“Here’s how we do things in America: We identify a problem, then we promptly ignore it until it’s not just biting our ass, but it’s already eaten the right cheek and has started on the left.”

 

Power in the lines, Geilston Bay. August 2021.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

This is a long and intricate book with a huge cast of characters, every one of them annoying and flawed in their own special way. Just like real life! With this, a mysterious illness arises and stalks across the fractured United States in the midst of an election that pits a career politician (who happens to be a capable but cold and aloof woman) against a reckless and obnoxious billionaire with some decidedly nefarious allies.

Yes, the parallels are stark and Wendig is not shy of sharing his thoughts on the matter. The centrepiece of the novel is the emergence of a sleepwalking illness that causes a (seemingly) random group of people to zone out and hit the road, walking with some kind of predetermined destination unknown to all. If you try and stop them, they explode (generally killing anyone nearby). Very messy.

The beginning of the book introduces the sullen and irritable teenager Shana, who wakes up one morning to discover her younger sister is patient zero with the sleeping sickness. Shana's peevishness stems from a detached father and mother who took of mysteriously a few years earlier. I never quite warmed to Shana, but this wasn't enough to put me off the book.

At 800 pages, I will not waste your time on a detailed outline. Suffice to say that the CDC is called in, a maverick scientist takes up the challenge of solving the puzzle of the sleepwalkers and pretty soon we have an evolved artificial intelligence supercomputer, a weak and vain preacher being manipulated by a powerful group of white supremacists, a raging pandemic destined to kill most of the world's population and an ageing rock god struggling with a secret and desire to find some meaning in the worship that he craves.

Sure, it's too long and a little bit "by-the-numbers", but it proceeds with gusto in an engaging style and some of the curveballs thrown in are really fascinating (not to mention cool). There's a bit too much standing around, and while I'm all in favour of flawed, rounded characters, they don't all have to be such pricks.

There is a general passivity to the whole thing which - while fitting the metaphor of sleepwalking into destruction - belies the importance of saving everybody on the planet. Perhaps the fact that the author's politics aligned well with mine (I won't complain about maligning hypocritical right-wing Christians and racists) kept me going, but all up I'm erring on the generous side.

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