This is book three of The Wayward Pines Trilogy.

Okay, so, the first book of the series, Pines, was all Twin Peaks mystery.

The second book of the series, Wayward, was all about understanding the whys and hows and terms the mystery of the first book.

This book, again continued just after the previous book ended, is a mad dash through the horror of the mystery, through death, through being human in a horror situation, and through the choices we make.

One of the subplots hit particularly close to home. I appreciated that.

Turns out, I enjoyed this book as much as the previous book in the series, finishing book two, and starting and finishing book three, this one, all in one day. While attending school during the day.

I enjoyed the series. Unsure I want to spoil them by watching the television show...

When your world falls apart, cling to the familiar.
Page: 27

When your world falls apart, we head back to our comfort zone, which continues to shrink if we don't force the edges outward.

“In the world we came from, our existence was so easy. And so full of discontent because it was so easy. How do you find meaning when you’re one of seven billion? When food, clothing, everything you need is just one Walmart away? When we numb our minds to sleep on all manner of screens and HD entertainment, the meaning of life, of our existence and purpose, becomes lost.”
Page: 40

It reminded him of the sickening, random way that fate and chance figured into battle—if you had stepped left instead of right, the bullet would have gone through your eye instead of your friend’s.
Page: 56

A world of chance, of randomness, is a very scary thing.

“I wish we lived in a world where actions were measured by the intentions behind them. But the truth is, they’re measured by their consequences.”
Page: 103

He also carried that whiff of unearned arrogance that seems to cling to those who crave authority for the sheer sake of power.
Page: 106

Yeah. This.

“Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re the right things.”
Page: 108

How did you help a boy come to terms with something like that when you could barely face it yourself?
Page: 108

Combat paralysis. When the total horror of the violence and the constant threat of death overwhelmed a soldier.
Page: 124

It’s a rush to keep company with someone who wields such power. Makes you feel better about yourself.
Page: 193

“Why are you up here?” she asked.

“I just told you.”

“No, I mean, is it because you can’t live with what you did? Or because you can’t be with her?”

“Because I can’t be with her. Look, I’m not going to stop loving her just because her husband’s around. That’s not the way the human heart works. I can’t just amputate what I feel."
Page: 254

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that are so life and death, one or two strong leaders need to call the shots.
Page: 268

“We have to keep trying. Keep fighting.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what we do.”
Page: 273

This is book two of The Wayward Pines Trilogy.

A thing about the first book of this series is that the ending felt like the end of the book. I hadn't realized there were two other books when I read the first book until I arrived at the last page of the book and saw the continuation.

This book does that: continues right off from the previous book, starting only two weeks after the previous book ended. The lead character, Ethan Burke, now knows what's going on in Wayward Pines, and has become a part of the town's conspiracy. The conversion makes for an interesting moral twist, given two weeks before, the town was trying to kill him.

We learn a bit more about the people running the show, and the strange twined history of several of the main characters. I enjoyed this book, and immediately picked up the third book in the series. Given that all three books happen in the span of a month or so, reading them in one go wouldn't be unreasonable.

Twitter and Facebook. Ethan didn’t miss those things. Didn’t wish that his son was growing up in a world where people stared at screens all day. Where communication had devolved into the tapping of tiny letters and humanity lived by and large for the endorphin kick from the ping of a received text or a new e-mail.
Page: 26

Gone were the days of— You can be whatever you want to be. Whatever you set your mind to. Just follow your heart and your dreams. Golden-age platitudes of an extinct species.
Page: 27

“‘Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in, or walling out.’ Robert Frost wrote that.”
Page: 33

She was my always friend and my sometimes lover. We were at ease with each other, and I didn’t know it was the last time I would ever see her alive.
Page: 61

"When I was seven years old, my parents left me with the sitter one Friday evening. They were going to drive into the city to have dinner and see a show. They never came back.”

“They left you?”

“They were killed in a car wreck.”

“Oh.”

“Never assume you know where someone else is coming from.”
Page: 78

Kate looked up from the book—a tattered Lee Child paperback, the last Reacher novel.
Page: 112

This cracked me up. We're still on the Reacher books! Tom Cruise is the f'ing WORST casting as Reacher in the movies. Horrible horrible horrible casting.

The most generous blessing and life-destroying curse all wrapped up in the same woman, and despite the pain of the guilt and the knowledge of how it would crush his wife, whom he still loved, the idea of turning away from Kate seemed like a betrayal of his soul.
Page: 112

I understand this sentiment.

Staring through the window screen, she said, “Look, you got something from her that you couldn’t get from me. Some kind of experience beyond ours. I don’t hate you for it. I never did.” She turned from the sink and faced him, steam rising off the surface of the soapy water. Gaither was playing one of Mozart’s piano concertos. “But that doesn’t mean you didn’t hurt me,” she said.
Page: 118

“I wonder if she makes you feel the way you make me feel. You don’t have to try and answer that. So it’s for work, huh?”
Page: 118

She’d had that effect in their relationship too. He’d spend a day with her that felt like bliss in the moment, then come out on the other side unsure of where he stood. Second-guessing everything. He’d never understood if it was a conscious play on her part, or his own failing in letting this woman get so deep and tangled in his head.
Page: 126

“As you’ll find with your son soon enough, letting go is the hardest, greatest thing we can do for them.”
Page: 158

He was playing the Rimsky-Korsakov edition of A Night on Bare Mountain. The frantic and terrifying section had concluded, and he was entering the slow, calming-down movement that conjured up the feeling of daybreak after a night in hell.
Page: 266

I bothered to look this up on YouTube and listen to it. Was worth the time to understand the feeling of daybreak after a night in hell.

Yeah, I'm finally in a place where I don't have Internet. This is both fantastic and, well, fantastic. I'm on my way to both reading five books this week, and being completely and totally okay without my computer. An interesting happy place to be.

And that's all totally unrelated to this book in particular, other than I read this book today. Well, much of this book today. It's a book of Reacher short stories. To me, that means I've likely read it before, being the Reacher fan that I am.

Fortunately for me, there were a number of the short stories I hadn't read. Can't say that any more!

Zipped through this book. Enjoyed it. A number of the stories Reacher solved a problem and went away. He didn't linger. He didn't get the girl. And those are all okay.

I enjoyed the short stories. Again, if a Reacher fan, yep, worth reading.

Surprise was always good. Delay was always fatal. Guys who let a situation unfold in its own good time were just stockpiling problems for themselves.
Location: 2235

A man in a dark room watching a lit street had an advantage. A man in a dark room watching a dark street might as well have saved himself the eyestrain.
Location: 2375

He heard the sound of steel on linoleum as the Colt skittered away, and he brushed the chair aside and groped and patted blindly until he found the collar of Croselli’s shirt, which he bunched in his left hand while he pounded away with his right, short roundhouse punches to the side of Croselli’s head, his ear, his jaw, one, two, three, four, vicious clubbing blows, until he felt the steam go out of the guy, whereupon he reached forward and grabbed the guy’s wrists and yanked them up behind his back, high and painful, and he clamped them together in his left hand, human handcuffs, a party trick perfected years before, enabled by the freakish strength in his fingers, from which no one had ever escaped, not even his brother, who was of equal size, or his father, who was smaller but stronger.
Location: 2502

Okay, who wrote this sentence? This is one sentence. One. I have to wonder if Child challenged himself to see what the longest sentence he could write and get past his editor would be.

This one wins.

The waitress shrugged and made a shape with her mouth, and said business was OK, but she didn’t sound convinced. And waitresses knew. They had a close-up view. Better than accountants or auditors or analysts. They saw the sad expression on the owner’s face, exactly once a week, on payday.
Location: 4663

Context, Reacher thought again. And melodrama.
Location: 5631