep them there while they move through space and time. Pick up the well-known Agatha Christie train mystery, if you like a good murder on the rails. Or, if you bend more toward science fiction, seek out Mary Robinette Kowal, whose The Spare Man subbed a spaceship for a train. It’s a trope because it works.
Now you can add Sarah Brooks’s The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands to the fantasy column of the train list. Brooks opens the story in 1899 as the Trans-Siberia Company’s luxury train is about to pull out of the Beijing station. It’ll be in Moscow in a few day’s time, if all goes well. And, reader, it does not go well.
This is no ordinary journey. In Brooks’s version of the late 19th century, the space between these two cities is the Wasteland, not because nothing is there but because many somethings beyond human understanding are there. But this train has been fortified to survive the passage. Rather than take the long way around, many would rather take the risk (and have the wealth) to plow straight through and save some time.
On the last passage, however, something nearly catastrophic happened on board. No one can remember exactly what it was. After a thorough review, the discovery of a scapegoat, and after a long delay, the train is running again. We get to know several passengers, each with their own agenda, as well as a child who has only known this train. Oh. And there’s a stowaway. On this passage, ‘‘there are secrets to be hooked and reeled in.’’
Despite the familiarity of the train motif and its furniture, Brooks takes it in an unfamiliar direction. What starts off as a linear trip, slowly builds to one that leaves the comfort of the rails. She also taps into one of the layers of story a train offers: This journey makes a great extended metaphor for life itself. Her hand here is just heavy enough to give the subtext heft.
Is this the best example of the form? It’s perfectly adequate and is diverting enough to make for a fun ride.
Adrienne Martini has been reading or writing about science fiction for decades and has had two non-fiction, non-genre books published by Simon and Schuster. She lives in Upstate New York with one husband, two kids, and one corgi. She also runs a lot.
This review and more like it in the May 2024 issue of Locus.
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