2025/047: The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands — Sarah Brooks

The Company had always disliked anything they perceived as superstitious or backward, but until recently an uneasy truce had existed. The crew could keep their small rituals, their icons and gods, as long as they were discreet, as long as the passengers found them charming. But now, they have been told, it is time for a change. A new century is approaching – the passengers do not want mysticism, they want modernity. There is no place for these rituals any more, said the Company. [loc. 367]

Siberia, 1899: Valentin Rostov's famous guidebook, from which this novel takes its title, begins by warning the traveller not to attempt the journey between Moscow and Beijing on the Trans-Siberian Express 'unless you are certain of your own evenness of mind' [loc. 153]. The heavily-armoured train's previous journey through the Wastelands ended catastrophically with the deaths of three people -- though nobody who was on board can quite recall what happened. 

Passengers on this new voyage, all heading for the Great Exhibition in Moscow, include a woman travelling under a pseudonym, a young girl who was famously born on the train, and a disgraced naturalist who's determined to redeem himself. There are also aristocrats and peasants, snipers and scientists, the train's Captain (who grew up in Siberia before it became Wasteland) and the two representatives of the Trans-Siberia Company, who are known as the Crows. Once the train has passed through the heavily-guarded Wall and into the Wasteland, even looking out of the window might be dangerous. For the Wasteland has, for nearly a century, been turning against humanity. And if its creatures enter the train, everyone will die.

This is a beautifully-written novel that I think I may have read, too hastily, at the wrong time. (Or perhaps my 'evenness of mind' was inadequate.) I suspect a reread is in order, so that I can soak up the atmosphere: the fluid horror and beauty of the Wastelands, the themes of evolution and of human impact on the natural world, the hints of the effects of the transformation on the wider world.