Wool Omnibus

Previously self-published e-books Wool, Wool 2, Wool 3, Wool 4, and Wool 5, make up this 500+ page compilation by author Hugh Howey. It is no small undertaking to read; however, it was well worth it. After piddling slowly through the first book (originally a 40 page short story), I got a notice from the library that it was due and could not be renewed, so I read all day yesterday until 2:30 this morning to finish. In a post apocalyptic future, several thousand people are living in a cement silo that bores nearly 150 stories into the ground. Goods and information and bodies are all moved via a single spiral staircase. The various levels contain a handful of administrative offices (mayor, sheriff, deputies), a few cafeterias, clinics/nurseries, hydroponic farms, animal pens, fabrication facilities, IT, and in the lowest levels is "Mechanical" where are found the oil well, the mines, the generator, the pumps, and the people who maintain them. We open the story with a ritualized death by Cleaning. No one is allowed to say anything about the outside--wondering about it or voicing a desire to go there. The only view of the bleak and utterly desolate remains of earth (presumably) come from sensors that extend above the ground. Large screens on the top floor of the silo show this view in the cafeteria, and in the holding cell of the jail. Whenever someone is convicted of any crime, they are given wool pads, a suit to protect them from the toxic air, sent outside to clean the sensor lenses. In living memory, no one has ever returned from this task. the view of the sere brown hills, and the skeletal city remains in the distance is punctuated by the decomposing bodies of those sent out to clean. When a popular and long-standing sheriff volunteers to go "out," the Mayor and deputy sheriff seek a mechanic from the "down-deep" to replace him. Reluctant new sheriff Juliette is obsessed with finding out why Sheriff Holston voluntarily went outside to his death. Since it turns out that IT, not the popularly elected Mayor has secretly been running the whole show in the silo, they quickly determine that Juliette is a menace and must die. Before she is sentenced to clean, however, she figures out that IT has been engineering the deaths of people and through close friends in Mechanical she gets a suit that does not fail and walks out of view over the hills where she discovers another silo. This is a well-developed plot with interesting characters, and my only niggling complaint is that we are supposed to believe that it gets colder the further down you bore into the earth--probably not! Otherwise, the science seems realistic and the resolution is satisfying. Other post-apocalyptic novels I have enjoyed include The Postman (Brin), Into the Forest (Hegland), and A Gift Upon the Shore (Wren)--almost all set in the Pacific Northwest. Now there is something to ponder.