The Wanderers by Carlos Sisi is the first novel I’ve read where the setting wasn’t predominately the US or the UK. Originally published as Los Caminantes, Wanderers tells the tale of a varied group of survivors in South America, what appears to be Argentina but then what do I know about world geography?

The point is that this is a great novel.

Mr. Sisi has done a great job detailing the city, characters and areas that the infected roam.

What starts out as a relatively simple police issue of a body washing up on the beach quickly turns into a tense situation when the body sits up and attacks the police officers that responded. From that point on, the action picks up and stays steady. The character back stories are nicely woven into the scene and don’t detract from the overall storyline. As the infected, wanderers or specters as they are referred to, take over the cities, the survivors are left with little recourse but to find some sort of safe haven. Following the canon laid down by Romero, Sisi places one group of survivors inside a sports complex. To the US readers they may not realize the benefits of this facility. In South America, sports facilities are not like what they are here in CONUS. Down there, a sports facility is more than a place to go to when you want to watch football or some other sport. People live in them, there are office complexes attached, restaurants and in some cases, theaters. It’s like a huge shopping mall with a sport arena attached. Picture Mall of the America’s attached to the Houston Astrodome and you get the idea.

Sisi takes the reader on a wild ride through the narrow streets of an old city, into apartment complexes full of the dead, into an ocean littered with floaters and into the mind of a crazed priest who thinks that God has made him his chosen one. Mix in local slang, character, military units, and medical terminology and The Wanderers becomes an international hit.

The tension increases when the priest leads an army of infected to the sports stadium for the final showdown. This is where Sisi’s writing really takes off. During this sequence, the action scenes are played out like a storyboard. The imagery is shockingly intense and tension ratchets up to a point where you find yourself almost holding your breath.

The characters are rich in detail as are the locations. This is not a novel where the characters are one dimensional finger puppets. They are fleshed out into believable characters that do reasonable actions considering the situation. The zombie genre is alive and well in The Wanderers. The novel is very insightful and enjoyable to read.

I look forward to more of Carlos Sisi’s work.

Available on Amazon.