A Book & A Beer – Wool by Hugh Howey

Season 2 of Silo is coming out on Apple TV and like many streaming shows, I have yet to view Season 1.  To compensate, I read the first book in the trilogy, Wool (followed by Dust and Shift in one word cryptic book titles).

Hugh Howey, the author, has a great story about the genesis of this series that was a self-published novelette that suddenly gained digital traction to the point where he all but had to embiggen it.

It joins the Fallout series in a post-apocalyptic setting with survivors hiding underground along with a lot of secrets.  I will do my best to not include spoilers in this mini recap.  The heroine of the story, Juliette is part of a mechanical team for the silo who gets the tap on the shoulder to literally go up in the world to become the sheriff.  Factions develop between the mayor, the mechanics, the supply crew and the IT department and there is a lot of going up from floor 100 to 34 to 1 and back down again that will make your legs feel tired just from reading.

For a nearly 600 page book, the pages fly by.  I could see why this was plucked for a TV series.  The trilogy could supply plenty of story for a showrunner.  However I felt it was a bit too fast paced and the silo feels so big just for the sake of being massive.  I felt good about the characters to start but they got a little plastic as the book wore on.  In a weird way, I would say this book could have ended earlier.  Maybe make a foursome of books.

I do not think, I will be picking up books two or three.

For beer, I would suggest pondering what beers you would take into a bunker when the world inevitably ends. And then which ones would be everyday drinkers and which you would save and / or hoard and not share a drop of.