The result is chaos, war, death, and a new hope. It only takes one person to trigger great change and in this case it is Juliette. The silo is a place where critical thinking is suppressed and, and inevitably becomes the birthing pits of revolution. The story has as its theme the common struggle of the need for Liberty to fight the unbending narrative of Tyranny in all its forms the threads of the plot are woven in social dogma, from enforced birth control, the chit system of payment, to the segregation of skills. A story that pits the 'good' of Mechanical against the 'evil' of IT. It is the death of Holston (which was the concept of the short story) that then leads the author to write the story of Juliette. The only ones who venture from this 'prison' are sent as a death sentence to clean the lens of the camera - that gives the people of the silo their only view of the world - before their suit falls apart and they die. None have seen fresh air, none walked outside because of the toxic nature of the world outside.

The story commences with the last few days of Sheriff Holston whose wife, Allison, 'was poking some great, overly full balloon with a needle, and Holston wanted to get that air out of it before she poked too far.' The balloon that Juliette, Holston, Mayor Jahns, Deputy Marnes plus a host of others all live in is a silo - a self-contained 144 level sealed unit. The novel revolves around a few key characters, headed by the enigmatic, engineering genius that is Juliette Nichols. The ceiling is stratospheric in this field and I have to say that Howey produces a credible effort (one that appears to be snapped up for a future film and you can see why). Not that, of course, a dystopia needs to be science fiction - just think of Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'. Orwell's '1984' leaps to mind, or perhaps Atwood's 'The Handmaiden's Tale'. Of course, Mr Howey is treading a genre with some pretty spectacular efforts. I have to say that having recently seen the appalling 'Cloud Atlas' - read the book, its much better - and the new Judge Dredd film I found myself reading this latest stab at a dystopia with a very critical eye. the end result is Mr Howey finds himself with a new career. Of course, it subsequently has been picked up by a publisher like the 'Fifty Shades.' series, had the aforementioned BBC article, etc. One of those 'electronic self publish' happy stories where skill at writing fiction shone past the inevitable and usual course of publisher rejection letters. I kindled this based on a BBC web article about the author who wrote a dystopian short story, conversed with his wife after seeing it pass a 1000 purchases on Amazon, and then decided to write a full blown novel, with a second and third to come.

Wool book hugh howey