If you have any interest in fantasy, those words just lit a fire in your imagination. And you would be right to respond to the synopsis with excitement, because I was the same. I could barely control myself as I leafed through those first few pages, watching as The Vagrant leaped into action, baby in hand, sending his mutated foes to an early grave with a few well-placed sword strokes.
And then Peter Newman pulled the curtain back and revealed the true nature of the world The Vagrant had to cross; a festering wound populated by the dead and the dying. I could not wait to immerse myself in his adventures.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I read the final page, closed the book, sat back, sighed, and thought, “Wow! So disappointing.’
I can’t describe this novel’s weakness without explaining its strengths. ‘The Vagrant’ has a great concept. You have a post-apocalyptic setting where paranormal entities invaded the mortal realm, crushed humanity’s best and brightest, and then perverted civilization, creating a grotesque hellscape.
The Vagrant is one human among a multitude of survivors that occupy a world they no longer own, forced to choose between the monstrous entities vying for control over the fate of their race.
Newman’s protagonists are a mute, a baby, and a goat. The Vagrant is a fascinating choice for a hero because he does not speak, and we have to rely on his companions’ reactions to his facial expressions to interpret The Vagrant’s thoughts.
The concept is oozing with potential. So, what went wrong? Peter Newman’s writing style is the biggest flaw. Well, Newman’s writing is incredible. However, he has a very sparse approach that initially entranced me. The Vagrant is just 400 pages long, yet quite a bit happens because the author says so much with so little.
He can paint the most elaborate pictures in your mind with one or two sentences. And for a time, he had me hooked. The story was practically sprinting from scene to scene, fight to fight, location to location. And yet, it never felt rushed.
But then, after a dozen or so chapters, something odd happened. I felt strangely detached from the story, and that sensation grew with each page. It took me a few days to realize that Newman was the problem.
His writing was too brief. The setting was basically a wallpaper in the background, nice to look at and think about, but hardly the rich, living, breathing world you see in the works of authors like Brandon Sanderson and George R.R Martin.
His characters were equally hollow. They spoke and fought and reacted. But they felt like puppets on a stage as opposed to real people because Newman could not be bothered to explore them to the appropriate depth.
We did not sit with them long enough to care for them. As such, I felt nothing when bad things happened to them. I did not care whether they succeeded or failed. The Vagrant looked cool. You can see him on the book’s cover. But at the end of the day, his struggles meant nothing to me.
I have seen reviews that praise Newman specifically because of his sparse prose. But I had the opposite reaction. The book felt like fluff even though it had the potential to be so much more.
I wanted to like this book. It started so well. But the characterization was practically non- existent, which is problematic, because I need great characters to anchor me to a story. Cool fight scenes are not enough.
If I had to assign the novel a rating out of 10, I would probably give it four stars.
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