The Wayfinder

by Adam Johnson ★★★★☆

The Wayfinder is an epic literary journey through the South Pacific of 1000 years ago. It explores the bellicose culture of the island nations, the rule of Tonga, and the power struggle between the Tongan king (the Tu'itonga), his brother who has returned home from war, and the Tu'itonga's three sons. In parallel, it explores the trials of the peoples of several other islands, who struggle daily as island resources continue to become more scarce and the threat of Tongan invasion looms. It's a story that is mostly grounded in reality, but one that taps into the storytelling oral traditions of the peoples depicted, and infuses an undercurrent of the mystical alongside the main story. This is, after all, a book that includes things like an all-powerful Fan that can flay a man alive or a person with the ability to reap a man's soul.

For starters, this book is an incredible literary accomplishment. I won't be able to do justice here to the immense depth of research and attention to culture that author Adam Johnson undertook to create it. He spent ten years writing the book, and that led to a mastery of a thousand-year-old culture, language, and people that bleeds through every page. Here's a quick sample of what much of the book is like:

"In the spring, when Hā Mutu wakes me early to hunt kūkū pigeons, I reach for my long spear. In summer, when it's time to take tūī birds, I bring wooden bowls to place in miro trees. The miro berries make the tūī birds thirsty—when they fly to a bowl for a drink, they do not see our snares in the water. But this was the time to catch the kākā parrots, so I fetched Aroha."

Because of the density of unfamiliar language and culture throughout, reading The Wayfinder was work. It required peak concentration to follow. For the first 150 pages, I was mostly lost, trying to place each character's role in the story. My confusion was exacerbated by dual timelines in which some characters appear in both timelines. Eventually, I latched on to what was happening, and things became slightly easier.

Nevertheless, it took me forever to finish. I would pick it up, read a few chapters, and then pause while I read an entire other book before coming back for more. To put that more fully in perspective, over the two months between when I started and finished it, I set The Wayfinder aside in favor of other books so often that I finished ten other books during that time.

Given that, it's a real challenge to rate this one. It is undoubtedly a 5-star literary accomplishment—I don't know how anyone could dispute that. But I can't ignore the difficulty I had getting through it. In that sense it's reminiscent in some ways of The Covenant of Water. What I wrote about Abraham Verghese's masterful 2023 book also applies here:

"(It) was undeniably brilliant and complex but also struggled to retain my interest at times. For starters, it is the book for which I have the most respect among those I've read this year. I didn't enjoy it the most, and I wouldn't universally recommend it (as I said at the top, it's a commitment). But when I consider the amount of time, and research, and intricate plotting, and effort that went into this, and then compare that to some of the more enjoyable (but less expansive) books among this year's favorites, I have to acknowledge the author's accomplishment."

My thoughts are nearly identical for Johnson's epic, although The Wayfinder lacks some of the plot complexities that Verghese injected into The Covenant of Water. It was deliberately paced, but also introduced memorable characters and scenes that I will remember for quite some time. Given its length—over 700 pages—it had plenty of time to include nearly everything you might look for in a book: character growth, action, romance, humor, mystery, tension, tragedy. But when distilled down, the plot is fairly straightforward for such an immense work, and some of the character interactions were less fully developed than I would have liked to see.

It's immense, it's dense, and it's a powerful work of fiction that deserves to be read, if for no other reason than to give author Adam Johnson the respect of consuming his deeply researched creation. Proceed with caution, but find time to work this beast of a novel into the rotation at some point in your life.

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Quick Facts

• Title: The Wayfinder

• Author: Adam Johnson

• Publisher: MCD

• Release Date: October 14, 2025

• Format: Ebook

• ISBN-13 / ASIN: 978-0374619589

• Pages: 737