Wanderers

Este tío se merece el Locus, el Nebula, el Hugo, un Oscar, dos Globos de Oro, el Princesa de Asturias y, si me apuras, hasta el Nobel. Ha sabido captar perfectamente lo que ha dado de sí 2020 (y parte de 2021) antes de que empezara. Conforme lo iba leyendo, me asombraba cada vez más que se hubiera publicado en 2019, antes del Covid, del asalto al Capitolio y del auge de las teorías de la conspiración más rocambolescas.

Quizá, sí lo hubiera leído cuando se publicó, me habría parecido un tanto descabellado y me hubiera gustado menos. Pero al leerlo después de una pandemia real, me asombra la capacidad de Wendig para vislumbrar la reacción de la humanidad ante un desafío de estas características.

La trama te atrapa desde el principio y los personajes que van apareciendo están muy bien construidos. Los giros de guion me han sorprendido y han hecho que me quedara a cuadros en varias ocasiones.

Un libro totalmente recomendable.

Maybe not the best book to read in 2020, but I read it on a whim and I'm glad I did it when I did it. It made the book feel like it carried a bit of extra weight, or baggage, or something when I could compare it to what's going on around me. You have a disease sweeping the world. You have a small group (the Flock) immune to the disease, walking like a sleepwalker to an unknown destination and guarded by a group of family and friends (the Shepherds). Then you have society unrest all around them, as fears and hatred become front and center. Things end for America, poorly.

This was a hard book to review. I really wanted to like it, to the point where I caught myself trying to rationalize myself to even just 4 stars "just because". In the end though, while I liked the journey and the concept, the ending was...really lackluster to me. Not a lot really happens over the course of the book, and while you get some really intimate pictures of the walkers and the shepherds painted for you, it's a lot of window dressing on a tire fire of society commentary. There's some red herrings thrown out for the ultimate cause of the disease, but despite that I still managed to not be surprised at all at where it led.

If you like the idea of end-of-the-world diseases, societal collapse, and all that sci-fi dystopian setting, maybe still give this a try. There's lots to like here. The ending didn't click with me though, but maybe it will for you.