ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Publisher: St. Elmo (July 14, 2024) Length: 385 pages Formats: ebook
Raymond St. Elmo’s Colleen the Wanderer is the second book set in the same world as Barnaby the Wanderer. It’s a tighter story with fewer pages, fewer characters, and a much more personal focus. For me, that shift worked well. We spend most of the time following Colleen as she moves through a strange world full of saints, monsters, and the occasional odd conversation.
I liked it. That’s not exactly a surprise. I generally like St. Elmo’s writing, and this book delivers many of the things that make his work distinctive.
Colleen herself is a good lead. She’s practical to a fault. She doesn’t want adventure, destiny, or glory. She wants people to leave her alone so she can make pots. Alas, the world has other plans. Saints interfere, monsters appear, dreams intrude, and somehow she ends up wandering whether she wants to or not.
The wandering really is the point. The plot exists, but it’s loose and often takes a back seat to encounters along the road. Colleen meets a steady parade of odd creatures, hermits, and supernatural oddities ("miscreates," as the book calls them) Some are funny, some unsettling, some just strange.
The tone sits somewhere between classic fantasy adventure and something more whimsical. St. Elmo has said he was aiming for a style similar to Andre Norton’s Witch World books, but he admits he can’t quite write without humor creeping in. That’s obvious here. The world may be full of saints and fate and mysterious forces, but the dialogue often undercuts any attempt at solemnity. Characters talk like people who are aware that the situation is absurd. It keeps the book lively.
As always with St. Elmo, the prose is one of the main draws. It’s sharp, playful, and occasionally very funny without trying too hard. The dialogue in particular works well. Conversations often drift into odd territory but still feel natural, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.
That said, the structure is a little uneven.
The opening takes a while to settle in. The first stretch is slightly confusing and slow, partly because the world operates on its own strange logic and the book doesn’t rush to explain it. Things improve once Colleen properly hits the road and the story finds its rhythm.
The ending goes the other way. After spending so much time wandering and meeting odd characters, the conclusion arrives fairly quickly. It ties the threads together, but it felt a bit abrupt. I wouldn’t have minded another chapter or two.
Still, the experience of reading the book is enjoyable. The story has a dreamlike quality where events make just enough sense to keep you moving forward. You don’t always know where things are going, but you trust the author to get you somewhere interesting.
If you’ve read Barnaby the Wanderer, you’ll notice a few familiar faces showing up briefly. They’re more like cameos than major roles, though, and the book mostly stands on its own. The focus stays firmly on Colleen.
In the end, Colleen the Wanderer is imaginative, occasionally funny, and full of peculiar creatures and conversations. The pacing wobbles a bit at the beginning and end, but the middle stretch - the actual wandering - is consistently engaging.
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