After finishing the epic Wanderers a couple of weeks back, I was happy to discover that the library had the sequel, Wayward, on the shelf too. Another whopping 800-page read! No wonder I'm 16 books behind my Goodreads goal this year.
Wayward takes place five years after the end of Wanderers and picks up the lives of the survivors of What Mask, particularly the sleepwalkers and Shepards who have settled in the remote town of Ouray. Awake now, the sleepwalkers are doing what Black Swan wanted them to do and are re-building. With the smartest and most resourceful people having been selected, the town is thriving.
Yet all is not well. The community is beginning to splinter with groups following their own beliefs starting to hole up in secret, making plans they are not sharing with the rest of the town. When Shana gives birth, the first new life in the town, things become downright sinister.
Meanwhile, the malevolent Ed Creel has appointed himself President and rules the world's elite from within the walls of a secure bunker. As the years of confinement mount and supplies begin to dwindle, things within this community also start falling apart and Ed's desperation to hold onto power becomes his downfall.
The book follows both the people of Ouray and Ed Creel and his band of deranged desperados as they struggle to survive in this new world and what they find when they leave the relative safety of their confined existences.
And overseeing everything is the dark spectre of Black Swan, the super computer AI behind the apocalypse and which continues to grow and develop in impossible new ways.
I enjoyed this sequel more than Wanderers. It was still over-long, but the story moved quickly and there was plenty of action and adventure and new characters to meet. While some of what is portrayed is horrible, much of the book is testament to the strength of the human spirit and just how far humanity will go to survive.
I enjoyed it and you probably will too, if you're into post-apocalyptic fiction.
But don't just listen to me. Here's the blurb:
Five years ago, ordinary Americans fell under the grip of a strange new malady that caused them to sleepwalk across the country to a destination only they knew. They were followed on their quest by the shepherds: friends and family who gave up everything to protect them.
Their secret destination: Ouray, a small town in Colorado that would become one of the last outposts of civilization. Because the sleepwalking epidemic was only the first in a chain of events that led to the end of the world--and the birth of a new one.
The survivors, sleepwalkers and shepherds alike, have a dream of rebuilding human society. Among them are Benji, the scientist struggling through grief to lead the town; Marcy, the former police officer who wants only to look after the people she loves; and Shana, the teenage girl who became the first shepherd--and an unlikely hero whose courage will be needed again.
Because the people of Ouray are not the only survivors, and the world they are building is fragile. The forces of cruelty and brutality are amassing under the leadership of self-proclaimed president Ed Creel. And in the very heart of Ouray, the most powerful survivor of all is plotting its own vision for the new world: Black Swan, the A.I. who imagined the apocalypse.
Against these threats, Benji, Marcy, Shana, and the rest have only one hope: one another. Because the only way to survive the end of the world is together.
