Book Review: Wool

If the idea of anybody being able to publish their work has left a bit of a rough taste in your mouth (We don’t wanna name names *coughs* 50 Shades Of Grey *coughs*) you shouldn’t worry, there will be one book this year that will change your mind, and how self-publishing is bringing forward some of the most talented people into the public eye.

Let us introduce you to Hugh Howey, whose novel WOOL has been causing a bit of stir recently, with one of the biggest directors in the industry (Ridley Scott) buying the rights to his book. But does WOOL live up to the hype? Why yes, yes it does.

Set in a dystopian future, WOOL first follows the story of Holston, a sheriff of The Silos who is investigating the circumstances of his wife’s death. His investigation kicks off the initial story of WOOL and as the story goes on we see how The Silos are run and how everybody is desperate to survive in them.

WOOL immediately takes you on an eerie path. Howey describes the dystopian Silos very brilliantly, and establishes the Silos to make character’s actions more understandable.

This is where Howey excels; his character development really creates a refreshing change to have an entire history behind them. It would be hard to explain some of the characters without spoiling the plot, but you do really have to read WOOL to understand what we are talking about.

The only problem that I encountered is, it does occasionally feel like the book was written in different stages. When you put yourself in the reader’s world, it feels a bit disorientating seeing different titles for each section, and that is when you realise that in reality it is not really a novel and has more of filmic feel to proceedings. However, this is a somewhat minor thing, and it doesn’t distract too much from the general narrative.

Once you finish WOOL, you immediately start to wonder how it would look like on screen. No wonder Ridley Scott snapped up the rights straight away! The only thing though is that with WOOL, you might become a rabid fan boy/girl that gets very angry if certain things are not done right.

In a nutshell WOOL might not be pitch perfect, but it is the nearest thing to it, and even if you are not the biggest post apocalypse fiction lover in the world, you will be once you have finished this.

WOOL is out now and available to order via this link here.

We also caught up with Hugh recently and had a chat about his book, more about self-publishing and a little bit of advice for upcoming writers.