Book Review > Wool - Hugh Howey

Wool by Hugh Howey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

** Warning Contains Spoilers ** After initially seeing this book advertised as the next Hunger Games and seeing that it was part of a trilogy, I decided to read it as it sounded intriguing. This was a really good book and I wasn’t disappointed. I thought it would take a while to get into this book as most of the action takes place underground in a silo but once the main protagonists were established then I soon got into it. The main character Juliette works in mechanical and has a knack of fixing things. She soon rises to Sheriff but soon finds out things are not as they seem as she learns about the secrets of the silo. She is promoted thanks to Mayor Jahns and against the advice of Bernard who runs the silo and IT. She meets Lukas who works in IT and has a hobby of star gazing through the screens outside. During her time up top she meets Scottie who points out that the views outside are doctored and he dies in a suspected suicide. Bernard soon becomes her nemesis when she starts to delve into the secrets of IT and is demoted back to mechanical. Eventually she goes too far and shares the fate of previous cleaners and has to go outside the silo. But she has help from Walker in mechanical so that she can survive a bit longer.

Juliette finds another silo and its sole occupant, a frightened boy who calls himself Silo. He has been on his own too long and has no real knowledge of how things working taking it for granted that there is power and water of a kind. She finds a way of communicating with Lukas and then another uprising starts when people learn that she has survived. Lukas has meanwhile been encouraged to read the book of orders that govern the organization of the people who live in the silo. He is being prepared to be a leader by Bernard but he wants to know what happened before the air was toxic outside and the people had to live underground in the silo. He soon becomes disillusioned when he finds out the truth and it looks as though he may share the same fate as Juliette.

I enjoyed the theme of the book about people living below ground and viewing the world through screens but is what they are seeing the truth? As the author says “it asks whether we can know he world by staring at a single screen or if we’re better off going for a look see”. There is a kind of class system here with the people in IT having knowledge that they don’t or cannot share with the people below in mechanical as that would lead to social breakdown. It’s partly science fiction and a thriller. The version I had had the first chapter from the next book ‘Shift’ so hope to read that soon.



View all my reviews