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A review by thesillyoldbear
Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
1.0
I've been a fan of Chuck Wendig for a while now, both his fiction and as an online personality. I've also been waiting eagerly waiting for this book for months, as have many others. So it's kinda hard to have to give this book such a low rating.
Let me be clear, 99% of this book was absolutely amazing. The premise was sound, the characters believable and easy to be sympathetic toward. Hell, even the ending was solid, strange.
But then there was that whopping great big assault scene that served no purpose other than establish threat. Threat that could be — and mostly already was — established in other ways. It's a lazy trope, and I'm mad as hell that he used it.
But maybe we should hear about the use of it as a trope from the man himself:
"But it is a reason not to rely on it as a creepy, shitty, trite trope. It’s important to realize that this thing is used again and again in fiction. Particularly in the SFF genre. It’s not treated as serious. It’s treated as a “plot device.” There’s no gravity to it. It’s like horrible wallpaper."
It seems that Mr. Wendig is more a "do as I say, not as I do" type than the example setting type, as he would have us believe.
If none of that bothers you, you'll probably like this immensely. Honestly I wish I could have, especially with how much it had going for it otherwise.
Let me be clear, 99% of this book was absolutely amazing. The premise was sound, the characters believable and easy to be sympathetic toward. Hell, even the ending was solid, strange.
But then there was that whopping great big assault scene that served no purpose other than establish threat. Threat that could be — and mostly already was — established in other ways. It's a lazy trope, and I'm mad as hell that he used it.
But maybe we should hear about the use of it as a trope from the man himself:
"But it is a reason not to rely on it as a creepy, shitty, trite trope. It’s important to realize that this thing is used again and again in fiction. Particularly in the SFF genre. It’s not treated as serious. It’s treated as a “plot device.” There’s no gravity to it. It’s like horrible wallpaper."
It seems that Mr. Wendig is more a "do as I say, not as I do" type than the example setting type, as he would have us believe.
If none of that bothers you, you'll probably like this immensely. Honestly I wish I could have, especially with how much it had going for it otherwise.