“In a ruined and toxic future, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside.

His fateful decision unleashes a drastic series of events. An unlikely candidate is appointed to replace him: Juliette, a mechanic with no training in law, whose special knack is fixing machines. Now Juliette is about to be entrusted with fixing her silo, and she will soon learn just how badly her world is broken. The silo is about to confront what its history has only hinted about and its inhabitants have never dared to whisper. Uprising.” 

[Text from the inside flap ; see also the backcover]

>> Please, read the warning for possible spoilers <<

I had just finished watching the excellent () science fiction TV series Silo from Apple TV+ (rated 8.1 on IMDb and 87% / 89% on Rotten Tomatoes; see the trailer on Youtube and check Wikipedia for more information) and I wanted more ! I really cannot resist a thrilling post-apocalyptic story. Of course, when I discovered that the series was based on a book by Hugh Howey, I quickly reserved it at the library. The series tells the story only of the first half of the book. I wanted to know how the story ended and I wasn’t disappointed (although that’s not really the end since this book, Wool, is part of a trilogy with Shift and Dust). In fact, if it is set in a post-apocalyptic world, the story is more a thriller. And like all book’s adaptation there are HUGE differences in the story-telling (the sex of some characters have been changed, their motivation is sometime not the same and some events unfold quite differently) but over all the general idea is the same. 

A community of about ten thousands humans lives in a self-sufficient closed environment, a silo made of over one hundred levels, protecting them from the toxic outside. Nobody knows for how long they have been there, nor what happened to make the surface of the Earth uninhabitable and toxic. In order to insure that they survive until the outside is liveable, this society is governed by a very strict set of rules called the “Pact”. If you ask too many questions or simply go crazy and desperately want to go outside, well, you are given a protective suit and shown the door. Despite the suit, most won’t survive the toxic environment more than a few meters… You are also given a piece of cloth (a wool) and asked to clean the sensor camera that monitors the outside. Hence the title of the novel (but it might also be a reference to the expression “pull the wool over someone’s eyes”, i.e. to deceive, which would make us wonder what kind of deception is in play…).

Somehow, since I saw the TV series first, I like it better than the book. The TV series offers a stronger love story and a more catchy thriller (and that’s totally normal since a TV series needs to put emphasis on those aspects to be successful) but the book is nevertheless a very good reading that offers more character development, a more detailed and complex mystery (secrets hiding secrets!) as well as the answer to the cliff hanger of the first season of the TV series. I really enjoyed both. Even if you have no intention to ever watch the TV series, it remains a very good book.

I can’t wait to learn what other mysteries Juliet will discovers in the other two novels. And, of course, I am also quite eager to watch the second season of the TV series (probably next summer) and see how the mystery unfolds in the adaptation. Apparently there is also a graphic novel adaptation and I’ll try to find that one too. Hugh Howey has created with Wool / Silo a very fascinating world and I just can’t resist to learn more about it.

Wool Omnibus #1, by Hugh Howey. New York: Simon & Schuster, March 2013. 514 pages, 14 x 21 cm, $US 26.00 / $29.99 Can, ISBN 978-1-4767-3511-5. For a teenager readership (14+). See the trailer on Youtbe.

For more information you can check the following websites:

[ Amazon • Goodreads • Google • Nelligan • Wikipedia • WorldCat ]

© 2012 Hugh Howey.

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