TITLE: Wool (Silo #1)
AUTHOR: Hugh Howey
GENRE: Science Fiction
PUBLISHED: 25/01/2012
RATING: ★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Review: First, a note; this review is specifically talking about the Wool Omnibus. The first instalment of Wool was, to the best of my knowledge, published online sometime mid-2011, but I want to talk about Wool as a whole, not dissect the bite-size novella parts individually.
So.
There's a good chance many of you have already heard of Hugh Howey; he is a big name in the self-publishing world, being one of the relatively few authors who have managed to achieve a great deal of fame and (again, relative) fortune through self-publishing. To the point where Howey is now signed on with a traditional publisher, and his novel Wool has been optioned for film rights.
I must admit, I don't understand the appeal.
There's nothing bad about Howey's writing, or Wool's premise, but for readers already comfortable in the science-fiction genre, Howey doesn't break any new ground, or even pull off a familiar trope in a particularly new way. The biggest twist/revelation occurs in the prologue (technically the first handful of chapters, but I'm going to shove them together and call them a prologue), and after that there was nothing that made me desperate to keep reading. The only reason I finished Wool at all was the insistence of a dear friend (the same reason I read and completed the sequel, Shift, which was just as blandly acceptable).
Here's the set-up: the characters live in a silo, an enormous underground facility encompassing everything from shops to farms that is entirely self-sufficient. The outside world is some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland where the very air is toxic to all life, but that's fine because the silo's inhabitants have very little interest in the outer world. As far as they're concerned, the silo is the world, dropped fully-functioning into existence by some unnamed god or gods. Only every now and then someone goes mad from claustrophobia, or breaks a serious law, and is sent outside for 'Cleaning' - to clean the cameras that provide the silo's only glimpse of the outside.
Cleaners inevitably die within sight of the silo.
Ta da! That's it. There is, inevitably, a great big conspiracy keeping people in the silo and unquestioning, and Wool could be summarised by just saying 'someone begins asking questions and pieces the conspiracy together'. It's nothing that hasn't been done before, and it says nothing that hasn't already been said. The friend I mentioned seems convinced that Wool is meant as social commentary on people who think outside the box (a terrible pun, considering the subject matter!) but having read through the first two books and almost finished the third, I just can't see it. It reads like a mystery, except that the mystery isn't much of a mystery, given that the twist of the prologue makes most of it pretty clear to the reader, and the pacing of the book is so slow that any manufactured sense of urgency dies within a few chapters. There is zero drive pushing the story along, nothing to make us turn the pages in order to find out what's going on.
Another floor went by—a pie-shaped division of dormitories. As Holston ascended the last few levels, this last climb he would ever take, the sounds of childlike delight rained down even louder from above. This was the laughter of youth, of souls who had not yet come to grips with where they lived, who did not yet feel the press of the earth on all sides, who in their minds were not buried at all, but alive. Alive and unworn, dripping happy sounds down the stairwell, trills that were incongruous with Holston’s actions, his decision and determination to go outside.
I mean, what is this? It's a long-winded, over-complicated, over-dramatic passage (from the first few pages) that tells us almost nothing. It could either be more concise or better descriptive, but as is it's just...useless and irritating.
That's it. That's the writing style. The whole way through.
I had several issues with the world-building too - several hundred years into the future and we still have a casually sexist culture where men must ask the father of the bride for permission to marry, and no LGBT representation whatsoever? - but to be fair, the reason for both those things is explained in book two, Shift, albeit subtly. I found Shift to be the most interesting of the trilogy simply because it explains how the world of the silos came to be, and that's always my first question in any kind of dystopia/post-apocalyptic story; what happened? But even Shift was a book I had to force myself to finish.
I really don't know what to say about this. Wool is bland. It's not terrible, but it's not great either - for the most part, it's slow and boring. A cast of interesting characters is ruined by too much introspection and a slow-moving plot, and though the writing is technically perfect, there's no spark to it, no addictive readability or stylistic beauty that would have balanced out a dull story. I can't even provide enough quotes to back up my review, because there is nothing to quote. There is no passage in the entire novel that stuck out as either important or delightful - just as, to be fair, there is no passage that stuck with me as being truly terrible. Wool is just one long flatline, and if you don't believe me, you're welcome to go try it out for yourself.
If nothing else, it's a great cure for insomnia.