Blake Crouch

Guess who’s back! Back again!

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Why yes, I do have some Eminem stuck in my head. Why do you ask?

So, yet again, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. Life gets in the way. At any rate, I’m making a pre-New Years resolution to start up the ol’ book blog again because while I have lagged on the posting, I have definitely not lagged in the reading. Thank goodness I have an ereader, or I’d be drowning in books.

Instead of reviewing a book this time, I thought I’d chat about some of my favorite authors and maybe toss out a favorite book from their bibliography. We’ll go alphabetically because I don’t have an all time favorite author. These are my favorite, favorites. I have read a lot more than just the below. And keep in mind that some of these people may be problematic right now, but when I first read them, they were not. And I still love what they wrote, even if I don’t like the person they turned out to be. If we couldn’t separate art from artist, then no one could enjoy a Picasso or a Diego Rivera, a Hemingway or any number of musicians’ works.

Old library or bookstore. This is what my house would be without an ereader.

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I mean, it speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Ilona Andrews – I legit don’t think I could pick between any of her books, I enjoy them all so much but if I had to choose one series…Probably the Innkeeper series. It’s a mix of magic and sci-fi, found family and mystery. It has it all.

Jim Butcher – The Dresden Files. All of them, but in particular, I’d probably choose Changes. And oof did that one just kill me at the end the first time I read it. By the way, his son has started writing too! Check out Dead Man’s Hand by James Butcher.

Gail Carriger – Anything. Legit anything of hers. I have read all her books. I subscribe to her newsletter. I got to meet her in person once! She’s lovely and her writing is amazing. The book that started it all for me is Soulless. It’s steampunk and got me addicted to steampunk. It also makes me realize that I like steampunk (and other stories) that are a little lighter, a little more fun than some other steampunk works (Whitechapel Gods comes to mind).

Agatha Christie – The godmother of mystery. I love Death on the Nile or the Mysterious Affair at Styles.

James S.A. Corey – The Expanse! What an absolutely amazing sci-fi series! I love it so much. It made me thirsty for more sci-fi, but I haven’t quite found anything I love as much as this series.

Blake Crouch – Wayward Pines trilogy. Man, that series definitely kept me guessing, which can be hard to do. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m actually pretty good at figuring out the end game in books, shows and movies (I figured out the Sixth Sense about halfway through), so I love something that can keep me guessing. I would love a fourth or a spin off, Mr. Crouch!

Clive Cussler – The leader in maritime adventure novels! Dirk Pitt, Numa Files, Oregon Files – I like them all. My favs are Raise the Titanic and Inca Gold.

Charlotte English – Weird & Wayward. Victorian Addams family anyone?

Jennifer Estep – The Elemental Assassin series is amazing. Not sure I could pick just one of them. I also like her Mythos Academy books and Galactic Bonds series.

Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett – Good Omens. Nuff said.

Simon R. Green – Deathstalker, Dealthstalker Coda, Nightside, Hawk & Fisher, Secret Histories, Shadow’s Fall. I haven’t gotten into his very latest series, but I plan to. Again, hard to pick just one, so maybe Just Another Judgment Day from the Nightside series?

Charlaine Harris – Sookie Stackhouse series. I think I might have to go with Dead to the World, where vampire sheriff Erik loses his memories and Sookie has to figure it out.

Kim Harrison – The Hollows series. Still on-going, even though I thought it had ended. Not up to date on the last couple of books, but I like that Rachel and Trent have gotten their shit together. That was the longest will they/won’t they ever.

Jordan L Hawk – Widdershins series. This is Victorian and kind of Lovecraftian and also the main characters are homosexual at a time where that was punishable by law (or worse).

Faith Hunter – Jane Yellowrock. Can’t go wrong with the first novel, Skinwalker.

Richard Kadrey – Sandman Slim series. I think my fav might be teh first book Sandman Slim.

Annette Marie – Guild Codex, Demonized, Warped and Unveiled. They’re all interconnected, they’re all fun. I just reread all of Demonized and Warped recently. Soooooo good.

Seanan McGuire – The October Daye series. Easily my favorite of the bunch is One Salt Sea. Also check out her Indexing series.

Jessie Mihalik – Starlight’s Shadow, Consortium Rebellion and Books & Broadswords series.

Devon Monk – Ordinary Magic series.

Anne Rice – A toss up between The Mummy or Ramses the Damned and Queen of the Damned.

John Scalzi – Easily Kaiju Preservation Society, though redshirts was amazing for this old Star Trek fan.

Rob Thurman – Cal Leandros and Trixa series. I’m sad that she quite writing before finishing them.

Next month, I’m hoping to review Gail Carriger’s next book, The Dratsie Dilemma.

Wayward Pines

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Wayward Pines by Blake Crouch

I picked up the first book of the Wayward Pines trilogy by Blake Crouch, Pines, because it was $1.99 on Amazon and I was looking for something new to read. I’d remembered hearing about the series on TV and how it was inspired by Twin Peaks, which I liked (no, I’m not that old, I watched it on Netflix). Beware, if you read further, there will be SPOILERS for the whole trilogy.

At first, it was kinda Twin Peaks-ish. A weird town with weird people that are clearly hiding something. I was edging toward disappointment, thinking this was going to be another “he thinks he’s alive but he’s really dead” sort of story when Crouch dropped a whammy of a twist on me. Main character Ethan Burke, a Secret Service agent out of Seattle, wasn’t dead. No, he and everyone else had simply (“simply”) been put in suspended animation by a nut job named David Pilcher and had woken up almost 2000 years ahead of present time.

Pilcher, a scientist has discovered that the human genome was “corrupted” (news flash: duh. Everyone’s got some sort of weird mutation. Whether or not that actually impacts your life is another story. Generally the answer is no) and that within 30 generations, humans as we know them would be extinct. Again, duh. It’s called evolution. That’s why we’re no longer neanderthals. I’m not knocking Crouch’s writing, just the character’s feeling like he had to “save” humanity by kidnapping (yes, kidnapping) about 1400 people and putting them in suspended animation.

Ethan works out that something is terribly wrong with the town of Wayward Pines, ID, where he wakes up after thinking he was in a car accident. After some fights, some time in their “hospital” and help from another townie who knows at least something of what’s going on, Ethan escapes. What he found when he gets out of the town, horrifies him. They’re surrounded by what Pilcher and his hired goons call abbies, for abnormal. Every one of which would gladly eat him for breakfast.

Holy crap. It was so good, I had to go out and buy the second novel, Wayward, immediately. I blew through that one too. In this one, Ethan has been made the sheriff and reunited with the wife and child he thought died 2000 years ago. It’s an uneasy moment, both in the town and in the Burke home. Teresa and Ben, the wife and child, have lived in Wayward Pines for 5 years without Ethan. They have to get used to being a family again when you’re never alone.

Not only that, but when new Sheriff Ethan Burke is called in to investigate a number of people dubbed “Wanderers” (people who remove their tracking chips), he knows there’s the very real possibility that he’ll end up being ordered to kill one of his old friends from Before, another Secret Service agent named Kate who was kidnapped before him. The investigation takes some wild turns and it lead Ethan to a fateful choice: Kill his old friend and partner or tell everyone in the town what’s really going on. SPOILER: he tells everyone in town what’s really going on.

That leads into book three, The Last Town. This book uses a different style of narrative than the previous books, alternating between people to focus on (i.e. – one chapter focuses on Ethan, one on Teresa, etc) and on past versus present. Pilcher, unhappy with what Ethan did, opens up the protective electrified fence that surrounds Wayward Pines and allows 500 abbies in. They slaughter most of the townspeople, but Ethan and about one hundred others escape. Not unscathed, but at least alive

Ethan makes it up to the mountain where Pilcher lives with the people he hired 2000 years ago, people who really believe in his cause. Let’s face it, Pilcher is a cult leader, one who’s about to get his comeuppance. Ethan gets the grunts on his side and effectively takes over Wayward Pines. The grunts, most of whom have weapons training, clear out the abbies in the town and get the fence up and running. From there, they have to decide if they’re going to 1) leave the town and try to make it in the world of the abbies (a suicide mission at best), 2) stay in the town and starve to death within 4 years or 3) go back into suspended animation and hope to wake up in the future.

This trilogy is captivating from beginning to end. I blasted through about nine hundred total pages in two and a half days. That’s a record even for me. The writing is superb and the suspense will leave you at the edge of your seat. Crouch knows how to leverage the cliffhanger, but also knows when to wrap something up. Amazing writing. I highly recommend the series, which is now on sale for Kindle at $1.99 per book. Go out and get it now!. Rating: A++