Book Review: Wool by Hugh Howey

Book #90 of 2022:

Wool by Hugh Howey (Silo #1)

This book, the first in the Silo trilogy, is itself made up of five sections, each originally published as a standalone novella: Wool (later renamed Holston), Proper Gauge, Casting Off, The Unraveling, and The Stranded. Of those, the debut is a wicked slice of science-fiction with a fabulous twist ending, but it’s also the only one that I feel actually works in isolation. Although the rest have clear structural breaks between them, they really function more as successive movements within a linked broader piece. That is, while I’ve enjoyed reading these all together, I think I would have been frustrated to receive them independently upon release.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the story, but our setting is a massive underground bunker, over a hundred narrow stories deep, where a population shelters from the post-apocalyptic nightmare of the uninhabitable earth outside. For generations, the only people to exit the silo have been condemned criminals, who are fitted with survival gear to keep them alive just long enough to scrub the cameras that look out on that barren landscape. In fact, even expressing a desire to leave is considered a capital offense — our earliest indication of the authoritarian horror governing this dystopia and the truths that might be suppressed in order to maintain that power.

I like the beginning of this tale better than the end — I’d say part one is stronger than the next two, which are likewise superior to the last couple — but it’s kept my interest throughout, and overall painted a bleakly distinctive vision of humanity’s future. I will likely move on to the second novel (a prequel that has its own three separate component segments, presumably for maximum reader confusion) at some point.

[Content warning for gun violence, suicide, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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