The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wasteland

I read this book in a single sitting today and thought it was excellently written. The descriptions of the wasteland’s nature made it come across as truly hellish and the companies’ greed made for an excellent villain, while the naturalist’s self-delusion was believable, but painful in a similar manner to Cersei’s POV in the later game of thrones books.

That said, I absolutely hated the ending. Hell was unleashed onto the world, and the characters had become so changed that they no longer cared, including Marya, whose mission to find that the companies greed had caused this calamity didn’t prevent her being a similarly willing part of it.

In terms of characters, that seems to make my perspective on the outcome to be most like the priest Petrov. Given he was characterised as an overly religious hypocrite throughout, that seems to be a case of disagreeing with the authors perspective perhaps? The alternative is that we are supposed to view the wastelands being unleashed as the apocalypse arriving, which was not how it seemed to be presented within the book.

I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on it, I read most of the reviews and discussion I could find and didn’t see anything which was even close to my perspective.