This week's book is the final installment of Hugh Howey's Silo series: Dust. (For a refresher, here's my review of Wool, and Shift.) This review's going to have spoilers for Wool and Shift. No way around it.
This book deals with the aftermath of the events from the last two books. Things looked hopeful at the end of both of those stories, but when the afterglow fades, things aren't as great as they seemed and everything goes horribly wrong. Juliette's return from outside and announcement that there are other silos is met with push back. The silo doesn't trust her and fears the changes she brings. Uniting silos 17 and 18 causes more problems than it solves when Jimmy and the kids have trouble integrating. And meanwhile, Donald and Charlotte run into trouble trying to disrupt the program from the inside when security starts to put the pieces together.
Like the first installment, and unlike the second book, this one ramped the action back up to thrilling levels. It might have even surpassed Wool in places, because the stakes where higher. Everything goes to hell in a hand basket, and it's gripping.
Part of this is that the characterization was so well done. I complained about characterization in the second book, but the series redeemed it self here. During action scenes and catastrophes, the focus is zoomed in so emotional reactions took center stage. It humanized those situations, made them relatable despite how they later felt confusing and nonsensical. People screamed and raged, they ran and shoved and sobbed, and the utter chaos pressed in on my chest until I couldn't stop reading because I could feel their pain. I could feel their world crumbling.
Juliette was especially good here. Her flaws came out in force. She showed a selfishness and disregard for her silo's wishes and eventually their safety. But it was understandable because she never asked to lead and didn't have the skill set or motivation to do so successfully. Lucas also felt more well rounded than he did in Wool. His youth came through, his inexperience and his hesitancy to act against Juliette. Once they started a normal relationship, it immediately began to strain as their personalities rubbed against each other. Instead of the blissful happily ever after that was hinted at in Wool, it started to feel like they were incompatible outside of completely dire situations.
It was great.
However, once I took a break and stepped back, once I was no longer swept along by the story, those confusing and nonsensical aspects chewed their way into my enjoyment. (You could even say, when the afterglow faded, things weren't as great as they seemed.) This book suffered from Third Book World Building Syndrome, where the world building that worked so well in a single, self-contained story spiraled out of control as more and more was added. Previous world building was retconned and added world building was confused and less neatly tied together. It didn't work in part because when a new discovery was made that contradicted something from an earlier book, it undermined my positive reaction to the previous reveal. Added to this was that the shocking moments when some nefarious workings of the universe were revealed missed the mark and fell flat. Most of these were about what Anna was up to, and instead of the previous "Evidence! Dun dun dun!" their presentation was along the lines of "I think Anna might have done a thing to help these people, but then that's a guess, and there's no way to verify that she did, and now it's been reversed anyway." Where the reveals used to be definite signs of villainy, these left me confused as to what had happened at all and had me questioning my reading comprehension.
Wait. So. Was the world destroyed?
The story crumbled when I finished and tried to make sense of it logically, but I'm not sure I care because it was an emotionally satisfying conclusion to the series.
***
Next week it's time for another book about writing. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.
No comments:
Post a Comment