Wool Review

Title: Wool
Author: Hugh Howey
Date Purchased: 10/24/2017
Price Paid: $2.11
Date Finished: 6/5/2021
Rating: 4/5

Back in the good old days of the Book Club, we used to tease my good friend Ben about his selections. “Hey Ben, which dystopian novel did you pick for us this time?” This good-natured ribbing was brought about because, well, Ben likes a good dystopian novel.

One of his picks was Sand, also written by Hugh Howey. I don’t remember a ton about that book, but I do remember being frustrated. Not that the premise of the book was bad, or the characters unlikeable – in fact, it was quite the opposite. There was a lot of promise in that book and much of it was left unrealized.

While discussing the book at our meeting, Ben mentioned that he was even more disappointed than we were because he had read Howey’s Wool and found it to be thoroughly enjoyable. As I trust my friend’s judgement, when I saw Wool on sale I had to pick it up.

Originally published as five novellas, Wool tells the story of a post-apocalyptic Earth and the remaining survivors that are living inside of an underground silo. As the story progresses we see something sinister going on just under the surface, and some of the characters are starting to realize that there’s more to their world than they have been led to believe.

I mentioned this with the Old Man’s War series, but I’m finding that books written as novellas or serials lend themselves to tidy packages. The author is able to, in the length of a short story, introduce a world, set up some problems, and answer a couple of them…all while leaving the reader satisfied. And we have that here with Wool.

Admittedly, I was not hooked from the get-go. I found the first couple of novellas to be a little too dark and brooding for my tastes. I know, I know. It’s a dystopian post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel. What did I expect? But there were flashes that kept me plugging along, and I’m glad I did.

Howey does a good job with his characters. We meet several that are flawed due to their nature and many more that have flaws brought about by the world they live in. The tagline to the book is “If the lies don’t kill you, the truth will” and that is something to keep in mind with everyone you meet.

Perhaps my favorite part of this book was that Howey creates a story that was a bit more captivating than your typical dystopian story. I’ve gotten used to the “how do we survive” approach in which the characters are adjusting (usually poorly) to the world. In Wool hundreds of years have gone by since…whatever…happened, so surviving isn’t really the hook here.

There are some fairly large surprises, so I’m not going to get into the story in case you are looking to check this one out. Suffice it to say that by the end of the book I was fully engrossed in the world. I had a lot of questions, was happy to plow forward to the next book, and I finally have a dystopian novel I would recommend!

Final Thoughts: I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. The beginning was a little slow and dark, but the final two-thirds was great.