Dust (2013)
Hugh Howey (1975)
458 pages
[Note: although I make it a point to not include spoilers in my reviews, this is the third book in a trilogy, and it's not possible to write about it without including some context from the earlier books, Wool and Shift. So, if you haven't read the first book, Wool, I suggest you jump back to my review here; if you haven't read the second book, Shift, I suggest you jump back to my review here.]
In his science fiction novel Wool (my review here), Hugh Howey launched readers on a wild ride through a wonderfully imagined, if horribly deformed, world: a silo that, rather than rising up to the sky, lies instead buried in the earth. Extending deep underground, the silo houses a community the size of a large town. Afraid of the poisoned landscape they can see only through cameras mounted on the surface, the people of the silo live, work, give birth and die all within their concrete home, the only world they know; curiosity about the outside and the silo’s past have become this society’s most fundamental taboos. For some, however, the desire to understand what guides their existence and what remains hidden from their view overcomes these prohibitions, with dangerous consequences for themselves and the stability of their community’s world. Howey’s sequel, Shift (my review here), continues the story, reaching back into the past to events leading up to the creation of this dystopia, even as the struggles in the silo’s present spin out of control.The third book in the series, Dust, has now been released. Bringing together the threads begun in the first two books, Howey continues the thrilling pace in this sequel, the tension building with every page. In Dust the struggles of the characters in the first two books evolve into an escalating fight for survival, as opposing viewpoints on how this artificially created world should move forward become locked in a life-or-death struggle; decisions about the community’s future quite literally become the ultimate ‘game of life’. Ironically, even as the tension rises over the course of the three books, the focus of events moves down the silo, deep into the earth. It is those in the community most distant and disconnected from the surface who must lead the way back there.
As in the first two novels, though we come to know some of the history and motivations of a few of the main characters, the trilogy is not built around deep character development. Howey’s focus in Dust remains on the broader psychological aspects of the situation and its effects on this community living underground in their circumscribed home. How have these people, so seemingly similar to us in how they go about their daily lives, managed to adapt to what would seem to be from our perspective an inhuman situation? And even more critically, how will they adjust to the sudden revelations about their world, revelations that will shake the foundations of their beliefs and understanding?
This third book provides a satisfying conclusion to the series, an entertaining resolution to the taut story line that was created for the reader from the first pages of Wool. And though Howey seems to point at Dust as being the conclusion of this story, giving it the subtitle “Every Beginning Has An End,” the final pages of Dust create a new kind of beginning --- so we may yet find that three books are not the upper limit of this trilogy.
Other reviews / information:
(Mild Spoiler Alert:)
It’s difficult, particularly in a science fiction novel, to have everything ‘add-up’, to seem completely logical, and Howey generally does a fine job of that in these stories. One thing surprised me however: at the end of Dust, when those who have escaped their silo gather outside, and beyond the dead zone round the silos, they discuss where to go next, and there is no mention of the sky scrapers (of Atlanta) that they have seen and wondered at through the cameras of the silos. Even if it’s clear they wouldn’t want to settle in a destroyed city, it’s hard to imagine they wouldn’t be intensely curious about it, and at least go for a look…
Howey has published a collection of short stories, Machine Learning (my review here), that includes a tryptic of stories collectively grouped as Silo Stories, and that span the period of the Silo Trilogy. The three tales form a wonderful complement to the original trilogy.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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