Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Wanderers is a pitiful hybrid: one part The Andromeda Strain, one part Fall, or Dodge in Hell, and one part Zombie Apocalypse. Unfortunately, it mostly takes the worst parts of all of those. Nessie, a teen girl in Pennsylvania suddenly gets up one night and starts walking in a trance-like state. Her sister follows her, trying to get her to wake up. Soon others join Nessie in the same state and their family members also join in the wandering flock. If the walkers are held or confined, they explode. The CDC soon sets out on the case. There are side plots on religion, politics, and some romance threads.
Somewhere in there is the potential for a half-decent sci-fi medical mystery à la The Andromeda Strain, but without the plausibility. Not even a speck. How many other ways does it go wrong? Too many to count. First, it’s at least four times as long as it needs to be (almost 800 pages). I thought the days of getting paid by the word were over; the editor is a feckless coward who lost his red pen. Second, its cyber-fi plot line is ridiculously plagiarizing Fall, or Dodge in Hell, and in particular appears to have copied Stephenson’s bloated faux epic length for no fathomable reason. Third, it descends into oceans of foul language for much of the latter portions of the book. Why use one obscenity when you can use five? Fourth, the author has mixed in current-day politics with an unfortunate far left bias. I appreciate the pro-evironmentalist bent and the disdain of the hate-mongers that seem to have acquired so much political clout, but not every conservative is a violent white supremacist. It wasn’t necessary to paint that picture to make the environmental points. The only thing that saved it for me was the very end, which, surprisingly, I liked. If I were Black Swan, I would make the same choices.
If you’re interested, but not up to reading an 800-page tome, I recommend reading the first 200 pages or so to acquaint yourself with all the major characters, then skim chapter titles and first paragraphs to get an idea of the plot line until about page 450 or 500 where things pick up. Read until around page 600 or so, then skim or skip liberally until you get to the last 70 or 80 pages unless you spot things that look interesting to you. That’s how I did it, and it worked for me.