Our family did a book club reading during the month of June. This is only the second time we have done that. The first time, while fun, was a couple of years ago and although we have wanted to do it again we just never got around to it. But June was the return! We decided on a book that my wife and son had read a few years ago: Wool, by Hugh Howey.^†

I remember hearing about this book and all the good word-of-mouth reviews it got when Howey self published it on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. My brother read it and suggested it to me, and when I saw a free copy on the trade table at work I jumped at the chance to get it. After bringing it home I told my wife I had gotten it just for her ;-). That's when she and my son read it, but I never did - until now.

Wool is a post-apocalyptic / dystopian story set on a future Earth where the outside air has become toxic, and everyone who's left now lives in a big silo that is underground. No one goes outside because, you know, they would die. Oh, except for people who have broken the law and been sentenced to "cleaning." That is their term for people who are forced to suit up, go outside the silo, clean the monitoring cameras, and then flail around and die as the nasty air gets them.

This novel is made up of several sections that were apparently written as separate short stories, so it feels a bit disjointed at times. Mostly it follows Juliette, a mechanic-turned-sheriff, who stumbles onto some forbidden knowledge and tries to carefully walk the line between doing her job and being sent to cleaning. Along the way there is some good old-fashioned propaganda, suppression of knowledge, forced family planning, secret killings and a little bit of good stuff too.

Overall I liked it, although there were a few parts that I felt dragged on a little too long. I give it 4 stars, and would recommend it to people who like dystopian fiction and fans of series like The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Maze Runner.

There are two other books in this series: one is a prequel and the other a sequel.^† I haven't read them, but they have lots of good reviews, and so I may do so at some point in the future - maybe for another family book club reading! There is also a TV series based on this book: Silo. It is on Apple TV+ and recently finished its second season. It was apparently popular too, as we found out when we tried to borrow the book from several local libraries and found that it was on a very long waitlist - thanks to the show just airing its season finale!

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