The Wanderers [Kindle Edition]

I read a lot of zombie novels. They're typically unpretentious, uncomplicated and just plain fun stories, and it's easy to imagine yourself in that kind of situation. As much as I love this kind of story, I'm well aware of the genre's limitations and uneven quality level. Most zombie novels are decent, if disposable, ways to kill a couple of hours. Some are quite good, and might even bear a second read. And every so often I'll run across one that works so brilliantly I know I'm going to come back and read it every couple of years just for the sheer enjoyment of it. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is one such book. So are the Dying to Live novels and Ex-Heroes/Ex-Patriots (Ex-Heroes Book 2). Now I can add Carlos Sisi's The Wanderers to that list.

Translated from the original Spanish version, The Wanderers is very much a typical zombie story. Set in Malaga, Spain, the zombie plague emerges and spreads rapidly, soon transforming the city into a wasteland populated by the walking dead...and a few isolated groups of survivors. They're scattered - in stores, apartment buildings - but they soon form a community at a sports complex on the edge of town. What these survivors don't know is that the town holds a survivor who is immune to the zombie plague and can even exert some control over the undead. Too bad for them that survivor is an insane priest who believes he is called to bring God's final judgment to the living.

Zombie 411: For the most part, the undead in The Wanderers are your basic Romero-style zombies. The only real variation on that theme is the inclusion of a handful of "sprinters" that can move much faster than the typical walking dead.

On the surface, The Wanderers seems like a typical zombie novel, and indeed Sisi follows most of the genre's conventions. Below the surface though (there's a pun you'll get after reading the book) you see where the author really shines. He gives us characters that start as "types" but soon become developed and individual. Their situations and the way they all come together is handled extremely well too, like puzzle pieces or strings forming a chord. The priest's actions in particular are as fascinating as they are disturbing. There's also an almost poetic aspect to the descriptions in this book, both in terms of scene-setting and describing the zombie violence. I'm not sure if that's coming partially from the translation, but it makes the book that much more memorable.

The Wanderers is a fantastic zombie story that really works on multiple levels. I honestly hated to see it end, and I hope this isn't the last we hear from Carlos Sisi. I'd love to revisit the survivors of Malaga (the ones left standing at least) in a sequel some day.

Disclosure - I received an electronic copy of this book from the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Originally published as Los Caminantes in 2009, The Wanderers is one of Spain's top selling apocalyptic novels, and is now available for the first time in an English translation.

It starts out with a dead body washing up on the beach, a body that proceeds to do its best to eat the police who come to investigate. We then follow a few different groups of survivors through the early stages of a standard zombie apocalypse as they watch their city fall apart around them.

At first I had some trouble keeping track of the characters, in part because I wasn't used to their names or the place names, but after I got used to them, I found the characters likeable, and believable. They really felt like regular people, mostly young, who were caught in a desperate situation. But luckily I didn't have to try to remember all of them for very long, because, spoiler alert, people die in this book, usually with spurting, gushing, or even fountaining of certain vital bodily fluids.

The story progresses with the survivors slowly consolidating into larger groups while they hole up in various buildings around the city, watching their reserves dwindle, wondering if there is anyone out there who can help them.

But as it turns out, there is another survivor out there, one who helps to set The Wanderers apart from the usual zombie fare. He is Father Isidro, priest of La Victoria Church, and it is his fervent belief that the rising of the dead signals the judgement of God upon Man, a judgement that must fall on everyone, even if it means that he has to be the one to lead the dead to the living.

In most zombie stories, the zombies themselves are the primary threat, or maybe there are agressive groups of survivors competing for the same resources, but I can't think of another one where the shambling hordes are actively prodded toward the living, particularly by someone with such a religious zeal. And it surprised me that a novel written and set in Spain, which Wikipedia tells me is 75% Catholic, would feature a Catholic priest as it's primary villain, but that may have added some of the shock value that made the book so popular over there.

The character of Father Isidro, and his raving lunacy, definitely adds something to the story, and that combined with believable characters, interesting locations, and plenty of gory action makes The Wanderers a book worth reading.

PS Just a quick note on the translation. Generally, it's very good, but I would guess that whoever did it is not a native English speaker. Some of the language or vocabulary used isn't what I would have expected; for example a phrase like "The scene was splattered with blood and screams" which isn't exactly correct. But at the same time there was never a case where the language was jarring, or failed to get the point across, and most of the time it read as any other English novel would, while giving the book a bit of a unique feel.

An enjoyable twist on the tired Zombie genre, The Wanderers, shows how the zombie genre still has some undead life left within it. When a twisted and ruthless priest sides with the mindless zombies, the scattered traces of humanity have more to fear than the shuffling undead. I found this book to be an intense reader, graphic in description, and brutal towards its characters. Many of the characters are given a quick back story, faced with a zombie, and then brutally torn to shreds. There are a few moments where the imagery presented by the author was difficult to follow, but I attribute this to the translation. The book fails on trying to explain the infection, I'm still not entirely certain whether the zombie infection is biological or supernatural in nature, and I think the author should have avoided trying to ground the infected in the real world. There are two more books in this trilogy waiting to be translated, I have a lot to look forward to!