Silo (Book Series) - 2014

After finishing up the Dune series (boy I wish I had had a place to review those at the time), I was looking for something that felt more like a good book, and less like a weird boring slog. Thankfully there’s a lot of buzz around the TV adaptation that is currently airing, and I’m a sucker for being the guy who says “actually, the book…”, so off we go.

Wool is an astoundingly good sci-fi novel. Published online as a series of short stories, it peels its layers back bit by bit, revealing an astounding talent for worldbuilding and some great character work. The plot whips by, but there’s enough time to live in the eponymous silo and wonder about the lives of people trapped forever in an underground tube. Of course, the tube is us all along, and the big twist that the REAL power behind the proceedings of the Silo is not the mayor’s office, but the IT department, is remarkably prescient for a 10-year-old book. Juliet kicks hyper ass, and her story, once it gets around to being hers, makes the pages fly by until the very satisfying ending.

Shift gets around the many structural challenges of writing the middle novel of a trilogy by refusing to move the plot forward at all, instead focusing on the backstories of a handful of characters, expanding the world laterally and catching it up to the ending we’ve already earned. I’ve never seen Godfather part II but it feels very Godfather part II.

Dust brings it all home, and it moves along nicely after a slower start. Once again, this guy knows how to please readers. The conclusion of the series (minus a short story that serves as tragic coda) is as happy and fulfilling as the conclusion to a story about the survivors of multiple genocide events can be.

This was a joy to read, and I’m happy to recommend it to others, because the author finished it before dying, and wasn’t zooted on coke the entire time.