If I’d read this novel in 2012, I’d probably have loved it. Now, it feels like a time capsule from a more innocent time.

 It’s a killer virus novel. Published four years after COVID. A killer virus novel that leans very heavily on the typical tropes of the sub-genre—the post-apocalyptic landscape, the armed militias, the last good man on a perilous journey to transport a possible cure to the virus (it’s called Disease X), accompanied by a cynical, hardened 14-year old girl. No, it’s not The Last of Us, but at times I might have been persuaded otherwise.

 It’s not that there’s no space for killer virus novels post-pandemic; it’s that they have to reach a very, very high bar to leave any impression, to not read like an unearthed artefact from a bygone age. The Way doesn’t come close. OK, yes, the main character, Will, can communicate with his pet raven (Peau) and his cat (Cassie), but this doesn’t elevate the novel; it just adds a slightly different and surreal texture.

 I suppose what I’m saying is that while our pandemic didn’t kill 98% of the population, we all got a taste of what the end of the world might be like, and it was far more banal and dull than we all assumed. Don’t get me wrong; it was also anxiety-inducing and horrific, but not in the ways that fiction and movies like Outbreak (1995) had led us to believe.*

 The Way isn’t a terrible novel. Aside from the talking animals, there are several decent set-pieces. But it all falls flat.  

[Note: The Way is out in December. My full review will appear in the December edition of Locus.]

*Yes, I get it; there was never any suggestion that COVID was going to kill us all. I stand by my point, though.