The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy
My rating: 5/5 cats
okay, so this book is fantastic. i mean, to me. it hit all my personal zing-buttons: sharp characters and a george r.r. martin-esque willingness to pare them down, well-described post-apocalyptic world, surprising twists, bleak atmosphere, and a chewy, cinematic quality to the writing that pans around and takes in everything. when it comes to horror, i can’t appreciate that lovecraftian tradition that makes the reader work to “see” the horror. i’ll work for any other kind of book, but with horror, i want it all there on the page for me to immerse myself into. it doesn’t need to be splatter-gore description, and in fact it’s better if it’s not, but my mind can’t fill in the gaps effectively when it’s forced to conjure up “the ineffable.” i find it flat, boring and lazy. which i guess describes my mind.
but this book is so descriptive that i could completely see the world he created. and not just because the sanctuary has a real woodbury feel to it.
another series this reminded me of, just in tone, was julianna baggott’s pure series, which is a fantastic and underread post-apocalyptic trilogy. i urge you towards it. it is immersive and spectacular, and i haven’t felt as viscerally connected to a blasted wasteland in a novel until i read this one. yes, Station Eleven is a great book, but it’s a different kind of aftermath novel. it’s more cerebral and it doesn’t get its hands dirty. like The Road, it’s more about the humanity that rises above the ashes than these, where the reader gets to actually roll around in those ashes. and sometimes i like to get my hands dirty.
this book is many things – an aftermath novel, an epic quest, a supernatural horror story, and there’s love and revenge and betrayal and human trafficking and power that corrupts and knowledge that sustains and a little clockwork owl.
it’s the story of america, 150 years after a flulike virus caused people to cough blood until they died, and the insult-to-injury nuclear ping pong that resulted as a way to prevent its spread. what little life remains is mutated from radiation, and the human part of it is no longer the uncontested top of the food chain. we start out in the sanctuary – a fortified compound in what was once st louis, where a man named thomas is the mayor of a dwindling community, which his panic of being deposed (and losing all the resources he has secretly been hoarding) causes to diminish further with public executions of potential threats to his authority. lewis meriwether, the curator of the museum that serves as the sole entertainment for the walled community, is a quiet scholar whose father was mayor before thomas, and whose hermitlike existence and vast knowledge has given him a slightly spooky reputation – “the wizard in the tower.” his no-nonsense assistant ella is the only one who is not in awe of him, and she is the closest thing he has to a friend. wilhelmina clark and reed are both sentinels and rangers, keeping watch on the wall overlooking the wasteland beyond, and venturing out beyond to hunt and assess dangers.
and one day, a potential danger arrives at the gates in the form of a black-eyed young girl named gawea who claims to have come all the way from oregon, where a man named aran burr would very much like an audience with lewis.
what follows is an epic journey as lewis and clark (and others) go on a manifest destiny road trip across the blighted landscape, not knowing if the enigmatic gawea can be trusted, or what lies at the end. along the way, they encounter horrifyingly-altered animals, slavers, a band of heavily-armed teenage girls, desert and snow and visions and madness and mutiny.
and it is outstanding.
percy is so good with small details. i still remember that horrifying zoo scene in Red Moon, and in this one, i will never forget the television set with the screen smashed in and dolls placed inside in some kind of desperate tableau.
and his characters are so rich and go through such transformations. apart from those already mentioned, there are other equally tremendous characters: simon – a young petty thief who navigates the secret catacombs of the sanctuary, danica – thomas’ brittle trophy wife, clark’s brother york – a puppyish street performer, colter – a tracker with his very own wolf pack, and slade, who performs all of thomas’ wetwork.
and his descriptions are arresting:
This morning, as the sun rises and reddens the world so that it appears it might catch flame, Clark stands at her sentry post atop the wall. Around it reaches a burn zone of some seventy yards. Beyond this grows a forest with many broken buildings rising from it, black-windowed, leaning masses of skeletal steel and shattered stone. The remains of the St. Louis arch, collapsed in the middle, appear like a ragged set of mandibles rising out of the earth. In the near distance, where once the Mississippi flowed, stretches a blond wash of sand.
and his descriptions of the survivors with their striking deformities (another thing i liked so much in baggott’s trilogy):
A second set of teeth barnacling their shoulder. Cysts bulging and sacks of fluid dangling. Moles so plentiful that a body appears like some fungus found in the forest.
i don’t know much about the historical lewis and clark expedition, so i’m sure i’m missing a lot of references (for example and conveniently enough, the book i read directly after this one had a character named york who was named after a member of the lewis and clark expedition, so there’s a little wink i missed), but that’s clearly not a prerequisite for enjoying this book, because i loved loved loved it.
so i was genuinely stunned to see so many negative ratings on here. i’ve read the reviews, and i understand some of the complaints. yes, scientific explanations are not a priority for percy. which is something i am guilty of complaining about with other books, but mostly in books that were not very well-written and had nothing else to make them stand out.
and not to stoop to saying anyone is “wrong” for their opinions, but i think that a barrage of scientific explanations would have dragged this book down. i mean, there’s not a lot of science in The Stand or The Road or Swan Song, but you know what? they’re fantastic, entertaining books whose focus is characters and atmosphere, not explanations.
i don’t know poundcake about science, but percy’s cause-and-effect explanations seemed fair enough to me. i’m not going to cry “biologically unrealistic” when i am treated to the entertainment value of GIANT BLOODSUCKING ALBINO BATS the size of horses, or any of the other amazing fauna that exist here after radiation has had its way with it. that would be like some nerd pushing up his glasses and saying “i don’t reckon sharks would survive the rotation-speed of a tornado, nor would they be able to breathe.” YOU ARE NO FUN, NERD! just sit back and enjoy the bats.
other complaints: the villain was too … villain-y. yeah, that’s probably true. but who doesn’t love a completely irredeemable douchebag to root against?
and thomas is really the only character who is flat-black evil. there are characters who are creepier and do worse things on the page, *koff* slade *koff*, but i kind of felt bad for that guy, after seeing his … home furnishings. which were unquestionably horrific, but i am a softie for lonely psychopaths.
he loved his dog SO MUCH!
my only complaint is with the wrapping-up of this book. i started getting a little nervous about 50 pages from the end because i was thinking “how the hell is he going to wrap this all up in so few pages?” answer: not perfectly. it’s a little too rimshot-abrupt, and it feels more like the beginning of a marvel movie. it was fine, just not as satisfying as the rest of the book was to me. View Spoiler »
but yeah – i guess i’m in the near-minority in loving this book, but i’m perfectly content here. no crowds, good view, and my heart filled with appreciation for someone who has taken the wasteland theme to a whole new level of unsettling.
