The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands - Sarah Brooks

Before you even start it, you can tell that The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands is going to take you to strange places. The title alone is promising enough, but the basic outline premise is even more intriguing. It involves a long train journey from Beijing to Moscow in 1899, the service provided by the the Trans-Siberia Company. It's back up and running again, reportedly stronger than ever after the mysterious circumstances of the last journey across the stricken Wastelands that caused the crew and passengers to lose their memory of the journey. As you are introduced to the passengers however, you soon begin however to wonder where the real danger is; whether it will come from the blight that has made the land outside uninhabitable and still carries strange sickness or whether it will come from the odd assembly of passengers on board, each taking the journey for private reasons, some clearly for different reasons than those they make public to the others.

There is every good reason to be cautious then and heed the advice of Valentin Rostov, the author of what is to date the definitive guidebook (as definitive as any can be) for those undertaking a journey unlike any other. It's a 15 day journey during which the train will pass through the second great wall of China - this one built to keep out the danger of the Wastelands - and cross what remains of Greater Siberia, at the end of which they will not pass the Vigil at the Russian side until there is an assurance that nothing of the Wastelands comes in with them. Anyone could be affected by the strange visions many are subjected to on the journey, particularly those already not of a sure frame of mind. There are definitely a few potential candidates fitting that description among the passengers on this trip.

There is Marya Petrovna, a widow who claims she is returning home to St Petersburg after the death of her husband and parents, but in reality she holds a deep grudge against the Trans-Siberia Company, blaming them for the death of her father. There is Dr Henry Grey, a disgraced naturalist whose theories have been discredited and found to be false, who is hoping to regain his reputation at the Great Exhibition in Moscow by unravelling some of the secrets of the Wastelands. You have to have an obligatory Countess on board and a cleric to denounce the godless land they travel through. Two Company men, Li Huangjin and Leonid Petrov, known as the Crows, are there as representatives of the Trans-Siberia company, suspicious of anyone who might seek to undermine the power or reputation of the Company, such as those publications made by a writer known as Artemis.

There is also Zhang Weiwei, who was born on the train to one of the serving maids. She is 16 now, but this is the only world she has ever known and she has become part of the features, able to make her way around all its secret corners and passages. There have also been sightings of a ghost on board the train, or perhaps it's just a stowaway. On this train the however difference could be hard to tell.

So to consider my question about whether the danger comes more from the inside than the outside ...well that depends on your viewpoint, as one could be said to affect the other. What is outside however is definitely strange and dangerous and it's brilliantly described by Sarah Brooks. In some parts it reminded me of Brian Catling's The Vorrh trilogy and in others of J.G. Ballard (like the Crystal World in a period setting), but Brooks creates her own original vision of the disturbing and unnatural, haunting and hallucinatory Greater Siberian Wastelands, capable of deceiving the eyes and deranging the mind. The author's distinct quality is in this alternate-world period setting, the marvellous characters she depicts aboard the train and how they react to the unfolding events. Those events develop slowly, but build into something dark and dangerous. This is quite a journey, but approach with caution.

Reading notes: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks is published by W&N on 20th June 2024. Thanks to the publisher for the preview advance reading copy through Netgalley.