I have always fancied travelling on one of those luxury train journeys. Stepping into the footsteps left by explorer Michael Palin (or perhaps less so ex-Conservative MP Michael Portillo), the idea of sitting in comfort whilst travelling to a new destination, watching the world go by with perhaps a book (or books!) and tea for company, is a favourite daydream of mine.
So this book, set on a journey made by the Great Trans-Siberian Express in 1899, sounded like it might be just my sort of thing. A journey on a great steampunk-y train, all brass and steam, sounds wonderful.
The book begins with the train setting off from Beijing Station (although (pedant’s point) of course had it been 1899, it would have been Peking Station, I guess.) From Beijing in China to Moscow in Russia will take fifteen days. Run by the mysterious Company, whose agents known as the Crows police the train, it is not only an important means of transport for people of all classes, but is an essential means to transporting goods and cargo that keeps commerce running. Readers of the film and TV series Snowpiercer may think this sounds familiar.
We are told the story initially through Marya Petrovna, although other characters are also given – Zhang Weiwei is a young child who was born on the train and has never really left it, Henry Grey is a naturalist who seems to have recently been disgraced and who is determined to prove his worthiness to the scientific community, for example.
However, what I thought might be a steampunk version of an Agatha Christie-esque trip of opulence and pleasure soon becomes something odder. We discover that the landscape between the train stops is known as ‘the Wastelands’, and just travelling through it can have effects on people. Strange things are seen outside the carriages, there’s supernatural figures often glimpsed in the corridors and people can be prone to fainting, hallucinogenic visions and fits as the journey progresses. The trip is not without dangers, but travellers are willing to take the risk – albeit cautiously, as the title suggests!
The tension is raised as Marya explains that a disaster befell a previous journey, although details of what happened are rather vague. There are whispers that the train isn’t safe. No one, not even Weiwei, can remember exactly what happened on the previous trip.
To add to this, we find that the train has a stowaway, and that some of the passengers can’t remember anything beyond the train itself. The Company itself may have secrets of its own on board the train that some are keen to discover, and the Crows, the train’s military police, are determined to keep secret.
So, as you can see what begins as a rather sedate train journey soon becomes something more. As secrets and stories begin to unravel, the passengers and crew must survive their journey together, even as something uncontrollable seems to be breaking in . . .
By the end of the novel, the reader may feel that this is rather like one of those metaphorical mind-trips that SF was so fond of in the 1960’s, or perhaps something akin to Jeff Vandermeer’s stories. Although Curious Traveller’s Guide is fantasy, personally I was reminded of Stanislaw Lem’s science fiction novel Solaris, as the journey becomes one of the mind as well as one of a physical nature. As I read further, questions were raised – Is the journey a metaphor for life? I liked the point that the train appears to be a microcosm of society, in that the passengers on board range from peasants in the 3rd class carriages to the elite in the 1st, each showing varying ways of coping with the journey.
Towards the end, we realise that the travel is not just to Moscow but actually somewhere else rather more esoteric. The enigmatic conclusion leaves things rather unclear, as the effects of this journey go beyond the train itself.
In summary, The Cautious Travellers Guide to the Wastelands is a real mind-bender of a book. It’s imaginative and well written, memorable for those readers who like weird stuff. Be warned – readers, you may lose connection with reality as the story goes on and end up somewhere very odd indeed.
THE CAUTIOUS TRAVELLERS GUIDE TO THE WASTELANDS by Sarah Brooks
Published by W&N, May 2024
336 pages
ISBN: 978 1399 607 537
Review by Mark Yon
