I recently read Neal Asher’s World Walkers. I’ve read a few of Asher’s books before, and remember enjoying them, but World Walkers left me cold.
I’m not saying it’s a bad book. It simply wasn’t for me.
As I often do after finishing a book, I took a look at reviews, and it’s received quite a mix of opinions. It seems I’m not alone in being disappointed by World Walkers.
But, as a writer, I can still learn from this book. So I started analysing why it didn’t gel with me.
The first major problem was that I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters. One reason for this could’ve been the number of characters introduced in the early chapters, with each one following their own story arc, with only vague links to others. I trusted that these different threads would weave together as the book progressed, but it still felt disjointed. I didn’t have enough time with each character to get to know them.
This is relevant to the writing of my Unity series, as I’m juggling separate story-arcs that will only pull together in sequels. So I have to figure out how I can help readers care about my characters.
I tend to write fairly short chapters, usually between one and two thousand words (roughly five to ten pages). Initially, I thought it would make sense to rotate story arcs—have one chapter from arc A, the next from arc B, the one after from arc C, and so on. But that’s too much jumping about. I don’t see it working.
But I’ve come up with a different structure. I intend to bunch story-arc chapters together, so we’ll spend longer with each point-of-view character before moving to the next. In effect, these groups-of-chapters will work as semi-self-contained short stories (although the endings will be very open—not necessarily cliff-hangers, but if I close any loops I’ll be sure to open others in preparation for that character’s next group of chapters). It looks like these sections will be between 12,000 and 20,000 words—technically novelette length.
Hopefully, this will help readers engage with the characters without feeling thrown about.
The next problem I had with World Walkers was an aspect of the writing.
The main recurring character in the early chapters is referred to as the Fenris. This Fenris needs to solve all kinds of problems, and these are explained in some detail.
Problems are vital to most stories. Literary fiction might be able to survive without a character having any difficulties, but in the vast majority of stories we need characters to face challenges. We want our characters to struggle with problems both internal and external.
And these problems have to have stakes. Failing to overcome a problem should leave the character in a bad place. We want the hero to win because failure would hurt.
In World Walkers, this wasn’t the case. At least, not initially. Towards the end the stakes increased for the Fenris, but at the start the problems seemed impersonal. Reading the Fenris solving these problems felt like watching someone solve mathematical equations or brain-teasing puzzles—interesting to a degree, but not particularly engaging. It felt like extended world-building rather than a story.
Which some readers love. I’ll re-emphasise that these are problems I had with the book, and to others, such as hard sci-fi fans, the world-building problem-solving might be what they read for.
And these readers aren’t who I’m writing for. I want my characters to be engaging in a more personal way, so their challenges have to be more emotional than intellectual or physical. In fact, I’ve used character arcs (the growth or otherwise of characters) as the basis for my planning. While the overarching story concerns alien signals, I’m focusing how way this affects my characters, and telling the larger story through their struggles.
This isn’t the case with World Walkers. Like a lot of great sci-fi, it’s a book with big ideas. But it feels like, for Asher, these ideas are the driving force. While there are moments where characters struggle to do the right thing rather than what feels best, most of the time it feels as if the characters are avatars enabling the reader to see these big ideas.
Which isn’t what I want in Unity. Readers who love World Walkers probably won’t enjoy my book (once it’s finished).
And I’m fine with that. I have to write the book that suits my style, that suits the way I see story. I’m trying to write the kind of book I’d enjoy reading. And that means I need to remain focused on my characters — on the interplay between their external and internal struggles, and on the way their personalities influence their decisions.
Yes, I’m looking to have some big ideas in this series. But I want to show these ideas through the characters—through their actions and thoughts, but especially through their struggles.
And after all that, will I read more of Asher’s books? Yes. I get the impression he pushed himself to try something different with World Walkers, and I’d rather a writer do that than stick to what feels safe. I’ll most likely read his next book if only to see what he does next.
Was it a waste of my time reading World Walkers? Definitely not. While I didn’t necessarily enjoy the book, it was interesting. And what it taught me (and reinforced) about my own reading and writing has been very useful indeed.
Finally, would I recommend World Walkers? That depends on what you look for in sci-fi. If you like character-driven stories that are emotionally engaging, this might not be the book for you. But if you want big ideas, and don’t mind a more impersonal, less character-focused style, then you’re likely to get a lot out of Asher’s book.
This post is the latest in a series I’m running on Substack, chronicling my work on this new project. If you’d like to read these posts as they appear, please consider subscribing for free.
TW Iain 