Title: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands

Author: Sarah Brooks

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Hachette, 2024; RRP: $34.99

The Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize is an annual award for manuscripts by unagented women writers from the UK and Ireland who have not previously had a novel published. Leeds-based academic Sarah Brooks won the prize in 2019 with a draft of The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, a major turning point in her writing career that has delivered the goods.

Brooks has a background in speculative fiction, both in her studies and her writing, with a PhD examining Chinese ghost stories and short stories published in a range of spec fic magazines.

Her debut novel spans genres, much in the same way the railway central to the story spans a wasteland between Beijing and Moscow. Set in 1899, the story mixes a steampunk aesthetic with the fabulous landscape that would not be lost in a Jeff VanderMeer novel. One might read a touch of ecofiction in there too, as a theme is the way in which a fantastical wasteland appears to have been exacerbated if not spawned by technology, a wild environment that the Great Trans-Siberian Express seeks to defy with its mighty train.

Aboard we have passengers, crew and scientists, the story focusing on three: solo traveller Marya, with her mysterious past and First Class ticket; Weiwei, born and raised on the train; and naturalist Henry Grey, who has an ambition to present a breakthrough discovery from the journey at the Great Exhibition in Moscow, a celebration of the latest and greatest in knowledge.

This journey is clouded by a rumoured scandal on the previous, adding to the tension and thrill for those aboard, where fear of contamination by the chaos of the wasteland is ever-present. Just to look out the windows is to risk anxiety, breakdown or worse, for something has gone amiss and nature has become scary, dangerous and unpredictable.

Sarah Brooks interviewed about The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wasteland

@ the publishing post

Why ride the train? If you’re in First Class, it’s a talking point for those who have exhausted many of the other adventures money can buy; if you’re in Third, likely it’s the best of bad options. It’s also expedient for business and a fascination for the curious, such as Dr Grey, who sees an opportunity to redeem himself following a previous professional embarrassment.

Marya has her own reasons for being on board, ones that carry a high degree of risk, for amongst those on board are two representatives of the Trans-Siberia Company, akin to political officers of Communist Russia, tasked with ensuring the good reputation of the Company is not sullied by unfortunate events. For there have been events in the past, and a repeat is unthinkable. Commerce, profit and market confidence ride the rails, and these two ‘Crows’ will do what must be done to protect them.

For Weiwei, the train is home, its rhythms familiar and comforting, but this journey brings an event – and an enigmatic stranger – that will have her challenging her assumptions about this sealed world of steel and steam and those who run it.

Taking place over a little over three weeks, the story follows the three and a well-drawn supporting cast as the train makes its way towards Moscow.

The title is taken from a fictional guide that sets the tone for the story, a travelogue from which excerpts provide slices of background and set the mood: this is one of the great train trips of the world and one of the most dangerous. But not even the author, Rostov, could predict how this mighty rattler could threaten the stability of the world order.

As it turns out, Brooks’ balance of character and setting makes her a fine guide as the story picks up steam, arriving dead on time for its fateful conclusion. All aboard!

Reviewed by: Jason Nahrung

Ballarat Writers Book Review Group

Review copy supplied by the publisher