Book Review: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

The Cautious Traveller's Guide
to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

Book title: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands
Author: Sarah Brooks
Genre: Steampunk fantasy
Published: June 18, 2024
372 pages
My rating: 3/5

“There is a woman on the platform with a borrowed name. With steam in her eyes and the taste of oil on her lips. The shrill, desperate whistle of the train turns into the sobbing of a young girl nearby and the cries of the trinket vendors, hawking their flimsy amulets as protection against Wastelands sickness.”

1899, a train runs from Beijing to Moscow across the Siberian Wastelands where strange phenomena are taking place. Marya Petrovna, a young woman with a borrowed name, boards the train to find out what happened to her father on the previous crossing. Weiwei, a girl born on the train, defies the rules of the train company and protects a stowaway girl. Henry Grey, a disgraced naturalist, is determined to restore his reputation. Together, they must survive the journey even as the uncontrollable Wastelands seem to break into the train.

The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands is Sarah Brooks’s debut novel. The premise sounded fascinating, and I was excited to read this steampunk fantasy, but unfortunately, the book left me a little disappointed.

The novel is supposed to be historical fantasy explicitly set in the year 1899, but the historical elements are very thin and basically just limited to the train having a steam locomotive. There is no mention of the Boxer Rebellion or the colonization of China or the social unrest and harsh Russification policies under Tsar Nicholas II. The fantasy elements were very thin as well, especially in the beginning of the book. There are multiple hints that something is wrong in the Siberian Wastelands, but the first concrete glimpse of what’s going on there only happens around page 50.

The book had a very slow start in other ways as well. We are introduced to the three main characters Marya, Weiwei, and Henry Grey, each with their own storylines. However, the narrative jumped from one storyline to another, and I lost focus on what was supposed to be the main storyline. Was it Marya’s quest to learn what happened to her father? Or was it Weiwei’s friendship with the stowaway girl? Henry Grey’s storyline in particular was underutilized for the majority of the book. I presume he was supposed to have some kind of redemption arc in the end, but it didn’t feel earned.

Because so much real estate was spent on setting up the story, the climax and resolution happened very fast, and it felt like the book was over before the action had even really started. I felt this book was trying to do too much, and the author didn’t quite succeed in pulling all the storylines to a satisfying conclusion.

I was also disappointed with the fantasy worldbuilding. Instead of being immersive and evocative, I found the descriptions of the Wastelands to be confusing. That might have been the intention, as the characters themselves struggle to make sense of what they are seeing in the ever-evolving and changing landscape. But I would have preferred as a reader to have a clearer understanding of what was actually going on. Now I found it hard to visualize the Wastelands.

If you don’t mind a historical fantasy where the historical elements are thin and the fantasy elements rather confusing, you might enjoy this book more than I did. I gave The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands three stars.