Pines, by Blake Crouch

ISBN: 9781612183954
Amazon ID: B007FG9LIE

Pines is the first book in the Wayward Pines trilogy. It gets off to a slow start, up to chapter 4 (of 18), and then in chapter 5, things start to get weird. Then, in chapter 6, they get really weird, and in chapter 9 (of 18, remember), the story starts to come together into something you can identify with and follow.

So, my impression so far is "nothing at all like the stories of Recursion or Dark Matter, and nowhere near as good".

Once the story gets under way, it feels more and more like Maze Runner, but without the interesting personalities.

In chapter 12, the story starts getting weird again, and then finally, in chapter 18 (of 18, remember) we get to the story. This continues on into the epilogue (correctly spelled, I notice), and the final impression is that it might be worth reading the second book after all, but it's been a long journey getting here.

In chapter 4, a woman puts her foot in the doors of a lift to block it from closing, and we are told that the person inside the lift is "staring at her through the four-inch space between the doors".

Firstly, what size shoes is she wearing to create a 4 inch gap between the doors (okay, maybe she put her foot in sideways?), but secondly, what sort of lift stops the doors from closing on a blockage at 4 inches, and then doesn't just open them again?

In chapter 7, "it took Beverly three digs with her shoulder to force open the iron door", which leads the reader to assume that she's pushing the door open. However, once she's through the door, she "pulled the door closed after them", suggesting that from the other side she must somehow have pulled the door open with her shoulder to begin with. As a general rule, if you push a door open from one side, you push it closed again from the other side.

In chapter 11, the character obtains "a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a black hoodie. The shirt and jeans were a few sizes small…" Later on the same page, he "grabbed a bag of carrots and a small loaf of bread, crammed them down into the side pockets of his jeans". That sounds like an impressive thing to do even if the jeans fit you, but when they're "a few sizes small" it sounds impossible.

Pines is followed by Wayward.

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