Fiction Reviews
Wayward Pines 2: Wayward
(2013/ 2023) Blake Crouch, Pan, £9.99, pbk, 294pp, ISBN 978-1-529-09985-0
If you have not read the first book, Pines, in the 'Wayward Pines' trilogy, then go back and read that first, as not only has this spoilers for the previous novel, it continues straight on from where that left off.
Former secret service agent Ethan Hunt has become the sheriff of the isolated, picture-perfect, rural settlement of Wayward Pines. He is one of the few who knows its secrets and why nearly all the other villagers must never, ever find out. The secret must be kept even from his wife!
However, when someone is murdered he is tasked to find out who. Moreover, when he does, he knows that it will be down to him to lead the villagers in the murder's communal killing. Can he do it…?
In addition to the afore main plot strand, we also get a smaller plot thread concerning a long-distance scout returning to Wayward Pines with vital news for Pilcher and those who secretly control the village.
Further, this novel has a few flashbacks over a thousand years to when Pilcher was preparing the Wayward Pines experiment and how it was put together.
This is all solid stuff, and a rollicking SFnal thriller, with bags of genre tropes to keep the SF reader engaged. And it ends on something of a cliff-hanger with just the last in the trilogy to come…
If you have made it this far then you probably will not be able to wait… Fortunately, Pan have re-released (2023) the whole trilogy all at once in its first, British Isles outing.
Jonathan Cowie
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