Wool

I’m an absolute sucker for fictional dystopia. It's the perfect arena to discuss complex real world issues and hypothesise what the extremes of those might look like. Hugh Howey's 'Wool' does all of this brilliantly, scratching an itch for me that’s not been touched since 2016’s The Power.

I discovered Wool through its engrossing television adaptation, 'Silo', on Apple TV. While it excels at character development and gives it an intriguing detective noir spin, I found myself needing to know what happens next. So, when I saw book two in the series on offer, it was a great excuse to get the first two to see how the source material compares.

I'm pretty sure it's a bit trite - I've come across a lot of the ideas and tropes before. But I expect that that’s what I needed at this point in time - fast paced, gripping, comfort food.

To sum it up, 'Wool' is a well-crafted tale that had me hooked, made me think, and left me wanting more. So much so, that the only thing stopping me from starting on the second book, 'Shift', is writing this.

This is an interesting little collection of tales that come together nicely in an overarching story.
 
The premise is that we're in a post-apocalyptic future where the atmosphere is highly toxic and corrosive and the last pocket of humanity is surviving in the silo, an underground tower designed to be self-sufficient for as long as it takes for the world above to become habitable again. It's been a few hundred years so far.
 
The only contact with the outside world is via viewscreens fed from sensors on the surface which gradually become coated with a layer of grime, obscuring the image. The punishment for most transgressions in the silo is to be sent out to clean the sensors, which is a death sentence - there's no way back inside before your protective suit is damaged by the corrosive wind.
 
The first few stories are short, the events told from a different character's viewpoint, and introducing us to other people who tell their own stories later on. The final installment is much longer than the others and jumps between characters to give us the full picture about what's happening.
 
The very first story was a great introduction and really set the scene for what was to come. The situation is explained, and we're given a whiff of the corruption inside the silo that isn't evident to most of the inhabitants. I thought I'd seen the twist in the tale a mile off, and I kind of had... but there was more to it. A brilliant start to the