It’s 1899 and passengers are boarding the Trans-Siberian Express, a twenty-carriage luxury train which will take them from Beijing to Moscow in time to attend the Great Exhibition. The four thousand mile journey will travel through the Wastelands, an abandoned wilderness where the landscape and wildlife seem to be undergoing strange changes and mutations. Since the changes were first recorded several decades earlier, Walls have been built to separate the Wastelands from the rest of Russia and China and passengers are not allowed to leave the train in the area between the Walls. On the previous journey, something went wrong: the glass in the windows cracked, exposing the train to the dangers of the Wastelands. The Trans-Siberian Company blamed the glassmaker and have assured passengers that the train is now safe, but doubts still remain.

The story of the 1899 Trans-Siberian crossing is told from the perspectives of several of the passengers. First, there’s Marya Petrovna, who has boarded the train under a false name and disguised as a mourning widow. At first we don’t know who Marya is or why she is hiding her identity, but we do know that she believes an injustice has been done and has come on this journey in search of answers. Then there’s Dr Henry Grey, an English naturalist whose latest theories have been disproved and who hopes to restore his reputation by studying the Wastelands. Finally, Zhang Weiwei is a sixteen-year-old girl known as ‘the child of the train’ because she was born in the Third Class sleeping car and has spent her whole life travelling backwards and forwards on the train. There are many other people onboard the train, but these are the central three around whom the novel revolves.

The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands is an unusual, imaginative novel and there were many things I enjoyed about it. I’ve read several other books set on trains, but usually, even in Murder on the Orient Express, the train simply provides a way of bringing a group of people together in close confines or of getting them from one destination to another. In this book, the train itself is an important part of the story and could even almost be viewed as another character. Sarah Brooks’ worldbuilding is very impressive; the novel has been compared to Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi and Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus and it did make me think of the latter in particular. So much attention to detail goes into describing the various carriages and compartments, the history of the train and its earlier crossings, and the fictional travel guide which gives the novel its name. The Wastelands themselves are less clearly described and although it’s suggested that life there has become tainted in some way, we don’t really know how or why, and much of the mystery still remains at the end of the book, which I’m sure was deliberate – but quite frustrating!

However, I felt that the setting and atmosphere came at the expense of the plot. The pace was very slow, with more than half of the novel devoted to setting the scene and introducing the characters, and it seemed to end just as things were starting to happen. I also would have preferred an explanation for what was happening in the Wastelands and was left wondering what we were intended to take away from the book. Was there a message in there about climate change and the environment – or migration, with walls being built to keep people out (or in)? I think we’re definitely supposed to question whether it’s best to travel cautiously or curiously, embracing change or turning away from it.

The Cautious Traveller’s Guide… is a fascinating alternate history novel, then, with lots to think about and debate. I didn’t find it completely satisfying, but I’m sure the right reader will love it.

Thanks to Orion Publishing Group for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 6/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.