If it was well-written I might have kept going. I got halfway through before I realised what a predictable load of old-school tosh this was (another ‘rebellion-fantasy’ dystopia, another bit of Capitalist product/worker-drone fodder, keeping the wheels of the mainstream turning – the ‘anarchy-lite’ of The Hunger Games and its clones). It takes a little while to see what is actually there on the page (not what the glowing endorsements want you to see): wooden characters and dialogue film treatment prose a George RR Martin ‘Old Testament’ style author-god, killing of his characters with predictable brutality (‘doing a Ned’ times ten) creaking Marxist dialectic (the underclass workers vs the nasty elite) an uneasy mismatch of technology (powerful computers but no lifts?) terrible ‘typo’ character names (all monosyllabic except for the unlikely ‘Juliette’ heroine) a painfully extended metaphor – ladled on thick in each section title. On the surface, a promising post-apocalypse SF novel by first timer Hugh Howey, but the hype surrounding it acts like the digitised view of the world-beyond-the-silo, the vast bunker in which a whole society operates. She is a very strong character who has to come to terms with the lies she's been told, and it's just a matter of time before she puts a plan into motion, so that everyone in Silo 18 knows its secrets. It's not until Juliette (Jules) is sent out to clean that the story really kicks into high gear - and what she learns changes everything she thought she knew about Silo 18.
And surprisingly, they actually do it, and seem pretty happy about doing it, though the reason why isn't apparent until later on in the book. When people break the law or ask to go outside - they are sent to clean the cameras with wool pads, so the people inside can see the outside. And leaving the Silo truly is a one way trip. The story starts with Holsten, the Sheriff of Silo 18, who wants to go outside - and anyone who wants to leave the Silo is granted their wish: because asking to go outside is a crime in itself punishable by death. Each book: Wool, Shift and Dust was equally entrancing. I loved everything about the Silo-Verse, and finished it within a couple of days of first starting.
This has to be one of my favourite books of all time.
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