Wool Omnibus
Hugh Howey
This was recommended to me by a friend, and I wasn’t disappointed. The book is a few years old by now, but from what I can gather it’s somewhat similar to The Martian, in that Hugh Howey self-published it and it gained a cult following. I do think the book gave off a certain quirky vibe to me that suggested it didn’t go through a standard editing process, but I don’t mean to say that the writing was bad or even that it was poorly edited. Howey’s figurative language is original, though it can be a bit heavy-handed at times. The book definitely has a “serial” feel to it (which is how it was originally published), and you don’t even meet the main character until maybe halfway through the book? I had a little bit of a hard time with it at first, but eventually I appreciated it.
I thought often of the movie “Snowpiercer” while reading Wool. There are a lot of content similarities: a very isolated world within a completely inhospitable environment, which is linearly-organized, with strong class divisions, and a significant amount of mystery relating to the actual nature of the situation. I found Wool to be far better executed though, and more thought-provoking. (I only saw the movie of “Snowpiercer”, though.)
It’s difficult to write much about the content of the book without spoilers, so I’m going to spoiler-tag the rest of this.
[spoilers removed]