The Dead Lands

Benjamin Percy

Hachette

Otago Daily Times, May 23rd 2016

Benjamin Percy’s latest dystopia is a road trip across an an America the devasted by a deadly viral outbreak, a series of tactical nuclear strikes, the meltdown of every reactor in the country, runaway global warming, and destruction of the ozone layer. Now, two decades after these mutliple catastrophes, all that remains of American society (and possibly the world) are a series of isolated communities dotted across the country.

One of these enclaves is Sanctuary, a fortified city-state built from the ruins of St Louis and surrounded by an arid, inhospitable and mutant-infested wasteland. Although initially considered a temporary haven that would one day reunite with the rest of the country, the city’s new mayor, Thomas Lancer, has declared Sanctuary to be all that is left of America and ordered anybody who suggests otherwise be executed as a traitor.

When a young girl comes riding out of the surrounding desert with news that society is rebuilding itself on the temperate Western Coast. Lancer tries to kill her but she escapes with a small band of Sanctuary’s citizens and the seeds of dissent at Lancer’s administration flare into violence.

The action switches between the journey across America on the one hand and the growing rebellion in Sanctuary on the other and most of the book is a catalogue of privation, violence and as many horrible ways to die as the author Benjamin Percy can think of.

Unfortunately, I read The Dead Lands immediately after Lauren van den Berg’s Find Me (reviewed elsewhere), and the comparison does it few favours. Van den Berg’s novel is an intense, tightly written and thoroughly absorbing, while Percy’s is a sprawling, poorly paced narrative intended for maximum shock value and, I suspect, screen adaptation.  All in all, 385 pages of conflict are resolved in a mere 14, of which 9 are epilogue.

The text is also shoehorned full of pop-cultural touchstones; two of the travellers are called Lewis and Clark, the death toll of named characters rivals that of Game of Thrones, and not only would the despotic Lancer make Stephen King proud, the cover is emblazed with a ringing endorsement from the Man himself.

If The Dead Lands was the work of an amateur writer I would be less inclined to share Spinrad’s pessimism, but Percy is an award-winning novelist, teaches in the prestigious Iowa State MFA programme, and his skill as a wordsmith is evident the vividly evocated wilderness his characters inhabit.  This book will certainly find an audience, but I have no wish to be part of it.