Hugh Howey’s WOOL
October 4, 2012 at 2:09 pm 10 comments
“Is seeing always believing?”
There are so many things to love about this book. It shares nothing in common with The Hungers Games, The Passage or The Matrix ( the first film not the dodgy sequels) but if you liked those stories you will go absolutely nuts for this book like I did.
“You’ve felt it, right? That we could be anywhere, living a lie?”
Originally self published as a short story that grew into five eBooks it is now available as one eBook together and will be published in December in paperback. I read an advanced print copy that had each part as a separate volume and I wish they were publishing the print book this way because having five distinct parts I think is essential to the overall reading experience of this extremely impressive novel.
“Something had happened. A great and powerful thing had fallen out of alignment.”
Part One is only 48 pages but it is more than enough to blow your mind. We meet Holston who is a Sheriff and is waiting in a holding cell to die. Holston lives in a gigantic underground silo which is over 130 stories deep. The outside world is full of toxic air and wastelands. The silo is organized and supplied so that people do not need to go outside. They have food and water and the population is kept in check. A couple cannot have a child until someone else dies and a lottery is held. There is a Mayor, a Sheriff and the laws of The Pact. If a law is broken the punishment is ‘The Cleaning’. ‘The Cleaning’ involves going outside in a specially designed suit and cleaning a gigantic lens which allows the inhabitants to view the outside world. It also involves certain death. Holston is waiting in a holding cell to do ‘The Cleaning’. A task he has volunteered for.
“A project to pull the wool back from everyone’s eyes. A favour to the next fool who slipped up or dared to hope aloud”
Holston is the catalyst. His actions set everything in motion. A new Sheriff must be found. As the next four parts unfold we learn more about life in the silo and how each level is divided up in order for everybody to survive. You also begin to piece together a bigger picture and a more complex world that will astonish you and leave you gasping for air as you read. What at first seems to be a great lie is in fact something else all together and discovering the truth is more dangerous that anyone can possibly imagine.
“This is how the uprising begins”
This is a story bursting with imagination and ideas. Thought-provoking seems an understatement. Howey does what all great speculative fiction should, he creates a world seemingly removed from our own, in an apocalyptic future, and slowly peels the differences away. There is a lot of hype around this book. This is one of those rare occasions where not only does the book live up to the hype, it exceeds it.
“It is not beyond us to kill to keep secrets.”
The eBook is currently only $6.99 which I think is a total steal
ISBN: 9781780891248
Format: Paperback
Price: $29.95
Price: $ 6.99
ISBN: 9781448150205
Pages: 448
Format: EPUB
Update 16/10/12
I have just finished reading First Shift: Legacy which is the first book in a new series of silo stories from Hugh Howey. It is just as mind-blowingly awesome as Wool but at 160 pages it didn’t seem ready to warrant a full review. I’ll wait until that story line is finished and then review but in the meantime if you loved Wool get reading First Shift NOW!
Update 28/10
I changed my mind and reviewed First Shift: Legacy
Entry filed under: Book Reviews. Tags: apocalypse, apolocalyptic, books, hunger games, survival, the matrix, The Passage.
1.
Craig | October 9, 2012 at 10:12 am
I loved this series – it’s engrossing, captivating, wondrously human and scarily possible. Post-apocalyptic mystery and sci-fi plus a dusting of romance and misery equals brilliant!
2.
Serial Killer: The Resurgence of the Serial Novel « Bite The Book – Book Reviews and Industry Views | October 16, 2012 at 5:09 pm
[...] you may know from reading my blog or following me on twitter I have recently been raving about Wool by Hugh Howey which is being published in paperback in December by Random House. However Wool is readily [...]
3.
Hugh Howey’s FIRST SHIFT: LEGACY « Bite The Book – Book Reviews and Industry Views | October 28, 2012 at 3:32 pm
[...] Rome and realized that even though these are serial novels they deserve individual reviewing. Wool was also originally published this way before an omnibus edition was made. Plus my memory is [...]
4.
My Top 5 Reads for 2012 « Bite The Book – Book Reviews and Industry Views | November 20, 2012 at 8:48 am
[...] mentions also go to GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn, WOOL by Hugh Howey, BRING UP THE BODIES by Hilary Mantel, TELEGRAPH AVENUE by Michael Chabon and THE ART [...]
5.
BOOK BITES: Wool by Hugh Howey « Bite The Book – Book Reviews and Industry Views | December 4, 2012 at 9:43 am
[...] You can also read my review here [...]
6.
Hugh Howey’s SECOND SHIFT: ORDER « Bite The Book – Book Reviews and Industry Views | December 11, 2012 at 6:13 pm
[...] eBook I dove straight in. This is the second part of three in what is essentially the prequel to the phenomenally brilliant Wool. I am totally amazed that the world Howey has created, which is so confined within a Silo, can have [...]
7.
Hugh Howey’s THIRD SHIFT: PACT | Bite The Book - Book Reviews and Industry Views | February 28, 2013 at 12:04 am
[...] other part of the story is the origins of Solo and how he came to be all alone. Wool showed us what happens when a silo starts to break down but with Solo we see how a whole society in a silo [...]
8.
In Defence of WOOL | Bite The Book - Book Reviews and Industry Views | March 8, 2013 at 10:03 pm
[...] I am a big fan of Wool and readily admit to bias in my defence here. Wool is not the perfect novel (if that even exists) and nor is it a literary masterwork of the 21st century. But it is an enjoyable, fast-paced, thought-provoking read by an author who has found a massive audience and has done so in a new way. [...]
9.
Hugh Howey’s SHIFT | Bite The Book - Book Reviews and Industry Views | March 27, 2013 at 3:30 pm
[...] eBooks, Shift was originally published as three eBooks and is now available in one volume. Shift is the follow-up to Wool but it is actually the prequel. Set in Silo 1 it tells the story of how the silos came into being [...]
10.
BOOK CHEWING: My Interview with Hugh Howey, author of WOOL and SHIFT | Bite The Book - Book Reviews and Industry Views | April 1, 2013 at 8:09 pm
[...] Wool has been a publishing phenomenon. It started off as a self-published, online, short story that grew into a serialized novel whose eBooks sales outstripped Fifty Shades of Grey. The film rights have been snapped up by Ridley Scott and Hugh Howey has landed landmark publishing deals with Random House in the UK & Australia and Simon & Schuster in the US. The follow up, Shift, has just been published and Hugh Howey is visiting Australia in April. (He will be signing copies at Pages & Pages on April 16!). Hugh was kind enough to answer a few questions ahead of his visit down under. [...]