I remember loving The Traveller when it first came out. Being a young teenager, the story of a group of vaguely New Age mystics living off the grid, and the shadowy, Samurai style warriors that protected them from the agents of the vast machine was completely different from anything else I'd read before and right up my street. Having now revisited it as an adult, I can still see why I enjoyed it so much then, but definitely got less out of it this time around.
You see, The Traveller is a very pulpy book. The prose is, for the most part, uninspiring, the characters a little flat and stereotyped, and the book as a whole is littered with cliches. Despite these very real sins, The Traveller has two redeeming features: it's interesting politically and philosophically (many of the observations about mass surveillance are proving frighteningly apt), and there is an actual plot (albeit, not a particularly imaginative one) and story development running throughout the whole book.
To my younger self who, aside from The Lord of the Rings, had mostly read books aimed at children and teenagers, its blend of Western action thriller and elements of Eastern philosophy was new and exciting. As an adult, I've read too many other books that The Traveller has borrowed from, but I can still appreciate the unique blend of well-used ideas. Not a book I would strongly recommend based upon its artistic merits, but also not the worst book I have read.
