Review: The Wrack

The Wrack by John Bierce
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Plague stories don't particularly interest me. You would think they would with the abundant deaths and misery. I haven't come across too many. The best I can think of would be Mask of the Red Death by Poe. I'd seen Outbreak once in Middle School and have never watched Contagion. I don't go hunting them down is what I'm trying to say. My willingness to read this one was because it sounded different from everything I've read in recent years. A plague set in a fantasy world that didn't revolve around rats. How did it fare?

The Wrack is a shipwreck in a perfect storm. It was a struggle to get through this when it should not have been.

I believe the reason why it took me three days to finish this instead of what should easily have been one short night was the structure of the story itself. The story of the plague as it develops is nothing to argue with. It is the choice to make each chapter its own short story with self-contained characters that wounded my interest. Further in that respect The Wrack also doesn't adhere to that rule either.

The first few chapters of the book focus on certain characters as the plague starts to affect those around them. The king's son is the first victim and it is initially believed to be the work of poison. A healer is summoned who quickly realizes that this is a sickness whose cure is beyond their reach. A plague. It becomes evident that they are in grave danger and the healer rushes to dispatch a warning as well as alert the King his son is dead.

After that start, you would imagine that this book would be remarkably good. It is an excellent beginning. Things become jumpy from here on out. I was hooked, armed, and ready. I stood on those frontlines waiting for greatness. Then I was forced to sit down. As I type this I'm reminded of so many unresolved storylines. It hurts because what we are given is good. The problem is as soon as I become invested in these people, their chapter ends and I'm given over to others. If this book was intended as a collection of short stories that would end each section with the horrors of the plague as it affects each group of people, that would almost have been better. The use of certain characters for multiple chapters, then dropping them for most of the book, only to bring them back later on for one or two more, then to drop them again before the ending results in a very jumbled feeling book.

Out of all those random middle chapters, two particularly stood out for me. One of which three people travel throughout a city going door to door to record the names of the deceased. There is a poignant moment when the person who had been doing the writing realizes his book has no more room and after being kind and composed the entire time to those suffering he finally loses his calmness and runs off screaming. One of his partners picks up his abandoned book and returns to the temple to get a blank notebook and only then does she feel the weight of what she is truly holding. The weight of their souls exists in those words. Otherwise, they would be lost. Only memories to be erased.

The other involves crew members on a ship. They discover a ghost ship filled with the dead. One member wants to burn the ship while another wants the crew to take it and return with two ships. Words get exchanged and they duel to the death. It is an odd story because the two crew members are a man and woman who it is believed are interested in each other. The instances from getting along to a sudden death match come quickly, and then the female remains after having stabbed her once-possible suitor. In the end, with the help of another crew member, they carry the fallen up to the ship's crows nest so his dying sight can be of the land. I'm not sure why this story spoke to me especially as none of these characters return or are mentioned in the rest of the book.

Much of the chapters are short and, to me at least, were irrelevant. When we finally return to the people who interested me at the beginning of the book, strangers come into the town and declare the nobility has to pay and atone for their deeds. This goes nowhere. There's also a mist that contains monsters which is also largely unimportant except for I believe in the end it's revealed the monsters transmitted the Wrack to cattle which in turn affected everyone else. Talk of these monsters comes up a few times in descriptions but there's no larger story about these creatures. With all literature, we get the story that is told to us. What I wanted was a larger conflict. It was a cool idea that didn't amount to anything.

Another moment that bothered me was that at the beginning of the book we are introduced to a Seer which are people with special sight gained through the use of various gem glass eyes. It is mentioned that not a lot of people are willing to become Seers because of the cost of losing an eye but throughout the book, we are introduced to quite a lot of them. It is something that stuck out and dragged me through the rest of the book.

After the first few chapters, we meet Yusef. His introduction made it seem like he would have a great presence in the book until he tells his daughter to investigate the plague in his stead. He does have one more chapter later on in the book but then disappears from the story forever. His daughter is another sporadic character that has her chapter and then disappears largely.

The plague is what connects these disjointed chapters but it doesn't pay off. Not when the inhabitants of this world are interesting and I want to read more but there is not enough. That's the fault in this book. It is only twenty-five chapters when it would have benefitted from being fifty or sixty. I wouldn't have minded all of the single stories if the main ones were fleshed out more. The Wrack doesn't reach the promise of what it is capable of. The writer took me to the Cheesecake factory, sat me next to the case, and wouldn't let me order a slice.

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