It’s been a long time since I was so thoroughly sucked into a fictional universe as I was with Wool. Honestly, that’s what I miss about fantasy, historical fiction and sci-fi books — while the writing may be good, it is rare that I would feel totally enfolded into the history, the context and the world that an author creates. I think the last time that happened was with the first book of the Chaos Trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go.
Hugh Howey does this for me again with Wool, which chronicles an unraveling mystery in post-apocalyptic Earth where the surviving humanity are housed in a silo — an underground city that extends more than a hundred levels beneath the Earth’s surface. It kicks off from the perspective of Holston, the sheriff of the silo, who is tortured by the mystery of why his wife decided to kill herself. In this world, uttering the words “I want to go out” is considered so taboo, so treasonous, that a citizen will immediately be exiled according to his wish — and that is just what Holston’s wife did two years ago, leaving her beloved husband in the wake of her death to try and understand the reasons behind her “madness.”
And how will they be exiled, you ask?
To read more of my review, go to my blog.