Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
Writing was lovely, but I couldn’t always focus/follow the story. I think a physical read might help because the audio was hard to keep track of characters.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Listen. I wanted to love this book. I tried to love this book. The cover? Gorgeous. The premise? Practically tailor-made for me. A magical train slicing across a nightmarish wasteland, complete with strange creatures, buried secrets, and a ticking sense of doom? Yes please. Inject that directly into my Goodreads TBR.
But instead of gripping tension or spine-tingling weirdness, what I got was a long, meandering wander through one of the slowest moving narratives I’ve encountered in a while. Not “meditative slow.” Not “Piranesi slow.” Just... stalled. Like the train itself had broken down somewhere between narrative momentum and character development, and no one remembered to call the conductor.
There are multiple POVs, and yet somehow every character sounds the same. You could have picked up a line of dialogue, held it up to the light like a literary fingerprint, and still had no clue whose voice it belonged to. Weiwei, Marya, Henry Gray (don’t get me started) - all of them blurred together into a soup of vaguely mournful inner monologues. The idea of a misfit crew bonded by circumstance should sing. This just hummed quietly in the background while I tried to stay awake.
And since we’re here, let’s talk about the Snowpiercer of it all. This book wants to channel that same claustrophobic, class-stratified pressure cooker on rails. But where Snowpiercer barrels forward with sharp stakes and brutal energy, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide sort of lounges in a velvet seat and stares moodily out the window. There’s no urgency, no propulsion. Just a lot of suggestive atmosphere and a disappointing lack of bite. If Snowpiercer is a knife fight in a steel tube, this is tea in a haunted lounge car that never quite gets spooky.
And yes, I know what you're thinking. “But the writing!” Sure. It’s decent. There are moments that almost shimmer, little phrases, haunting images, crumbs of what could’ve been a much sharper book. But decent prose can only carry you so far when you feel like you’re stuck on a train ride with no destination and no one you care about. I didn’t root for a single person. Not one. The Wastelands themselves? Intriguing on paper. On the page, disappointingly underbaked.
I kept hoping the plot would kick in, that something would jolt this story into gear. A big reveal, a betrayal, a monstrous fae-bird snatching someone off the caboose - ANYTHING. But no. There is a “twist,” technically, toward the end. I won’t spoil it, but suffice to say it didn’t feel earned so much as inserted, like someone remembered last-minute that books should probably have climaxes.
2 stars from me, and honestly, most of that is for the concept and the moody, atmospheric groundwork. I can see what Brooks wanted to do. There’s ambition here, and I’m not writing her off as a writer - I’d probably give her next book a shot. But this one? This was a chore. A beautiful, plodding, disappointingly quiet chore.
But instead of gripping tension or spine-tingling weirdness, what I got was a long, meandering wander through one of the slowest moving narratives I’ve encountered in a while. Not “meditative slow.” Not “Piranesi slow.” Just... stalled. Like the train itself had broken down somewhere between narrative momentum and character development, and no one remembered to call the conductor.
There are multiple POVs, and yet somehow every character sounds the same. You could have picked up a line of dialogue, held it up to the light like a literary fingerprint, and still had no clue whose voice it belonged to. Weiwei, Marya, Henry Gray (don’t get me started) - all of them blurred together into a soup of vaguely mournful inner monologues. The idea of a misfit crew bonded by circumstance should sing. This just hummed quietly in the background while I tried to stay awake.
And since we’re here, let’s talk about the Snowpiercer of it all. This book wants to channel that same claustrophobic, class-stratified pressure cooker on rails. But where Snowpiercer barrels forward with sharp stakes and brutal energy, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide sort of lounges in a velvet seat and stares moodily out the window. There’s no urgency, no propulsion. Just a lot of suggestive atmosphere and a disappointing lack of bite. If Snowpiercer is a knife fight in a steel tube, this is tea in a haunted lounge car that never quite gets spooky.
And yes, I know what you're thinking. “But the writing!” Sure. It’s decent. There are moments that almost shimmer, little phrases, haunting images, crumbs of what could’ve been a much sharper book. But decent prose can only carry you so far when you feel like you’re stuck on a train ride with no destination and no one you care about. I didn’t root for a single person. Not one. The Wastelands themselves? Intriguing on paper. On the page, disappointingly underbaked.
I kept hoping the plot would kick in, that something would jolt this story into gear. A big reveal, a betrayal, a monstrous fae-bird snatching someone off the caboose - ANYTHING. But no. There is a “twist,” technically, toward the end. I won’t spoil it, but suffice to say it didn’t feel earned so much as inserted, like someone remembered last-minute that books should probably have climaxes.
2 stars from me, and honestly, most of that is for the concept and the moody, atmospheric groundwork. I can see what Brooks wanted to do. There’s ambition here, and I’m not writing her off as a writer - I’d probably give her next book a shot. But this one? This was a chore. A beautiful, plodding, disappointingly quiet chore.
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
What a book, since page one Sarah get me hooked with this book. What a amazing debut for some writer. The Cautious Traveller's Guide to The Wastelands is a gripping post-apocalyptic story that have many POVs of the group of travellers on the Trans Siberian Express. What a way of create a epic atmosphere in a book, that was my favourite part, plus it was delightful written and the pace was perfect for the book too. Characters got me hooked to the book too, the whole sense of travelling around the world that is a wreck and everyone keep their own secrets and their own battles. Now I need a paper copy of this book and I will keep my eye for more work of this talented author. Thank you very much to NetGalley, the editorial and the author for the fantastic ARC
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Xenophobia
Minor: Death, Violence
I went back and forth on this between 2 stars and 3 stars, but ultimately I settled on 2 because, in retrospect, there is too much left unexplained in this story. We are plunged into a thing called the Wastelands, and we get that something happened at some point which caused it to develop whole new species of plants and animals and that it is now highly dangerous to humans. We never do find out what happened to cause this or when it happened. We get some sort of explanation as to what is happening now as a result of the train passing through the Wastelands, but the reason for their continuing the journey isn't really satisfactory. Maybe greed is enough. I get that this is supposed to be some huge metaphor for the imposition of technology on the earth, but it doesn't really work for me.
It felt like the author didn’t really know where she was going with this and just made it up as she went along. A cool concept but the execution could be better and there could be more context to why the things that were happening were happening.
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes