Wool

“It turned out that some crooked things looked even worse when straightened. Some tangled knots only made sense once unraveled.”

The world, the characters, the writing, it was all so amazing in this book. I had no idea what to expect going into this book. I had heard a lot of good things about it from people, but went in fairly blind especially with respect to the plot and what it was really about. I basically knew it was a science fiction novel.

And I was so blown away by this book. It was fantastically written with such real, human characters. I really felt everything they were going through and really cared what happened to them. There were so many layers to what was going on with them and how they were coping with finding out everything about their world.

This book unfolds in a very unique way. You are basically placed at a certain point in time with no background and see the events unfold with some flashbacks, but mostly simply following along. I would say the main character is Juliette, because we do follow her the most, but we also follow the events though other characters too, which I loved.

The last thing I want to comment on is the world. I was so fascinated by this idea of 150 story Silos housing people. This whole idea of having to walk up and down stairs to get anywhere was so intriguing. It also raised the question of why there were not elevators! But I think control is the answer. Going back to the Silos, I loved the disparity that they created. It was fascinating to see how where you lived in the Silo affected your station in life and also your career. The culture was designed in this really weird way that was highly unique.

Overall, this was a great read and I'm really glad I took the time to read it. It is 5 “stories” in one but I think reading all five together is important. However the first few stories were not as gripping and action heavy as the last two. And I think some aspects of the last two could be cut to make the book shorter because some plot points did seem to drag on. I also was disappointed with the ending. I feel like there are still a lot of questions that need answering. I know their is a sequel of sorts, but I'm not sure how much of a direct sequel it actually is. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy a unique science fiction world and for people who do no mind longer books that can drag in places.

Alright, so this has been on my to-read list for quite a while and I finally got to it! I'm really disappointed. Unfortunately this was not interesting at all and I feel quite opposed to the five-star reviews and the very high rating it has here on Goodreads. Definitely feels like I one of those moments where I think that I read something different than everyone else.

I don't know how this became so unbelievably boring. It started out very tight, focused and engaging because you wanted to know what happened and then it just shut that down entirely. As soon as anything interesting happens in this book, we flip to a different time, another character etc and climb some stairs. Actually have people going up and down stairs.

I also want to complain because the copy I read has a quote on it saying how it real the world building is basically and I did not find it real at all. I found it flat as hell and the characters felt like they were not talking naturally, I don't know if it's because they live underground and their style of speech has changed but didn't feel like a deliberate choice but just bad dialogue a lot of the time. I didn't really find any of the characters engaging and I had a very hard picturing them in my mind...and I wanted to and I tried! Everyone became kind of little cardboard cutouts acting out the story for me.

I don't usually write reviews but I had wanted to read this for such a long time and then it was such a damn struggle for me to get to the end of this book I really had to. Anyways, this isn't a one star review because I liked the concept of the book and I really wanted to explore that stuff further, there were parts where I was kind of skimming the b plot to get back to the a plot of discovery with the character of Juliette, but then I just became disappointed again because her main purpose was just to kind of keep doing the same thing over and over again of groping around in the dark in various ways. Now I'm thinking on it. I feel like none of the characters grew or changed very much in a believable way, except for the convenience of the story.

Also there was some discussion about why the silo was here and how it was constructed to make lives separate and difficult. I hope that the incredible amount of stairs were a part of that and I was just waiting for like an explanation as to why nobody had come up with a better solution than hundreds and hundreds of stairs all the damn time! No one has solved that in any way? I got really “tired” of hearing how “tired” all the characters were and the heavy-handed classism discourse. Definitely felt like I wanted more exploration and less time spent on build up to very boring events, like so much slow build up for nothing.

There's a lot actually I could just keep going and I don't know, Maybe skim this one if you want to know what the hype is all about but I honestly feel like nothing happened in this book and I don't think that was a style choice. I'm aware that The story continues in other novels, but honestly I'm not going to be reading them.