A review by manuphoto
The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

The premise is quite classic: big dumb object shows up, havoc ensues, how will humanity manage? Dun, dun, duuuun.

Ok, been there, done that, but the story has some scope and interesting elements, at least on the surface. Sadly, the execution is very disappointing.

Leiber choses to have multiple viewpoints for the same storyline, which is ok but he bounces around too much and we lose track and interest somewhat for the main characters.

The prose is alright, nothing fancy but very readable and clear. It’s also pretty bland, which I don’t honestly mind that much if the story or characters captivate me. Here.. I was interested, but never truly captivated. 

After a little over a hundred pages I started to find the book quite repetitive and a bit tedious. But the story made it look like there’ll be a big jump, another big event that would elevate the novel to another level or add a layer of complexity that would make it exciting.

But it never really came about. Some parts are fine, others plain boring and useless. It just makes for a disjointed whole that was slow and not that interesting. Overall, a very underwhelming read. It has some nice ideas and moments, but as a novel, it is bloated and really not that good. Not utterly terrible I’d say.. but not far from it. If I didn’t want to read all the Hugo award winning novels, I’d have DNFed it, and I very rarely do that.

There is also some weird sex in there.. I’m not shocked or anything (remember, I’m French), but I thought it was strange and served no purpose at all except to satisfy some urge. I guess old Fritz needed to get some action and couldn’t… oh well.

Also, I’ve read books written by Leiber in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s and his sexism and racism haven’t evolved nor improved over those decades. This guy was retrograde even by those days’ standards, really rough. To him, women are irrational and chaotic (although I will say that Margo has some nice moments in this novel) and black people are savages who smoke

weed all day, and only white males can figure things out and actually do something coherent. Brutal… I understand that these feelings were sadly common at the time, but he could have avoided rubbing our noses in them that much.