Book(s) Review: Wayward Pines Trilogy
SPOILER ALERT: The following book review may contain potential spoilers from the story.
Lockdown has turned life upside down literally. I really can’t imagine what you could be going through right now. And so, I thought we would be much better off discussing a book with a story similar to ours (in a way, turned upside-down). Now it’s up to you if you wish to consider this a review or a discussion but one thing’s clear: WE HAVE SPOILERS!
So beware, if you haven’t read these books yet.
We are not discussing just a book here but a trilogy. A well-written, popular, now a TV-Series, trilogy by Blake Crouch: Wayward Pines. The thing I love the most about book series and trilogies is simply the fact that they don’t end in just one book and you get to be a part of the character’s journey a little longer. You get to witness how they change over the course, dealing with stuff that’s thrown at them.
This trilogy has the following books:
#1: Pines
#2: Wayward
#3: The Last Town
THEME:
I got to say, Blake Crouch is a Pro in writing sci-fi books. This is not just about Pines, I am talking here. I have read his other books like Recursion and Dark Matter and it’s just not easy to get over them once you are done. The dialogues will stay with you for days or weeks, floating in your head. Though these are just single books and not part of any series, Crouch doesn’t compromise on character building and improv and still manages to build a perfect sci-fi thriller.
With this trilogy, Crouch takes us into another sci-fi journey. A very relatable journey, something that we are bound to find in most of our school textbooks. Journey of Human Evolution. I am not sure if suspended animation or anything like it is true to the last word as described in the book but, the characters and the knowledge they share makes you want to believe it!
STORYLINE:
Our protagonist, Ethan Burke is our journey-chauffeur here. In the first book, Pines, Ethan is described as mostly a workaholic with no time for family. Though loving his wife a lot, he ends up cheating on her quite a few times. So there it is: he is not perfect. But things change after he lands up in a weird-as-hell town called Wayward Pines, Idaho. Why weird? Because there is no way to get out of this town, no way to contact people outside the town and people in the town itself act strangely as if they are under some surveillance. In short, no way for Ethan to know about his family or work in Seattle.
The story unfolds with Ethan battling the invisible forces surveilling the town and some monstrous creatures called abbies to finally realize the secret of the town from the man who started it all: David Pilcher. After explaining all the stuff about suspended animation and abbies to Ethan, David gives Ethan another chance to return to his life along with his family and take up the job of being the one and only Sheriff of Wayward Pines.
Throughout the second and third book, Wayward and The Last Town, we see Ethan Burke evolving both emotionally (with his family) and professionally (as Sheriff of the town). His relationship with his wife and son change drastically in the second book. Its the secret, he knows, about the town that brings him closer to his family. He realizes all that he couldn’t be before.
CHARACTERS:
Ethan Burke is shown as the protagonist throughout the trilogy. However, the story proceeds through the eyes of many other characters as well. The second book takes the initiative to dive deeper into the life of Adam Hassler (Ethan’s boss at work from a previous life in Seattle), who is now on a quest to find the solution to the origin of the abbies and the future of humanity (in Pines). Also, there is Theresa, Ethan’s wife, whose character is the most interesting in the second and third book, as we learn about her relationship with Adam(in the simulated world) and the inner conflicts she goes through to choose between Adam and Ethan at the end. There is this really beautiful line that Adam Hassler says in the last book (in context to Theresa): “I can’t avoid her, and what I feel for her has defined me for so long now, I don’t know the person I’d be if I tried to walk away from it.”
Chills. Literal Chills.
Other characters like Nurse Pam, Ben (Ethan’s son), Kate Hewson add spice to the story. There are actually many other characters, whose names I don’t vividly remember, that you will really love by the end of the triology.
Conclusion:
All-in-all, Wayward Trilogy is my new favorite book series after Percy Jackson (read: Heroes of Olympus too) and Harry Potter. It doesn’t have any wizards or demigods lurking around but it will surely get you in the sci-fi book genre if you are still not there yet. Thank You, Blake Crouch for this amazing trilogy.
The trilogy later got adapted into a TV Series with two seasons. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy the TV Series at all. It was quite a letdown as they didn’t stick to the book’s plot and the TV series concluded with an ending way different(and also nonsensical) than the book. I gave it a shot just because I wanted to see how an abby (the weird creature) looks and know if it was really as scary as they had described in the book
(ANOTHER SPOILER: Yes it is scary and that’s probably the only best part of the TV series).
Thanks for reading and if you read the trilogy already let me know in the comments below, what you think about the end of the trilogy.
-Aditya Darekar
