After giving us the ‘how we got here’ in “Shift”, Howey brings his readers back to Juliette’s timeline from “Wool”, so that we may see how her story eAfter giving us the ‘how we got here’ in “Shift”, Howey brings his readers back to Juliette’s timeline from “Wool”, so that we may see how her story ends. I was so excited to get to this book, but also kind of annoyed that it would be the end of this fantastic trilogy. Once again, big thanks to Aunt Karen for sharing my enthusiasm for sci-fi and for enabling my book hoarding!
I am going to keep this brief for the sake of keeping things as spoiler-free as humanly possible, but it must be noted that the trilogy absolutely should be read in order of publication, as this is where the story lines from books 1 and 2 finally collide, and the ultimate fate of the silo(s) is finally decided. It’s very difficult to discuss without giving anything from the previous books away, but I was amazed at how Howey manages to crank up the tension in an already incredibly tense situation. I cursed every time I had to put the book down because oh look, a curve ball I never saw coming was just thrown my way! Somehow, mysteries are still getting unravelled, so many lives hang in the balance and the existential threats keep piling up!
It's a lot.
Juliette is a fantastic character, who is thrown in a much more complicated situation than she was prepared for at the beginning of “Wool” but who stepped up to the challenges that were thrown at her in a remarkable way. I was very excited to be reunited with this reluctant hero, and I am always amazed at the way she deals with situation. She is smart, strong and terribly stubborn, but really, I can’t blame her for reacting the way she does after everything she has been through. Her determination to save her people is incredible, and while her temper often gets her into more trouble than she needs, she persists. She’s not perfect, but frankly, I wouldn’t want to get on Juliette’s bad side!
One of the strengths of these books is the pacing: the plot is structured in such a way that makes it very difficult not to go ‘just one more chapter!’ several times in a row, and the next thing you know, a hundred pages have gone by – and this remains the case with “Dust” until the very end. The vivid (if kind of terrifying) world-building is also one of the remarkable aspects of these books: the way Howey fleshed out his universe is so detailed and palpable that I am not tired of reading about it! I get the feeling that these books will still be really fun on a second read, and while the story Howey set out to tell is finished, I would happily read spin-offs set in the same world.
Yes, most of his characters are not terribly well-developed, I have no issues admitting that. It’s not his strength, and he tends to tell more than he shows when it comes to how his characters feel, but I also think that his intent had a different focus. This book (and the whole series, really) is about resilience, survival and fighting for the truth, so there isn’t much focus on the more personal emotions of the characters – yet he still wants to impress on his readers that they are motivated by love. A sheriff following his wife into a deadly wasteland, a man fighting to figure out what happened to the woman he loved (and in the tv series, a woman doing everything in her power to figure out why the man she loved died); that stuff is obviously a big deal to him, he just writes it a little too dry.
(As a sidenote, I know I am a bit emotional these days, but I can’t really deal with even tiny story lines about missing or dead pets lately. It really sets me off, and while this isn’t a big part of this book, one short chapter was hard to get through, and even if everyone, animals included, were fine by then end of it, I wasn’t. In my current mood, I think I’m going to need a book just about puppies living happy lives, hit me if you have any recommendations.)
Those books deserve all the praise that they get and are important works in the contemporary sci-fi cannon. Howey’s note at the end of this book mentions that a theme he cares a lot about is ‘not letting the cruelty of the world change who you are’, and I think that not only is that a very important and relevant theme, but I think that he did a good job of making that a core value of this series. Very highly recommended. ...more
I basically devoured “Wool” earlier this year, and then I got busy with a lot of other books, but I really couldn’t wait to get my hands on “Shift”. OI basically devoured “Wool” earlier this year, and then I got busy with a lot of other books, but I really couldn’t wait to get my hands on “Shift”. One of the biggest unanswered questions of the first book is: how did this strange underground society come to be? Who built the silo? What cataclysm forced humanity to hide underground to survive all these years?
“Shift” is more of a prequel than a sequel, because it turns the clocks back so that we, the readers, may see how things got from life as we currently know it to the strange, claustrophobic world we have come to know in “Wool”, but it doesn’t disconnect us from the people we met in the silo completely. Of course, trying to write about this without spoiling this book or the first tome of the series is basically impossible, so I will keep things simple, because those books are probably best read for the first time with as little information as possible: discovering the world is a big part of the fun with this series, and if you are as curious as I am after the first one, you will want to gobble this one up very quickly. And yes, they should definitely be read in order of publication.
One timeline is set in a fictional mid 2000s in the United-States, and follows a young congressman named Donald (no, not that Donald), who is shocked to learnt that his old architectural designs are being used for a secret government project based in Georgia. The most surprising aspect is that the powers that be want to take his design of a towering cylindrical building and put it… underground… As he begins to work on the project, believing it to be about making nuclear shelters that will never be used, he begins to notice some odd changes being made to his designs by people way above his pay grade. Another timeline forwards to the 2100s, where a man named Troy is being awakened from a cryogenic sleep and treated with a memory-altering drug, as he prepares for a 6-month ‘shift’ working in a strange place from which he can see a ravaged landscape readers of the previous book will feel familiar with…
Yeah, that’s about as much as I can tell you without spoiling stuff, but if you liked the first book, you will enjoy exploring the world further. Howey has crafted a very immersive environment, and I found myself completely sucked in very quickly. Donald and Troy are not as interesting as Juliette is, but as protagonists go, watching them trying to figure out what mess they got themselves into and discovering what’s going on along with them is very interesting. There are a few tropes (scheming double-crossing politicians, oh my!), but they are used intelligently to send the reader on a near-future sci-fi trip that isn’t that hard to imagine. Unfortunately.
I love (in a ‘purely as a theoretical concept’ kind of way) the idea of a pill that erases traumatic memories because most people are so desperate to put bad things behind and act like they have never happened. Pardon the segway, but recent reports show upticks in covid cases pretty much everywhere and when I mention this to people, a lot of them act as if the pandemic had never even happened or was a thing from such a distant past that worrying about it now makes no sense to them – which flabbergasts me. This might be a natural response from people who simply desire to move forward and leave the past and their suffering behind, but Howey uses this as a clear metaphor for the age-old aphorism, that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it… Add to that the fact that no one gobbling down those pills is dealing with their collective trauma adequately, something which has a way of biting people in the ass… and you get this claustrophobic and bizarre society we discovered in “Wool”. My point is, this is a brilliant idea and is a sure-fire recipe for disaster, especially when it becomes a thing at the same time as when humanity finds a way to blow itself back into the stone age, and I loved the way it was used in the story of the silo.
I was reminded a bit of “A Canticle for Leibowitz”, which was a fascinating speculation on a post-nuclear disaster Earth when the destruction has been so complete that even the knowledge of how to recreate the cataclysm was lost, and people could only vaguely speculate on what life had been like before based on whatever random artefact they could get their hands on. The “Silo” series obviously doesn’t have the religious element “Canticle” did, but there are still interesting parallels to be drawn between the two books.
Not unlike “Wool”, this is the kind of book that quickly becomes very difficult to put down, as the short chapters and rapid pacing become very addictive very quickly, and the 600 or so pages went by in a flash. In fact, I think I found this book even more tense and hard to put away than the first. I had a few days of growling at anyone who tried to pull me away from the book for silly things like eating and working – feh! Howey definitely has a knack for writing things in a very cinematic way, and hopefully, the wonderful Apple+ tv show keeps going long enough that we can have the pleasure of seeing this part of the silo’s story on the screen, because it is perfect material for adaptation.
One of the underlying themes of the series so far is corruption, and the consequences of hoarding knowledge and restricting access to information and technology – even when it’s allegedly for the greater good. I had noted in the first book that I kept thinking about Soviet Russia as I read about the way labor is organized, compartmentalized, and staggered; I also thought about the USSR reading this one, but more about the realpolitik and truth manipulation aspect of the Soviet Union. I have a pet theory that the USA is way more like the USSR (albeit in sneaky ways, though shit like Project 2025 is making it seem less and less sneaky) that they will ever admit – much more so now than when Howey wrote those books, but he may simply be very smart and prescient. There was also an echo of my readings about the Chernobyl disaster because of a team of workers who have to proceed with extremely dangerous work that they don’t want to do but must, because someone has to.
While Howey is better at plotting than he is at character development, he also brings a very practical human element to the genre of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, and I really appreciate that line of speculation and find it much more interesting than “Hunger Games”-type of dystopian pageantry. That might be because I am more the type to worry about what I would do should the shit hit the fan in my lifetime (I was recently reminded that I once put together a go-bag when I was 9 years old, so obviously, I have issues to deal with there) than the type to imagine what things would be like a hundred years after that (I won’t be there!).
If you enjoyed the first book of this series, or are simply curious as to how it all came to be, this is a great, if stressful and claustrophobic ride. Very recommended!...more
This book is a cute little graphic novel about what happens to the younger characters of “Stranger Things” between seasons. I fully admit that I had nThis book is a cute little graphic novel about what happens to the younger characters of “Stranger Things” between seasons. I fully admit that I had not paid close attention to the content before I got my copy, so word of warning: this is definitely aimed at a young adult audience: the stories are fun, but some little teachable moments are added in there, for good measure.
“Zombie Boys” is about the AV Club gang getting together with a new student to make a zombie movie, which helps Will, who still feels quite rattled by his experience in the Upside Down and by his new nickname. “The Bully” is about Troy, the mean little bully El put back in his place twice over the first season, and his attempt to understand what happened. And finally, “Erica the Great” is about Erica Sinclair’s attempt to get her girlfriends to play D&D, and how that doesn’t quite work out the way she expected.
The first story was cute, and I do appreciate the underlying message, that art can help us heal and reclaim who we are after trauma – and that scary movies can actually help us cope with real-life scary stuff, and I simply loved the last story, but then Erica is one of my favorite supporting characters: she is utterly terrifying and tragically underutilized, I hope they fix that in season 5. The middle story about Troy was an interesting choice: it shows that bullies usually learn their behavior somewhere, and tend to be just as terrified as the people they pick on, albeit for different reasons. And this will sound harsh, but Stranger Things does disgusting bully characters so-well that I am kind of indifferent to attempts at redeeming them.
Overall, a cute and fun little collection of bite-sized stories, but I would not consider it a significant addition to the universe’s cannon....more
Nick Harkwaway’s novels are always unique. He has a wild imagination, and he knows how to make very twisty and convoluted plots that manage to give thNick Harkwaway’s novels are always unique. He has a wild imagination, and he knows how to make very twisty and convoluted plots that manage to give the reader a satisfying ending – and reading experience. So at the risk of voicing what might be an unpopular opinion, can I just ask what happened here? OK, granted, I haven’t read Mr. Harkaway’s entire catalogue, I am basing my opinion of ‘Titanium Noir’ on how I felt about ‘The Gone Away World’ and ‘Angelmaker’, but if you had told me the same guy wrote all those books, I would be skeptical.
Cal Sounder is an investigator who specializes in Titan technology related crimes. In this strange world Harkaway has conjured, Titans are humans who have undergone a sort of gene therapy that makes them virtually indestructible, incredibly strong but also physically massive – which makes them dangerous sometimes simply because of their size. Those individuals are obviously noticeable, but they also tend to be from extremely wealthy backgrounds, as the therapy that turns humans into Titans is extremely expensive. So when Cal is called to a crime scene to investigate the death of a Titan who seems to have been from a very modest background, he finds himself with more questions than answers very fast.
I browsed a few reviews and my take on this is clearly the unpopular opinion, but this was just… weird. And I say that as someone who eats weird for breakfast. The hard-boiled detective vibe is spot-on, with violent encounters, a dame and plenty of double-crossing, but where, oh where is the (for lack of a better world) enchantment I had gotten used to from Mr. Harkaway? Certainly, his technology bordering on magical is there, love lost is a strong motivator for many characters in the story, and there is a not-so-subtle wink at class warfare, but it all felt kind of sterile and colorless compared to my experience of his other works, which were lush and baroque and shiny.
It’s also quite short, and that makes me wonder if he was rushed in any way, because the other books of his that I have read were sprawling tapestries that took readers all over the world. Would this book have been better if it had been longer? Maybe; provided the richness of his other work had been given room to bloom here, but somehow, I don’t think that this is what he was going for here.
I am going to dust off my copy of ‘Gnomon’ and read it to see if this one was the fluke, or if my first two reads were the fluke. Since I seem to be in the minority in not being crazy about this book, you should check it out if you enjoy weird noir detective stories with a strong sci-fi streak....more
One of the blurbs on the cover of this book described it as a ‘Black Mirror’ episode, and honestly, yeah, pretty spot on. Near future techno-dystopia,One of the blurbs on the cover of this book described it as a ‘Black Mirror’ episode, and honestly, yeah, pretty spot on. Near future techno-dystopia, with just enough elements from daily life as we know it to make it feel uncomfortably realistic. Urgh.
My online presence is insignificant. Goodreads, Instagram (so by association, FB) but that’s basically it. I’m just not really interested in more, frankly, and I realize that probably ages me, and that’s fine. So reading a book about people who have taken the idea of influencer to the extreme but logical end of that concept – so people who live almost their entire life fully online, supported by a professional production team… well, that feels both like a thing that will happen any minute now, but it also freaks me out a bit.
Joey is a producer for one such influencer, Indi, basically running his livestream, making sure that he does what’s required to keep his fanbase engaged. This goes from the simple stuff, like product placement and event attendance, to supervising auditions for Indi’s new girlfriend (because her likability might impact his, duh). Rudra is Indi’s cousin, who was mostly estranged from his family, but is brought back into the fold when his uncle dies and begs Indi for a job on his team. The complex family dynamics in place are already making things fraught, but things get significantly more complicated when a conflict with investors come up, and information from both Joey and Indi’s past is dug up and used to threaten them.
This book is short, and fast-paced, and has a lot to say about our addiction to vapid social media and surveillance capitalism. In North America, we worry about it, but in countries like India, the consequences of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could be much more severe than the run-of-the-mill cancellations we see here on an almost daily basis. Samit Basu is a brilliant writer, who managed to get me engaged with his characters immediately and gave me such a rich sense of the settings that I could imagine all the noises and colors and lights and smells of Delhi. But to say that enjoyed a story that focuses on paranoia would not be quite accurate. It’s an incredibly effective story, detailed and precise, and it was a great read, but it draws a bleak and concerning picture of the future. I will be looking for more books by Basu, and keeping an eye out for future publication because this is a talent not to be missed if you are interested in sci-fi. Very recommended. ...more
Morty decides he wants to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons to impress a cute nerd girl he met at the hobby shop. Well, that was simply awesome!
Morty decides he wants to learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons to impress a cute nerd girl he met at the hobby shop. It turns out that Rick is a huge D&D fan who has very strong opinions about the game. The whole Smith family ends up getting involved and as in any good “Rick and Morty” adventure, things go completely off the rails quickly, as the family basically gets Jumanji-ed into their game.
One of the fantastic things about this graphic novel is that you do not have to be a D&D person to enjoy it, in large parts because there are basic and clear explanations provided through the story without ever veering into info-dumping. I don’t play D&D at all, and I was able to follow everything easily, though I do imagine there are plenty of little Easter Egg jokes in there for people who do. I also loved that even with a strong theme to build the story around, the graphic novels stays extremely true to the darkly hilarious and nihilistic style of the show. The characters ring absolutely perfect and faithful to the originals.
Long story short, this is exactly what the title promises! Highly recommended for the all the “Rick and Morty” fans out there!...more
I really had difficulties with reading over the past six months, maybe even longer than that. Anxiety is to blame"We weren't meant to live like this."
I really had difficulties with reading over the past six months, maybe even longer than that. Anxiety is to blame for stuttering attention span and perpetual exhaustion, but I'm finally turning a corner and reading in big fat gulps, like a parched person suddenly given an oasis with which to quench their thirst. It feels nice.
"Wool" was a perfect book to read while getting back into my gluttonous rhythm: short chapters and quick pacing meant I took the book with me everywhere and cracked it open at every opportunity, eager to find out what happens next in a way I hadn't felt in a long time. I have a lot of gratitude for Hugh Howey, if only for that. I did something else I haven't done in a while, which is avoid spoilers at all cost: I wanted to keep the excited curiosity going as long as possible!
My copy of this book has a blurb that compare it to "1984" and "Brave New World", and that felt like a huge boast to me: these are the freaking gold standards of dystopic sci-fi, and how any work could live up to that praise is something I struggled to imagine. But I soon found out that the world of "Wool" is one of suffocating claustrophobia, extreme surveillance of it's citizens and the way they behave, high secrecy and information withholding, control over reproduction... The world Howey dreamt up is deeply unsettling and, perhaps because of the classics of this genre that came before, also feels uncomfortably familiar. And yes, just like "1984" and "Brave New World", this is set in a unspecified but near enough future featuring technology that is not beyond what we can conceive right now.
Following unknown but catastrophic events, what is left of human civilization has come to reside in an enormous underground silo, encompassing over a hundred "floors". The world outside the silo is strictly taboo, as the view from external sensors make clear that the air outside is terribly toxic and would kill a person who would step outside in just a few moments. Most people are content with their lives in this strange structure, but some people ask themselves questions about what life in the silo was like, before a rebellion that took place about 140 years before the beginning of the narrative, when many servers were destroyed and all information about the past was lost.
One such person was the sheriff's own wife. She found something that made her utter words that are an automatic death sentence in the silo: "I want to go out". She is given a sort of hazmat suit and supplies with which to clean the sensors and she is sent outside, to clean so that citizens of the silo can see the outside devastation more clearly, and to die in the poisoned atmosphere they are hiding from. But something about her death makes no sense to her now-widowed husband - and not simply because of his grief. He soon follows in her footsteps outside the silo, leaving an ominous mystery for his successor to solve.
Said successor is an unlikely pick: Juliette was an engineer, working on the deepest levels of the silo, who had dedicated her life to keeping the main generator working. She had no experience or interest in law-enforcement but she ends up with the big job, where the suspicions of her detractors are confirmed: she asks too many questions and she is too smart. To say more would be spoiling the fun, so I will leave the summary at that, but trust me, things that happen from that point on are twisted, upsetting and fascinating.
The pacing was a pleasant surprise: I could barely put the damn book down, the action was rolling at a fast and gripping clip, and next thing I knew, I had gobbled down the entire book. And while some characters flirted a bit with stereotypes, I found them well-drawn up and easy to get attached to. Juliette has a lot of Ripley energy: smart, no nonsense, stubborn and highly qualified. She is the perfect character through which a reader can explore this strange world, and I loved her so much and rooted for her every step of the way. And what a way that was! Whew! I finished the book and took a long bath with a big glass of wine just to calm myself down.
I highly recommend this novel for all fans to dystopian sci-fi and readers who enjoy a good action-packed mystery. I am very excited to read the next tome in the trilogy!
I picked up this book after spying the trilogy in my aunt Karen's shelves and her enthusiastic endorsement of both the books and the series (which I just started watching last night, and it's freaking awesome already!). She is a wise person and she has excellent taste! Thank you Karen!...more
Loading...
