Did anyone here read the Wayward Pines trilogy?

[leeba25]

I have thoughts. I'll keep this non-spoilery, for anyone who hasn't read or watched the show. (I didn't watch the show, so I have no idea how it compares.) 

The first book had this weird creepy vibe for most of it, which was amazingly paranoid. Loved it! Then the reveal, and the whole dynamic of the book - the whole "feel" of it - changed. By the third book, I just wanted it to be over. It was very odd how much I simultaneously enjoyed the books but also was annoyed by them. I think that at least part of it was the HUGE GAPING plot hole that kept slapping me in the face. Actually, make that two huge plot holes. Maybe more. But other than those mental gymnastics, it was a cool premise and execution, so I enjoyed a lot of it too. 

Plus they're all really quick reads, so that's always a plus. 

[snshne322]

I'm not sure what makes me think this, but I think susiebw did?  I feel like it was discussed before on NBC.  It made it to my TBR, but I haven't picked it up yet.

[susiebw]

Yup, I read the series. I watched one season of the show after I read the series, too. I heard that there were more seasons of the show, but I thought the one I watched pretty much covered all the books. I really liked Terrance Howard as the sheriff, but mostly the show was nowhere near as good as that first book. The first person take on waking up in Wayward Pines and not really being sure if you've gone crazy or if everyone else has was just so well done, and the show didn't portray that as well.

I loved that first book so, so much. I really enjoyed the other two as well, but I agree, they went downhill as you went through the series. The first 20-30 pages of that third book were brutal; like I was reading about the zombie apocalypse or something. in WAY too much gory detail. I read them a year or so ago, so my memory might be a little fuzzy on the details, but I'm interested in the gaping plot holes that you mention. I remember thinking some of the science seemed confusing to me, and that a few things just didn't feel like they worked out right in my head, but anything involving time-travelly stuff is always hard for me to really grasp.

[charlatti]

Definitely agree that the first was much better than two or three. I can't remember what the plot hole would be, but I feel like that's the sort of book I read for pure entertainment with my critical brain turned mostly off.

[leeba25]

Ok here goes, I hope I do the spoiler thing right. 

SPOILER: Click to show

1) This was the biggest one that kept bugging me: How did the first person wake up from suspended animation? They needed someone there to do whatever to the machines to make it happen, pump your blood back in, whatever. But someone had to be there to do that for the first one. Plus they made a big deal about how when you first woke up, you'd be disoriented and suffer some temporary amnesia. Was there a timer for one person, who then woke everyone else up? This bugged the heck out of me. They addressed the suspended animation issue repeatedly, talked about it at length, and then used it again at the end of the third book, but never got to explaining that. 

2) The kind of evolution that happened in this book is just not something that can occur in 2k years. A whole new species? Come on now. I feel like he sort of addressed that by making the end of the 3rd book jump 70k years into the future. 

3) The reason Pilcher did this whole thing was because he discovered some error in the human genome that would mean that humans would die out within 30-40 generations. So by taking the current batch of humans, and moving them 2k years in the future ... didn't he just forestall that extinction? He didn't fix their genes. He just knocked them out and woke them back up later. 

4) Pilcher kept saying "you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me! You'd be dead! I gave you life! I am your god!" etc, etc. What only one person said once, which should have been thrown in his face over & over, was that if it weren't for him, they would have lived full, regular, fulfilling lives instead of this. It was such a lack of critical thinking that it bugged me people weren't focused on it. He didn't extend their lives! He kidnapped them and moved them to a new time. 

Also, and this isn't really a plot hole, but they just never explained why he woke Ethan Burke up and make him sheriff. He didn't trust him, so why go there with a newbie? Maybe that's a plot hole too, idk. 

[litskispeciality]

I read the series and want to comment. How do you hide spoilers?

[leeba25]

Sept 7, 2016 15:47:58 GMT -5 litskispeciality said:

I read the series and want to comment. How do you hide spoilers?

do brackets with the word spoiler at the beginning, then type what you want to hide, then do brackets with /spoiler at the end. 

these are brackets [   ] 

[Nonny]

I haven't read the books, but I just finished the second season of the TV show last night and I agree there are some major plot holes.

These are TV spoilers, but maybe the book readers can shed some light on some of the issues? 

SPOILER: Click to show

Season 1 plot hole:
Is it explained in the books how exactly the town got built? If the town was built prior to everyone being put in the pods, it should be overgrown and falling apart by the time everyone was woken up because it was over a thousand years with no one around to maintain anything.  But if it wasn't built until after some X group of people was brought out of the pods, they should have known they were building smack in an Abbie hot zone and they were going to be screwed.

Season 2 plot holes:
Regarding the cryogenic pods - when the Abbies are coming and half the pods are uncharged because they've been diverting the power to the fences, and they think if they put people in the uncharged/partially charged pod, they will fail and the people will die.  But they plan to turn off the power to the fences once they get everyone back in the pods, leaving the unchosen people to die anyway. Why didn't they just put the "non-essential" adults into the iffy pods anyway?  Once the power if off to the fence, the uncharged/partially charged pods would have a chance to charge, and maybe they could have saved some of those other people (and would have prevented the rioting, and would have given those people a more peaceful death, and would have established a better level of trust with the essential people and children they did save in the fully charged pods). 

Where exactly are they going to live when they awaken themselves in the future again?  They are going back into the pods because they have no food, and no medicine, and are about to be overrun by the Abbies. Going into the pods changes none of this, it just moves it into the future.

(Book spoilers are OK here, because I'm skeptical they will get a 3rd season.)

[leeba25]

Nonny, Great questions, and I can see where the books & the show differed. I might check the show out, because it looks so intriguing, and based on what you said, it seems like they added a lot of stuff. 

SPOILER: Click to show

Season 1 plot hole:

Is it explained in the books how exactly the town got built? If the town was built prior to everyone being put in the pods, it should be overgrown and falling apart by the time everyone was woken up because it was over a thousand years with no one around to maintain anything. But if it wasn't built until after some X group of people was brought out of the pods, they should have known they were building smack in an Abbie hot zone and they were going to be screwed.


Yeah, so when Pilcher planned this whole endeavor, he put an enormous amount of money and effort into supplies and plans. He stored everything necessary to rebuild this town. (Apparently in the same manner that it had been built in the present day, which the author never really explained or got into.) So when Pilcher and his inner circle woke up - and remember, the first person magically woke up, and then they woke up a few inner circle members, and then Pilcher - he had his crew first secure the mountain, and then he worked on rebuilding the town. Roads, homes, etc, etc. He had all that stuff in the giant storage cavern, including building materials, food supplies, furniture, vehicles, housewares, etc. 


Season 2 plot holes:

Regarding the cryogenic pods - when the Abbies are coming and half the pods are uncharged because they've been diverting the power to the fences, and they think if they put people in the uncharged/partially charged pod, they will fail and the people will die. But they plan to turn off the power to the fences once they get everyone back in the pods, leaving the unchosen people to die anyway. Why didn't they just put the "non-essential" adults into the iffy pods anyway? Once the power if off to the fence, the uncharged/partially charged pods would have a chance to charge, and maybe they could have saved some of those other people (and would have prevented the rioting, and would have given those people a more peaceful death, and would have established a better level of trust with the essential people and children they did save in the fully charged pods).


None of this pod failure stuff happened in the book, so this never came up. And come to think of it, I'm not exactly sure how they powered the pods for those millennia they were asleep. I *think* they mentioned in passing about "reactors" or "reactor cores" but who knows. 


Where exactly are they going to live when they awaken themselves in the future again? They are going back into the pods because they have no food, and no medicine, and are about to be overrun by the Abbies. Going into the pods changes none of this, it just moves it into the future.


Ok, in the book they set this up a little more clearly (it seems). They all went back into the pods because they realized that life alongside the abbies was not sustainable. Humans were prey, and the abbies were incapable of empathy or any other emotion like that. But Ethan had glimpses that perhaps abbies would evolve into more "humane" creatures, based mainly on his interactions with one particular atypical abbie they had in captivity. So he thought, what the hell, we're running out of food and wouldn't be able to be hunter/gatherers alongside the abbies, so we'll die out in a few years anyway, why not push into the future and see if abbies evolve into beings that might tolerate another species without eating them all. Also, it sounds like the 3rd book ended right where you are ... they go into the pods, then there's a final "chapter" about Ethan waking up (magically!! lol) 70k years in the future. 

Read more: pandce.proboards.com/thread/550976/read-wayward-pines-trilogy#ixzz4JfQ9TfMw

[litskispeciality]

SPOILER: Click to show

Based on the books:
1) This was the biggest one that kept bugging me: How did the first person wake up from suspended animation? They needed someone there to do whatever to the machines to make it happen, pump your blood back in, whatever. But someone had to be there to do that for the first one. Plus they made a big deal about how when you first woke up, you'd be disoriented and suffer some temporary amnesia. Was there a timer for one person, who then woke everyone else up? This bugged the heck out of me. They addressed the suspended animation issue repeatedly, talked about it at length, and then used it again at the end of the third book, but never got to explaining that.

I completely agree. Never mind magically after 2K years the technology just works perfect, someone wakes up and all is well?

2) The kind of evolution that happened in this book is just not something that can occur in 2k years. A whole new species? Come on now. I feel like he sort of addressed that by making the end of the 3rd book jump 70k years into the future.

Yes and how that species grew so much so quickly, but perhaps that happens in nature?

3) The reason Pilcher did this whole thing was because he discovered some error in the human genome that would mean that humans would die out within 30-40 generations. So by taking the current batch of humans, and moving them 2k years in the future ... didn't he just forestall that extinction? He didn't fix their genes. He just knocked them out and woke them back up later.

I think the show addressed the need to breed more than the book, but did they plan it out to bring enough young men and women of child bearing age to keep the population going? Wouldn't you end up with a gap because the babies have to grow up, and then what, they have kids at 13 to grow the population?

4) Pilcher kept saying "you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me! You'd be dead! I gave you life! I am your god!" etc, etc. What only one person said once, which should have been thrown in his face over & over, was that if it weren't for him, they would have lived full, regular, fulfilling lives instead of this. It was such a lack of critical thinking that it bugged me people weren't focused on it. He didn't extend their lives! He kidnapped them and moved them to a new time.

Yes!

Also, and this isn't really a plot hole, but they just never explained why he woke Ethan Burke up and make him sheriff. He didn't trust him, so why go there with a newbie? Maybe that's a plot hole too, idk.

I also had a hard time with the housing, both in the book and the first season of the show. Where the heck did the electricity come from? And why don't they have heat if they have electricity?

How did they keep starting over? I think they reference that no only Ethan, but the whole gang restarted a couple of times because of revolt? How do they keep rebuilding the houses and resetting everyone?

The TV show drove me nuts with how clean everything was. Would the trees grow that much that quick? The first few episodes of the first season were good, well cast, stuck to the plot. I'm such a stickler for not changing the plot I had a hard time getting through the end. I still recommend reading the books I think they were good, but yes book 3 could be shorter, maybe even just 2 books.]

[Nonny]

leeba25,

SPOILER: Click to show

Season 1 kind of covered that they'd stored away a TON of supplies, and Season 2 introduced the woman (architect) he'd hired to design the town, but they never really explained how it got built. They just showed her making the plans and being super confused when she was told it wasn't being built right now as they were showing her where it was going to go.

Also, Ethan isn't in Season 2 - the focus is on a doctor they thaw out (the estranged husband of the architect) and a teenager (Jason) who was raised to be the leader. They have an "atypical" Abbie in captivity, but between the doctor and one of the scouts they'd sent out to see if any other human/non-Abbie civilizations were out there who comes back to Wayward Pines, they figure out that the Abbies aren't these mindless animals, but they actually have a thriving culture of their own. The leader is also implied to be telepathic, and they start to do things to deliberately to attack Wayward Pines; at one point they realize the crops are important to the town, so they deliberately burn them all down.

But even with your additional info, I still can't reconcile how'd they make a 3rd TV season out of this.

litskispeciality, your 4th bullet point bugged me about the TV show too! There were a lot of people who went willingly, you probably could have filled all your pods (and necessary people/jobs) with willing participants if you'd just asked around.