Reviews with content warning for Violence - Pines

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Pines by Blake Crouch

57 reviews

vrlewellen's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

This is not the type of book I typically read. It had more sci-fi elements than I was expecting. There was an element of mystery but over half the book seemed highly repetitive and there were many elements of torture. I have no interest in continuing the series.

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arel2908's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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sarapriz's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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beckyyreadss's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I wanted to read this book because I enjoyed Upgrade by Blake Crouch and once, I enjoy a book by an author, I want to read more from them. I decided to start with Pines, as it was on Kindle Unlimited and sounded interesting and wouldn’t hurt my head like Upgrade did.

This book is based on Ethan Burke, and he is a Secret Service agent. He has arrived in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission to locate to federal agents who went missing in this town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation turns up more questions than why can’t he get any phone calls through to his wife and son? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep residents in? Or something else out? Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan farther from the world he knew, from the man he was, until he must face a horrifying fact – he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

Again, like Upgrade, I loved the main character in this book. Ethan Burke wasn’t taking no shit; he was determined to find out what the hell was going on in this town and to get the hell out of there to be with his wife and son. I found myself rooting for Ethan and really wanting him to be reunited with his family and wanted to give him a hug. I liked the plot and how it was slowly building and mind-fucking. I was so confused but wanted to carry on finding out what the hell was going on.

I felt like the side characters were underdeveloped. They were only there to move the story along besides his wife and son. Everyone in the book just felt very 2D and I understood why but I just wanted a bit more from them. The plot twists did confuse me slightly with all the memory wiping and future thing. I would have loved for this to be dual POV and for the doctor to have another POV, so the reader knew what was going on and watching Ethan connect the dots. He spends most of the book unconscious or in pain and the hospital.

I cannot wait to read the next one in the series. I’m intrigued with how this is going to be continued especially with the ending, but we will wait and see.

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marianka1992's review against another edition

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mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Intense and fast paced with mystery/sci fi elements

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booksandcoffeewithlexi's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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ssyme's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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rsilverst's review against another edition

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I honestly can't recall a book that was written more poorly than this. And I know people think this series is amazing. But I found it to be trite, with bad dialogue, horrible character development, boring plot that revealed very little. I've read a few other books by the author. Two of them I liked, and one was bad, but I finished. This was so bad that I just don't care what happened next.

I don't know how an author can talk about people getting their noses crushed like 4 times in the same story. It's so implausible.

The narrator could do little to save the story. He gave a good performance but what can you do with a bad script.

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brittneyn125's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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schnaucl's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

I liked it, although the more I thought about it, the less the premise made sense.

The book mentions that people aren't allowed to talk about books that were available outside of Wayward Pines. With such a small population, I'm guessing there aren't many talented writers, and even if there were, how would they get published? But it's not just books that would date people, it's all forms of entertainment, film, music, games, even sports. But to avoid giving away the game on the different time periods you'd also have to eliminate politics, history, technology, slang, fashion, social attitudes. The book was published in 2012 and think about what's changed just since then. People spend a lot more time on their cell phones, which are much more powerful than they were in 2012. Almost everyone relies on their cell phones to be their cameras. Digital storage is cheap. We had the backlash to the Obama years with the Trump years. Abortion is illegal again in much of the country. Baseball has a pitch clock. Pickeleball is a thing.

And think about how people get to know each other. They talk about the things they're interested in, like entertainment. But under these rules you've eliminated that shared cultural understanding.

And that's before you get to no one being able to leave town (no matter how idyllic eventually people are going to want a change of scenery) and the nights where you're suddenly forced to brutally murder someone you probably know personally. And since there are multiple reintegration attempts, how are you supposed to remember if the conversation you had with someone was the current integration attempt or a prior one?

I absolutely believe that telling people everyone they know is dead and they can't go back to their prior life because it's been over for more than a thousand years would cause an unsustainable high number of suicides. I have a hard time believing that this sustained cognitive dissonance plus forced participation in murder wouldn't also result in high rates of suicide or people isolating themselves as much as possible (which I'm assuming would also be considered a failed integration).

At least with the knowledge that you're trying to save humanity there might be a common thing to bind the community together. Here, the only thing binding them together is forced murder and the collective agreement to pretend everything is fine and normal when it's clearly not.

I feel like your best bet would be to select for deep intellectual incuriosity, which doesn't bode well for keeping humanity going long term. That said, I'm not sure the genetic diversity would be enough for that anyway.

And how does the economy work? There's hotel, which I would think can only have guests that are new integrations, which won't have any money... although I thought there was another guest mentioned.

I get that there are literally tons of food stored, but presumably you'd want the community to be self sustaining at some point but I don't think farmers are mentioned. Who maintains the power for the town? How is it maintained? That takes specialized knowledge and some kind of industrial structure. What happens when power lines are damaged?

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