Previous SFF Author: Thompson Cross
Blake Crouch is a bestselling novelist and screenwriter. He is the author of the forthcoming novel, Dark Matter, for which he is writing the screenplay for Sony Pictures. His international-bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy was adapted into a television series for FOX, executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, that was Summer 2015’s #1 show. With Chad Hodge, Crouch also created Good Behavior, the TNT television show starring Michelle Dockery based on his Letty Dobesh novellas. He has written more than a dozen novels that have been translated into over thirty languages and his short fiction has appeared in numerous publications including Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Crouch lives in Colorado with his family. To learn more about what he is doing, check out his website, www.blakecrouch.com, follow him on Twitter – @blakecrouch1 – or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/blakecrouchauthor.
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Apparently I’ve been living under a rock or, perhaps, in an isolated cottage in a pine forest, since I had never heard of Wayward Pines — the town, the trilogy of novels by Blake Crouch, or the Fox TV series based on these novels — before I picked up Pines (2012). In this case, being oblivious was a great thing, since the mystery wasn’t spoiled. I think it would be possible to enjoy reading Pines already knowing what the big secret is,
Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Blake Crouch | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Wayward (2013), the second book in Blake Crouch’s WAYWARD PINES trilogy, picks up right where book 1, Pines, left off. I’ll avoid THE major spoiler for Pines, but minor ones are inevitable, and if there was ever a series where you absolutely need to read the books in order, this one is it. Ethan Burke is the newly-minted sheriff of the small town of Wayward Pines,
Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Blake Crouch | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Blake Crouch wraps up the WAYWARD PINES trilogy in The Last Town (2014). If you haven’t read the prior two books, Pines and Wayward, be warned that here there be spoilers, as well as monsters and a bloodbath.
David Pilcher was a visionary man, convinced that the town of Wayward Pines, Idaho would be a new Eden, a place where people could start over again.
Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Blake Crouch | Horror | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Dark Matter (2016) is a tense science fiction thriller that was nearly unputdownable. It sucked me in almost immediately and didn’t spit me out again until I was on the other side of about a four hour reading marathon.
Jason Dessen is a brilliant physicist who in some respects has “settled.” Fifteen years ago, on the cusp of a scientific breakthrough in quantum mechanics, his girlfriend Daniela, a gifted artist, unexpectedly told him that she was pregnant. After an internal struggle,
Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Blake Crouch | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Recursion (2019) begins with a dual timeline in alternating chapters, a familiar literary approach, but then splinters into razor-sharp time shards as the characters deal with the explosive consequences of a new technology relating to personal memory.
In November 2018, detective Barry Sutton attempts to prevent a woman from jumping from the 41st floor of a New York City tower. The woman, Ann, tells him she has False Memory Syndrome (FMS), a new affliction in which a person remembers an entirely different past for themselves,
Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Blake Crouch | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
A woman steals a Maserati and takes off for a mansion north of San Francisco, on a remote stretch of Highway 1 on the coast of California. Another person, Riley, follows her into the home and up to a bathroom, where a man in the tub is dying of knife wounds. As Riley pursues the woman, the tension is offset somewhat by feeling that something about the scene is off. A smell is described as “almost right.” The woman that Riley is chasing, Maxine or “Max,” speaks in toddler-like language.
Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Blake Crouch | Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
I chose Blake Crouch’s 2022 novel Upgrade out of curiosity because I’d never read anything of his. He is a popular author whose books are everywhere, and he writes thrillers, usually with a speculative-fiction flavor. I’d heard of him years ago when Fox TV made a show based on his WAYWARD trilogy, and the one or two episodes I saw (Season 1) had a nifty, paranoid, who-can-you-trust vibe. Upgrade shares that vibe.
My plot synopsis may contain mild spoilers.
Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Blake Crouch | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Previous SFF Author: Thompson Cross
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.