Wayward Pines, by Blake Crouch

I liked Recursion by this author, and I really liked Dark Matter, so I bought the Wayward Pines trilogy as well.

This comprises:

The grammar leaves something to be desired (the author specifically seems to have an aversion to using verbs from time to time in book one, and then switches to leaving out nouns in books two and three, and just refers to things using adjectives), and some of the Americanisms are a bit jarring (such as, in chapter 7 of Pines, "more people would be here momentarily". In fact the author means that "more people would be here soon", but the idea that more people would be here for a moment, and then not be here any more, is ridiculous in the context).

Americans in particular, please note: "momentarily" means "for a moment". If you want to say "in a moment", the word is "soon". If you want a longer one, try "shortly".

[I have been on a plane with an American pilot, and I cannot recall whether it was more worrisome to hear that "we shall be taking off momentarily", or (several hours later, fortunately) that "we shall be landing momentarily". I prefer both take-offs and landings to be reasonably long-lived states of change.]

My summary of the trilogy is that the first book is downright confusing (because it's telling the story of a character in a very confusing situation) and the second book brings the story back to comprehensibility, but it was only by the end of it that I thought "oh good, the real story's going to start now".

The third book is by far the most eventful and action-based, but unfortunately written in a very disjointed manner, telling stories from different characters' perspectives in different chapters. There's very little continuity to it. It does at least tell the main story, though, and then ends with one of the shortest epilogue chapters I have ever read.

Recommendation to the author: condense books 1 and 2 down to 25% of their original size, reorganise book 3 into some semblance of continuity and chronological order, and publish them together, in that sequence, as a single volume novel "Wayward Pines".

Oh, and please put the nouns back in.


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