Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC of The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson.

I give this 4.5 stars overall.

I absolutely love Adam Johnson's work. Both The Orphan Master's Son and Fortune Smiles are favorites of mine . His short story, Nirvana, lives rent free in my head. The man is just talented. He's a must read for me.

The Wayfinder, a historical epic, was not what I expected from him, but one that I fully embrace on the other side of those 736 pages. Johnson has wells of range and the artistic vision and The Wayfinder is a shining example of how we can always expect whatever comes next from him will be top tier.

The story is told over two timelines, which may not seem clear in the first 15% or so, but does solidify early-ish in the novel. One timeline follows Kōrero, a young woman on an island inhabited by shipwrecked slaves three generations ago. No strangers have visited their island, and it is rapidly nearing the full depletion of its resources with no wood available for boats and no community members with the skills to sail. or navigate. By some miracle, two young brothers on their own journey wash ashore on Kōrero's island and her people begin to determine a way to save themselves.

The other timeline happens in the very near past and revolves around the two brothers and their family and their longer journey to end up on Kōrero's island. My one of three minor gripes with this whole novel is this narrative difference, because, with the timelines being so close in time, it, at times, did not work for me. Truly, what I wanted was more of Kōrero and her journey. thinking from the description that this is about her journey to leadership, but I think the majority of the book is about the brothers and the royal family of Tonga and the empire's negative influences. I think I would have been fine if the first timeline came first and there was a second part of the novel with Kōrero's storyline and that would have made everything feel more balanced instead of back-and-forth just when you get invested in each part. But honestly, that's very minor, because Johnson tells the story of the Tu'i Tonga empire and introduces the characters in such a way that you want to know more about each of them and you want each chapter to spend more time with whomever is being featured at the moment. (The second gripe is I didn't ever have any idea of what century/time I was in exactly, given all my knowledge of the Tongan empire comes from this book, so I would have loved some references to the year, both when this begins and how much time passes with all of these water journeys, because I wasn't sure how long the timeline actually was. The third gripe is that I wanted to know for sure about Papa Toki, Hine and the others given Kōrero's tasks at the end of the novel - I think having a knowledge of how much time had passed in the novel would have helped with this).

Johnson does not shy away from darker aspects of war, PTSD, sexual assault of women, and slavery. He also features the depletion of resources and extinction of animals, the purposeful burning of islands to de-home inhabitants, and the offerings required to the kingdom that leave communities with nothing. The overarching story covers the themes of empire, of environmental and animal conservation, and of trauma, while also bringing messages of hope and healing and forgiveness and the power of community and nonviolence in a world full of violence.

There are little note sections interspersed throughout chapters that convey the oral storytelling traditions of the Tongans and recount tales that may directly influence the characters or the history and culture. There is also a lot of poetry and translations of Tongan and Fijian language that adds emphasis to the stories. You can tell Johnson researched and carefully arranged these stories and these usages, and I appreciate his efforts to respectfully bring this empire to life in so many faceted ways.

When it comes to characters, Johnson can make you both love and hate a horrendous character, or feel such sympathy for those that don't have the freedom to feel it for themselves: Aho, Tapoto, Lolohea, the Wayfinder, Finau, Moon Appearing, the Tu'i Tonga, Sun Shower, the Tamaha, Punake, Havea, Tiri, etc. etc. So many characters have the opportunity to shine and show multifaceted personalities and character arcs, and all the arcs felt true to what we were told of those people. Even knowing with Johnson's hints who would die several chapters ahead, it would still hit like a gut punch even when you learned more about the other characters and their motivations, while not ideal, were valid to their feelings. This is what makes Johnson so fantastic - he can make you cheer for a character and in the next sentence turn that on a dime and it is all entirely planned for.