Pines Trilogy

- By Blake Crouch

Wayward Pines is a tiny town with population of four hundred and sixty one. People are friendly and they live in Victorian style houses surrounded by picket fences and have barbeques on a nice Summer evening, with crickets chirping in the woods nearby. They live in the moment and smile and laugh and engage in social rituals. In short, they live in paradise on earth, where their kids go to school which does not give them any homework! Anyone who visits the town is persuaded to stay there by the sheer beauty it offers.

Ethan Burke is a Secret Service agent who travels to Wayward Pines, Idaho, in search for missing agents, along with another Secret Service Agent Stallings. In a freak accident, he finds himself on the side of a river, without a wallet or phone or badge or gun, severely battered with no memory of where he was and what happened. He begins walking along the town roads, with severe headache and tries to remember anything about the roads or the houses he seem to find himself amongst. Finding the locals, he starts asking them questions and their answers were not very forthcoming. However, his loss of memory is short lived and upon receiving a treatment at the local hospital, he seems to remember where he was and what he had to do. However, the Sherriff in town was not very supportive, nor were the locals. He seems to think that there is something wrong with the town, because all his attempts at finding the answers seems to be thwarted, either by recurring headaches or the Sherriff or the locals.

He meets a bartender girl, Beverly, who seems to be the only one willing to provide him answers. But in an intended display of mob mentality, Beverly is torn apart by the locals and Ethan is left alone to find answers he came looking for and trying to find an escape route from this town, which seemingly looks like an impossible task, because the exit roads seem to loop back into the town. And when he finds the other missing agent, Kate, who seems to not only be happily settled in the town, but looks much more aged that he remembers her to be, he thinks he may be losing his mind. Warned by her to just adapt and not try to escape, because they are watching and listening, with sensor activated cameras in trees, street lamps and houses, he realizes that he cannot live in this jail, however beautiful it looks from the outset. So, he sets off into the woods, only to find the town  boundary surrounded by an electrical fence which looks like it could fry anything that approaches it, with a warning about danger beyond the fence. However, he is determined to leave the town and he keeps walking further into the woods and finds himself climbing an impossible mountain in the hope of escaping the town. During his climb, he encounters an almost human looking monster called an abby, that is bent on killing him. In the struggle ensued, he kills it and escapes into a cave that he crawls into, only to find himself back in the hospital.  David Pilcher, the psychiatrist tries to calm him down, when Ethan refuses to stay another minute in the town without understanding what is going on. That is when he is told the truth that they are the only living human kind on the planet and that the year is three thousand and the remaining human species is extinct and the earth is taken over by abbies. He is taken to the town fence and is shown the borders.

The eccentric David Pilcher is the one who orchestrated this entire charade of civilization to keep a semblance of peace in the last humane society. When Ethan questions as to why he could not just tell the people the truth, he explains that having told the people the truth, people refused to believe it and killed themselves and hence he had no choice but to enforce rules and consequences for breaking the rules. And he urges Ethan to take the role of Sherriff and handle the peace keeping in the town. Thus, Ethan finds himself now holding the secret about human kind and playing the charade along with everyone. However, as with every well set society, there are rule breakers and when its discovered that few people in the town have found ways of communicating without being discovered, he is asked to investigate. And his investigation leads him to a place in forest, where a group of people have let go of the charade and are breaking all the rules and talking about their past lives and sharing their emotions. Ethan empathizes with the group, but being the Sherriff and for the greater good, he could not disclose what is going on. Having found himself in a situation where he needs to maintain the charade, yet his core values push him to explain the truth to his fellow companions, he is forced to walk on the fence line of right and wrong. The rest of the series focuses on how Ethan burke embraces the truth about human extinction and how me makes his choices at every turn for the greater good.

Wayward Pines, by Blake Crouch is a no non-sense, fast paced thriller that is guaranteed to scintillate all your adrenaline senses. It tells a fascinating science fiction tale that engages the reader and talks about the people who live in a seemingly beautiful paradise with enforced rules. It is a page turner and a definite read for all mystery/science fiction lovers.

Happy Reading fella readers!!