Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands | 2024 | Sarah Brooks | Buy |
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands is set on the Trans-Siberian Express as it makes a crossing through the Wastelands — a region that has become strange and dangerous following an event no one fully understands. The train is a closed world with its own rules, and the passengers know that looking out into the Wastelands is forbidden. The novel follows several characters as their reasons for traveling begin to intersect and the journey grows more dangerous.
Brooks writes with close attention to atmosphere, and the Wastelands themselves have a quality that shifts depending on which character is observing them. The book works as a mystery, a character study, and a piece of speculative world-building at once. For readers who enjoy quiet, precise prose and settings that feel genuinely strange without falling back on familiar fantasy conventions, it is a strong debut.