Note to self: when requesting new book releases, be sure to check page counts. Topping out at a whopping 800 pages, Wanderers is a book I probably would not have requested has I known how long it was. Shana wakes up one morning to her sister sleepwalking. She cannot be woken or stopped. She seems to be on a mission, and is slowly joined by others. As society starts collapsing around the spreading epidemic, Chuck Wendig paints a tantalizing picture of the end of the world. Given its extreme length, I’m not finished with this one yet, but I can tell you it’s starting out really well.

I had such high hopes for this book. After the first chapter, I was sure this was going to be an awesome read, all 800 pages of it. Because of its length, I didn't read any of the reviews before diving in. So many people complain about the extremely long books solely because of the length and I didn't want to allow for any preconceived notions. We first meet Shanna, who wakes up one morning to find her sister walking away from their home like a zombie. She is unresponsive, so Shana follows her, thinking she's had a nervous breakdown and is a danger to herself. As the early part of the story builds, we learn there are other walkers. They cannot be stopped and they are all walking in one direction, toward something unknown. Many of the walkers are being trailed by concerned family members, or shepherds, keeping watch over the flock. I loved Shana from the start. Her character was perfectly drawn and I had such a connection with her and her love for her sister. Some of the other primary characters were just as complex and interesting. As the story went on, the cast grew and grew and the plot got weirder. Wendig goes on a deep-dive with some of the stories of tertiary characters and this is where a lot of the length of this book comes from. It is completely irrelevant and just adds bulk to the book. To me, it felt like he had this master list of personalities he wanted to write and decided he should put them all in one book. This was not a good idea. Overall, I wanted this story to go in a different direction. I wasn't satisfied with the reason these people were walking and really wanted a different outcome. There were also some holes in the plot that were not filled with answers. If you're into epic science fiction novels, you might enjoy this book, but it was middle of the road for me and a disappointment for the high hopes I had at the beginning. *Advance copy provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

It took me the entire summer to read this 800-page gorilla, mostly due to putting it down after many attempts to get into the story of a western migration of sleepwalkers (with their loved ones following along). Comparisons to The Stand are valid, but Chuck Wendig knows this and does his best to make the story original.

There's plenty of political commentary which may scare off some red-staters, but that's not the problem here. What weighs down the story is the first half of the book. Am I saying it takes 400 pages for it to get started? Not exactly, but yes. The second half (the third act, more accurately) has its payoff and it's a good one. I'm afraid too many will DNF and quite frankly I almost did. If it weren't for the fact that I'm enjoying Wendig's Miriam Black series so much, I'd have tossed Wanderers aside.

I didn't love this book like I thought I would, and that's too bad. But there's always The Stand and that deserves a read every decade or so. I can wait.

All I can say about this book is WOW! I have long been a fan of Wendig's blog, but have not really read anything by him. Once I saw him at BookCon this summer, I knew I wanted to read this book, and it did not disappoint. Wendig is ambitious, touching on all of the issues of our modern life through the tale of a mysterious sickness that descends on ordinary individuals, causing them to wander for no reason. They cannot talk, they just walk, and cannot be stopped in their progress. I won't say much more because that would spoil the book, but the humanity and inhumanity prevalent in this book will have readers hooked and wanting to see what happens next. I cannot wait to check out Wendig's catalogue and find more gems!

Too real, to close to home, to possible. This a well imagined and written story. Fans of Stephen King’s The Stand, or Joe Hill’s Fireman take note.

Im really not impressed with this book. It seems an interesting story line and i would really like to find out where the walkers wind up, but not enough to slog through 800 pages of excessive foul language and poorly written dialogue. The narrative was engaging and caught my interest as it seemed to wrap around several themes to include politics, religion, and social issues. But im afraid the dialogue and overly used aggressive foul language proved to be to much of a distraction. I do wish authors would realize bad language is not necessary to sell good story. It isnt missed when edited out and can cut the word count condidersbly. But that is my opinion for what its worth. Moving on to my next book and leaving this one behind.
I received a free digital copy of this book through netgalley. All opinions are expressly my own.

A rock star. A radio host. And a girl who appears to be sleeping. Come on, how can you resist something like this, especially when the writing is so sharp, so fluid, and so engrossing you forget you are reading because you are so caught up in this world? Loved this book and this author.

an interesting book though I wish it had been a bit shorter at over 800 pages it takes too long for the introductions to end and the real story to begin. I did like the ending though

Chuck Wendig takes readers on a monumental journey with this novel about life on the verge of collapse. A seemingly random group of people from across the country are falling in line as those around them die from a mysterious disease known as the White Mask. The walkers, in sleepwalker trance, are accompanied by shepherds, folks devoted to see the "flock" to its unknown destination. A few devoted CDC scientists and such are among the shepherds. Pulling the strings behind the scene is the Black Swan, an artificial intelligence that has seen into the future. Wendig's story is no easy read - it's long, frightening and too close to the techno edge that finds us all are leaning too close to the guard rail.

While I found the premise and the first few chapters interesting, I had trouble with the slow pacing. It’s a fascinating concept and the writing is top notch, but the epic progression style didn’t work for me.

Many books detail life after a cataclysmic event. This book takes you right through the event itself. Upon waking, Shana discovers that her little sister has turned into a sleepwalker. She cannot wake up, and she cannot be stopped. Every few hours another sleepwalker joins her. The CDC swoops in to investigate, fearing a contagion or bio-terrorist attack. While the sleepwalkers grow, a racist and well armed faction rises to power, determined that white supremacy will once again rule. Further, a new and terrifying fungal disease sweeps across the nation, threatening to wipe out all of humanity.

The book has an enormous cast, and it is hard to give an accurate description of everything that is going on. The book felt so realistic, the characters were real and dynamic. This is definitely one of those epic, must read books. 5 stars.

This is a Brandon Sanderson length book, so I'm *still* reading it. Alas, as much as I read, I'm not terribly quick about it. I'll update when I'm able to finish, but since I read 4 to 5 books at a time, it'll be a minute. "Invasive" is the longest Chuck Wendig novel I've read previously. This expansive writing is completely different, but I'm really enjoying it so far! It's great to get this kind of world immersion. This year I’m trying hard to read books by more diverse authors, at the very least, female authors. So it’s high praise that I chose Wendig to be one of my white, cis, hetero author reads :)

Now THIS is a book: a great big epic story that is entertaining and frightening and fantastic. "Wanderers" was probably my favorite summer read of 2019. At 800 pages, it may be a bit intimidating, but it is one of the books that makes you glad it is so long, because you don't want it to ever end.

It has all these great elements that I just love in a book: science fiction, mystery, intrigue, an apocalypse and even a bit of romance. It is filled with complex, realistic characters and we see the events unfolding through multiple points of view.

The events in the book are frighteningly realistic. I think an apocalypse of the sort depicted in the book is quite a real possibility, as well as the collapse of society that follows it. Wendig does a terrific job portraying the good and awful sides of humanity and how people might react should the worst happen.

I have been recommending this book to everyone I talk to. I will be looking for more books by this author.

I was really digging this story. The characters, the build up. I was invested. Then the ending happened.

Give me good post-apocalyptic fiction every time. Give me 800 pages of a well written book and I’m a hog in heaven. Give me good characters and a barn burning story line. Unfortunately, this book did not fully live up to my expectations.

It’s a good premise and some of the characters are definitely interesting. A gay rock star following the flock in hopes of finding some inner peace was a real favorite. Other characters also pleased me to a certain degree. But the plot itself, the menacing over-the top villains, the mysterious disease, the inscrutable AI controlling everyone’s destiny … none of it touched me. That is the real failing of the book. It didn’t make me feel any real sense of horror, pity, fondness, or curiosity. I just meandered down the road with the flock, hoping for an interesting ending. In the meantime, it felt like a really looooong dusty road, and that’s unforgivable for a book of this genre.

Wanderers was a fabulous read and one that I highly recommend! I found myself immersed in the plot and could not put the novel down. I plan to pick up the physical copy to read over and over again!

“Wanderers” is a novel that was compared to Stephen King’s “The Stand” - one of my favorite novels of all time, thus I couldn’t wait to read it. In the beginning, I was highly intrigued and was racing through the novel, completely captivated by Shana and her plight and then unfortunately I ended up feeling less connected to her as the novel wore on. In addition, unfortunately, I found the novel’s pace to slow considerably fairly early on and I lost focus.

While I had high hopes for this novel, I felt like the writing was a bit choppy and the novel fell short of my expectations. I think in this case, it was a matter of my simply being the wrong reader for this novel.

This was another buddy read with Kaceey.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group Ballantine and Chuck Wendig for an arc of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

This was a marathon of a read that I had trouble connecting to from the beginning! I was shocked to learn this was over 800 pages, and sadly I could not stay focused throughout.

As many reviewers have mentioned, there are similarities with Stephen King’s The Stand. A book I just loved beginning to end. Sadly I did not feel the same magic with this read.

There are some fabulous reviews for this book, unfortunately it was not a good fit for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group Ballantine for the ARC to read and review.

The Stand is probably my very favorite Stephen King book so I grabbed Wanderers when the jacket plot sounded familiar. This is not The Stand rewritten. It is a very good story of it's own merit. Any type of story that spends the time to build each character and bring them together in an epic community to accomplish a goal...even though they did not know that's what they were doing in the first part...will give you an explosive ending that makes it worth the time you invest in their story. Chuck Wendig may have borrowed the popularity of the The Stand to catch a reader's interest, but he keeps it by writing one heck of a book.

I live my life by the phrase, “Mama didn’t raise a quitter, but she did raise a fool and that’s a terrible combination.” (It used to just be “Mama didn’t raise a quitter,” but then my dad used it against me when I was discussing quitting my job and now I have to use the long version.)

Anyways.

I tend to hang on to things long after they start being unhealthy for me. Let me point to my restaurant job, to my high school friendships, and other various habits as proof. And this never shows its head more than when I’m reading a book. I tend to force myself to finish a book, even if I don’t care for it, because I hate the idea of leaving something unfinished. It’s only recently that I realized that maybe it’s better for me – and everyone, really – if let myself put things down that I don’t want to finish.

I mean, yeah I have this site and a podcast, but no one’s holding a gun to my head. I’m not getting graded (except by that person that gave me one star on iTunes but I decided to just accept it and move on). My life doesn’t depend on finishing a book that I don’t want to finish.

So it was this thinking that lead me put down WANDERERS by Chuck Wendig, and label it DNF.


WANDERERS is a multi-POV novel about an epidemic of sleepwalkers, the shepherds that guard and protect them, and the charged political climate that surrounds them all. Very much inspired by THE STAND by Stephen King (and, in my opinion THE FIREMAN by Joe Hill), the sleepwalkers spark mystery and controversy by the fact that they don’t need to eat or drink, their skin can’t be pierced, and if they’re stopped they explode.

Yeah. Wholeass. They explode.

So I know what you’re wondering: why didn’t I finish it? I can tell you what happens in the first half of this behemoth of a book, but why would I stop there?

Well. It’s a bit of a story.

Y’all know that I’m nonbinary and hella queer. It’s all over my Twitter, I have a pronoun sticker I’m gonna stick to my Podcast Movement badge, any Picrew images I make heavily feature the nonbinary pride colors. I don’t make it a secret online. But in real life?

I can count one occasion that people used my pronouns, and that was Worldcon San Jose. Even in my mall job when I brought it up, no one used my pronouns. And it’s okay. It’s not the kick in the chest that it could be, and with living in a red state, I’m always a little on edge to share that anyways.

But now I run(ish) the Twitter account for work. And we follow a lot of right-wing conservative people. People who, if they met me in real life, would want to do me harm. And because I represent my company on this account, I can’t do anything. Can’t unfollow them, can’t block them, can’t even really take a stance on anything. Which is, y’know. How things just be, I suppose.

But it just means that for a good chunk of my day, I’m surrounded by this immense sense of discomfort and fear. And the last thing I want to see when I sit down for some me-time is more of the same shit.

This book features POVs and characters that take us deep, deep into the world of extreme conservatism. It’s always framed as bad, the narrative condemns it every single time it comes up, but it’s scary and exhausting to be confronted by my real life problems when I’m trying to escape them in fiction. And as we get deeper to the white supremacy – the gun hoarding, the swastikas, the shooting, the overdose scene, the rape scene – there was nothing in the narrative to energize me to move forward. Even the scenes that didn’t feature these elements were heavy. Its mimicry of our real life politics, of our real life situation, makes it a poignant and relatable read. But it’s just too much for me, guys.

I know that the world isn’t going to bend to my whims and treat me 100% perfectly, 100% of the time. I know this, I’m acutely aware of this at every moment of every day. I have to live with and deal with a world that constantly sees me as Other, that wants to pick apart my identity and find some faulty bit they can use as a “gotcha” and tell me I’m lying, or doing this for attention, or just trying to make people upset. But it’s one thing to be confronted with that in real life, and another thing to be confronted with that in fiction.

Listen. Listen. I’m not saying Chuck Wendig is a bad writer. Far from it – if anything, Chuck is one of the few people that I trust to write this. He’s a very outspoken dude on Twitter about hating the way our country currently works, and I’m not like, saying he’s secretly a white supremacist. He’s got a masterful sense of prose, he doesn’t shy away from the darker shit, and he writes with a passion that outshines the goddamn sun. I admire him as a writer, and hope that one day I can write with even a fraction of that passion, an atom of that fearlessness.

But he wrote a book that’s just . . . too real for me to deal with right now.

Maybe one day I can come back and finish this book. One day, when I’m in my own home and not shoved in a closet, when I’ve got a support system, when I’ve got real life people who use my pronouns and don’t question it, my own existence will energize me enough to read the ending of this story. But for now, when I am exhausted and holding myself together with packing tape and spite? I have to step back. I have to, and I won’t apologize for it despite every ounce of trauma in my body demanding that I should.

I enjoyed the invocation of Stephen King, and I love that it stands as a new contender with THE STAND and THE FIREMAN in the spec fiction camp of pandemic fiction. (I’ve mentioned before that THE STAND is one of my favorite summer books to read, so I’m always down for pandemic fiction.) I enjoyed the resident AI, Black Swan, and at some point I’d love to sit down and analyze the fuck out of it as I’m known to do with AI characters. But for now?

You gotta know when to fold ’em, gang. And it’s time for me to fold.

You may not have the same problems as me, and if you’re down with it I’d really suggest that you read this book. Like I said, it’s a good snapshot of today’s worldstate, and I have hope that things get better in the novel at some point. Just because it wasn’t for me doesn’t mean it’s not for you.

And if you can trust anyone with these topics, with handling this the way it needs to be handled, it’s Chuck Wendig.
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Check out the podcast episode GOTTA KNOW WHEN TO FOLD 'EM, out now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify