Pines (Wayward Pines #1)

Genres Thriller, Horror, Mystery

8/10

Ethan, a secret service agent is assigned to a recovery mission in Wayward Pines where two other agents disappeared a month earlier. However, just as he arrives, Ethan gets into a car accident and wakes up at the local hospital. The staff and the people seem friendly at first but it quickly becomes clear that something is off. Ethan can’t reach anyone outside of Wayward Pines and the locals seem unwilling to help him as he slowly realises that he’ll need to escape this place if he wants to survive.

Highlights

A bit of a cliché set up
The core is solid and deserves to be called a thriller
Ending is a bit weak
Not as good as Dark Matter or Recursion but still very enjoyable

Dark Matter and Recursion are some of my favourite books of all time. I’m not saying they’re masterpieces but they struck a very specific chord with me as they were extremely reminescent of Michael Crichton’s thrillers which I loved to read. Having recently finished Blake Crouch’s latest book, Upgrade, I was still craving a nice techno thriller and decided to explore his past work, the kind of boringly named Pines.

Pines doesn’t really hit the techno thriller chord I was hoping for but it remains a solid thriller and it doesn’t take long to get going. We are quickly introduced to Ethan who is a secret service agent searching for two other agents who disappeared in Wayward Pines before he gets in a brutal car accident. Ethan wakes up in Wayward Pines’ hospital and whilst the staff are understandably worried about his health they also seem resilient to letting him reach out to his family, boss and generally get out of Wayward Pines. You can see where this set up is going, this little town isn’t quite as friendly as it first appeared and soon Ethan has to fight for his survival and figure out what is happening in the area. It’s arguably a bit cliché, the whole “isolated nice town turns out to be creepy and threatening” but it works and it’s not boring by any means.

This being one of the author’s first published pieces of work, I noted a few writing issues here and there with some sentences having weirdly shuffled about structures and technical descriptions that went into significant depths (in the style of a Tom Clancy novel) whilst having no particular relevance or pay off. However, this is really more of a nitpick than a genuine issue as the story is engrossing enough to make abstraction of those issues.

Whilst the beginning and centre of the story make up a pretty standard but very good quality thriller, the last quarter and ending have the potential of being a bit more divisive as they take a seemingly supernatural turn (although everything is admittedly explained from a scientific point of view that is more or less believable).

Spoiler

At some point in the story, Ethan is chased by a monster whose existence is justified by significant mutations although the wider context makes it all the less believable.

The real issue I had with the ending however is not its believability as the twist and turns leading to it are still enjoyable and achieve that equal mix of thrill and horror but that in its nature, it negates most of the interest I might have in reading the sequel as I could only see it work by switching the genre of the next book in the series away from a mystery thriller which is not something I’m particularly looking for. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my time with Pines and if you’re one to read a book for the journey and not the ending, this is a great read.