Wool

[Amazon Link]
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[Update, September 2022: Old link broken for some reason, replaced.]

Online chatter about the genesis of this book a few years back caused me to stick it into the to-be-read pile. It's an amateur author's fantasy: write a book, publish it yourself (via Amazon), fall into fame and fortune.

Frankly, I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. But the author, Hugh Howey, writes well and knows how to grab the reader's interest with intriguing plot and sympathetic characters.

It is set in an imaginative dystopia: thousands of people inhabiting a "silo" set deep into the earth. (But is it Earth?) Going outside is deadly. (Or is it?) Yet, every so often someone is sentenced to go outside and clean the sensors with specially designed… wool.

But "wool" also refers to the stuff that is proverbially pulled over one's eyes. As it turns out, like most fictional dystopias, the masses are social-engineered to believe a lot of stuff that isn't true. Will a few brave souls manage to uncover the truth?

My only quibble: there are villains, and they are way too obvious. Might as well twirl their mustaches while cackling evilly.


Last Modified 2024-01-26 4:19 PM EDT