It shouldn't be any surprise that my biggest criticism of a book that's 775 pages is that it's too long. Nor should it be a surprise that I DNF'ed this book about 15% of the way in because there was nothing happening beyond a lot of really, really drawn-out exposition. I'm actually kind of surprised that Chuck Wendig wrote a book like this because, while he will occasionally overwrite, he's usually pretty tight with his plotting and description. But this book is somewhere between 250 and 400 pages longer than most of his works and, oh boy, does it ever feel like it.

This has the vibe of someone's dream project. Those "opus" projects that every fiction author has had in the back of their mind for years, and have painstakingly developed and thought through and, when it came time to actually write it, couldn't bear to edit out any of the thousands of details and minutiae that they had invested their time and imagination into over the years. After 121 pages, the promise of the book was that we had spent a ton of time with one point of view experience with whatever this affliction is, and that we were destined to be introduced to other characters in a seemingly longwinded way, with only a vague promise that - at some point - answers would be forthcoming. Maybe.

Where I often find myself getting stuck with books that have mysteries in them is that I want to know what happened or how it will work out. I will stick with a book I'm not enjoying for a real long time because my curiosity just has to be satisfied. The problem with this book was that it took too long to get into the mystery; I got bored before I ever started to care about the characters or the mystery they needed to get to the bottom of.

This book is perfect for fans of Stephen King's The Stand and similar books, where you want to just luxuriate in a meticulously-detailed and intricately-described world. If that's the case, I have some great news for you; there are two books in this series and, combined, they're over 1,800 pages long. But if you're a fan of, you know, plot... and pacing... you're probably better off reading one of his shorter, more to the point books.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of Wanderers: A Novel   from Amazon.Com!

Created Jan 18, 2025 at 2:07pm • Submit your own review...