Wool 5: The Stranded, by Hugh Howey

Posted on April 16, 2012 by

Release date: January 14th 2012
Publisher: Broad Reach Publishing
Genre: Science fiction, dystopia
Pages: 252
See the book on: Amazon | Goodreads
My rating: 4.5/5

Summary from Goodreads:

In July of 2011, a short story named WOOL was quietly released into the vast wilds of the Kindle Store. I never marketed this novelette; I failed to mention it on my website. What happened next was remarkable: People started reading it, and reviewing it, and talking about it.

There was never any intention to create a series. It wasn’t until the demand for “more” became so great that I launched into the next four books, each one growing longer and longer, until I was wrapping up the story line with this novel, a full 60,000 word WOOL 5.

I would like to humbly thank everyone who has come along on this journey with me; it has been the most rewarding experience of my young writing career. Your emails, your reviews, your comments on my website, every ounce of your enthusiasm . . . it has combined to grant me enough satisfaction and confidence to last the rest of my writing days.

For those of you who suffered the wait, I hope you’ll find it was worth it. This is WOOL 5. Brace yourselves. And enjoy.

Isn’t that the nicest summary for a novel you’ve ever read? Hugh Howey is basically awesome.

Wool 5? Also awesome! What an emotional ending to a great story. It is quite a bit longer than any of the others, but I still managed to read it in just two sittings. It’s impossible to put down!

Once again we’re following multiple narrators, and I enjoyed every storyline, but especially everything in Silo 17. I went through the entire range of emotions here. I laughed, I cried, I literally stopped breathing for about a minute and took one great big gulp of air when I realized what I was doing. I’ve always been pretty leery of deep water (ok, terrified) and here it is very dark, deep, and lonely water and oh MAN was that a rough chapter for me to read. When was the last time a story made me stop breathing from anxiety!? I don’t know, but this one was pretty awesome.

It opens up with a gut wrenching action scene and it doesn’t let up from there. We get more trickles of information about the silos, and their history, and Lukas asks some pretty ballsy questions. I liked Lukas a lot more in this volume actually. The love story became a lot more plausible for me. It was so obviously infatuation in the beginning and then once he is able to continue talking to Juliette he’s like “Wait…she’s not perfect.” But of course I rooted for the guy the whole time.

Honestly the only thing I didn’t like much was the ending. It just kind of…happened. I was fine with that for the other installations, but this time, I knew there wasn’t a sequel just waiting for me to click over to it. Mr. Howey states very clearly however that he is writing more stories for us and I can’t wait to get my hands on them! Overall, I would give the Wool omnibus a solid 4/5. It’s not perfect but it’s damn good.

The Wool series has guaranteed that I will read anything Hugh Howey publishes from here on out. Congratulations on an amazing series!

Posted in 5/5 stars, dystopia, Read in 2012, Science Fiction | Leave a comment

Wool 4: The Unraveling, by Hugh Howey

Posted on April 16, 2012 by

Release date: December 25th 2011
Publisher: Broad Reach Publishing
Genre: Science fiction, dystopia
Pages: 166
See the book on: Amazon | Goodreads
My rating: 4.5/5

Summary from Goodreads:

There is a legend in their past of an uprising, a war they have learned about, but have learned nothing from

Nobody knows what went wrong. Nobody talks about what happened. Such are the silo taboos.

Now, nearly two hundred years later, the people of the Silo will get a chance to learn more about that distant uprising.

They’ll get to start one of their own…

Immediately upon finishing it: PURE UNADULTERATED CAPSLOCK AWESOME.

A day later: What amazing characterization. Mr. Howey kills off characters in every story but I never feel like I’m at a loss when he introduces a new one. They immediately fit into the silo society I’ve come to know, stepping into place because they had always been there, we just didn’t know their names. This is the first story with multiple narrators, so it jumps around for each chapter, but he makes it all fit together wonderfully. I loved the addition of Solo, and I hope to see more of him.

I don’t want to spoil it but this book is seriously what nightmares are made of. It is terrifying. Not like I was going to go to bed and stop reading, no sir, but after imagining myself in just such a situation, I was practically hyperventilating with worry over the main character.

Great characters, great story, action, and suspense. What more could you want in a 160 page book?!

Awesome addition to the Wool series. I was able to take a break and read some other books in between Wool 1-3 but not this time. There’s not a huge cliffhanger, but I immediately picked up Wool 5 and started reading, I simply had to know what happened.

Posted in 4/5 stars, dystopia, Read in 2012, Science Fiction | Leave a comment

Sword of Fire and Sea (The Chaos Knight, #1), by Erin Hoffman

Posted on April 14, 2012 by

Release date: June 4th 2011
Publisher: Pyr
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 277
See the book on: Amazon | Goodreads
My rating: Abandoned

Summary from Goodreads:

Three generations ago Captain Vidarian Rulorat’s great-grandfather gave up an imperial commission to commit social catastrophe by marrying a fire priestess. For love, he unwittingly doomed his family to generations of a rare genetic disease that follows families who cross elemental boundaries. Now Vidarian, the last surviving member of the Rulorat family, struggles to uphold his family legacy, and finds himself chained to a task as a result of the bride price his great-grandfather paid: the Breakwater Agreement, a seventy-year-old alliance between his family and the High Temple of Kara’zul, domain of the fire priestesses.

The priestess Endera has called upon Vidarian to fulfill his family’s obligation by transporting a young fire priestess named Ariadel to a water temple far to the south, through dangerous pirate-controlled territory. A journey perilous in the best of conditions is made more so by their pursuers: rogue telepathic magic-users called the Vkortha who will stop at nothing to recover Ariadel, who has witnessed their forbidden rites.

Together, Vidarian and Ariadel will navigate more than treacherous waters: Imperial intrigue, a world that has been slowly losing its magic for generations, secrets that the priestesshoods have kept for longer, the indifference of their elemental goddesses, gryphons, once thought mythical, now returning to the world, and their own labyrinthine family legacies. Vidarian finds himself at the intersection not only of the world’s most volatile elements, but of colliding universes, and the ancient and alien powers that lurk between them.

The Wikipedia article on Erin Hoffman is enough to herald the woman as a hero in her own right. You can get the details there, but to sum up, back in 2004, when it first came out that EA Games was treating their programmers like cattle, she wrote a persuasive and inflammatory blog post. Her husband had been working extended hours (like 90 hours a week), along with the rest of the team, but not receiving extra wages. It eventually led to a lawsuit and, along with a number of plaintiffs, they were awarded a total of almost $15 million, a tidy sum, although I’m unaware of what each individual received.

I remember the story coming out and my righteous anger at EA, but what can you do, if you’re a gamer? You’re practically forced to buy EA titles. I still do, to my chagrin. I just bought Sims 3 Pets for gods sake! The video game industry still has a long ways to go to become humane though and it amazes me that it’s legal to treat their employees in such a manner.

At any rate, Ms. Hoffman and her family were awarded some hard earned cash. My imagination goes wild at this point, as I stare off into space dreamily thinking her husband must’ve come home with a big check and said, “Hey honey you know that fantasy series you’ve always wanted to write? Go nuts.” Man, wouldn’t that be awesome? Yes, of course it would be! She still works in the video game industry and keeps an active blog, but it seems like just the type of break an aspiring author would need.

Now if only that book had been readable.

The characters rush to and fro with little explanation either of their actions or the world they are rushing about in. I’m baffled as to why part of the time it required three, THREE!, gryphons to transport Vidarian in the baby bassinet (that’s what I pictured the device as no real information is given), but then later, Thalnarra, the main gryphoness, is perfectly capable of carrying it herself. Also, a female gryphon is called a gryphoness? What’s that even from? It strikes a dissonant nerd rage chord in me. Probably because as a nerd I insist that something is canon before you can go and change it, and that’s not really fair to Ms. Hoffman. That doesn’t change me from disliking the word gryphoness though.

Who is the Tesseract and why do we care? How could a 4-dimensional cube save the world? What is quenching and why do we care? Why are priestesses so incredibly rich that everything is covered in gold and they can offer seemingly priceless sun emeralds? Did Ariadel really just sacrifice her life for a kitten? Did a goddess just show up and yell at Vidarian for having sexy times with someone who wasn’t her? Come on now. These are legitimate questions. And maybe they would’ve been answered, but you can see what I’m getting at here: ideas for a story that didn’t come together.

Don’t even get me started on the cover. At first glance I thought it was great, until I really looked at it. What is the gryphon(ess?) screaming at that the other two dudes don’t seem to care about? Why, on such a small piece of real estate like a book cover, is the girl able to show up not once but THREE times! And then the description on the back apparently doesn’t even describe this book, but is more a synopsis of the entire series. That just seems like bad business to me.

These are mostly superficial observations, little things that bugged me, but not enough to make me put the book down. No, that took a lot more work. We are dropped head first into a fantasy world, which is to be expected. I don’t like long expositions on the state of the world, it’s much better when it comes naturally with the story. However, when you receive literally no explanation, a reader is left with bewildered indignation. Names of factions and goddesses are dropped like we should know and care what they are. From the first chapter, what feels like momentous events start occurring that I could care less about because I don’t know what they mean. Alright, but it’s only the first chapter. I’ll give the story some time to gain some momentum before I pass judgment. Vidarian, the main character, travels from a temple, to another temple, to an island, to more islands, back to the same temple, and this was all just in the 137 pages that I read. I think I skipped some temples and islands in there, too. The amount of travel leaves no time for us to get to know the characters, besides when they are annoyed with traveling. They hardly arrive at a new location before it is time to leave again, with a different setting for practically every chapter. I know literally nothing of the background of any of the main characters. The one time we do get information of the world, it is boring and a huge info dump as Thalnarra (the gryphoness) tries to explain the magic system to Vidarian. The magic system was therefore immediately filed away under “I’ll learn it later if I stick around to care.” So the one thing I showed some enthusiasm for, magic, all of a sudden also completely lost my interest.

I made it about halfway through, before what should have felt like a stupendous betrayal (and one of the worst sex scenes I’ve ever read) left me shrugging my shoulders and asking “Why do I care?” before I simply had to put the book down.

I hate abandoning a debut. Fantasy is such a difficult genre to break into, but there is so much good fantasy out there, I just couldn’t waste my time with reading anymore of a book I didn’t care about. Sadly, this will have to remain on my “abandoned” shelf.

Posted in Abandoned, Fantasy | Leave a comment

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie US Cover

Posted on April 14, 2012 by


Just look at that beauty. Check it out over at Joe Abercrombie’s blog here! And as someone pointed out over on Goodreads, whoever is holding the sword appears to be missing a rather telling digit. It can only mean one thing! The Bloody Nine is back! Shivers going down my spine for that, I can’t wait to get my hands on this.

Posted in Cool stuff, Release | Leave a comment

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

Posted on April 13, 2012 by

Release date: September 13th 2011
Publisher: Doubleday
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 387
See the book on: Amazon | Goodreads
My rating: 2/5

Summary from Goodreads:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

Let’s talk about hype machines. They’re annoying, right? No one likes being inundated with the same images and catch phrases over and over again. But somehow it works, and hype makes money and wins awards for things that sometimes just don’t deserve it. Hype is a fickle beast. Too much of it, and there is so much ground to make up it’s almost impossible to reach my expectations. Not enough of it, and I think, “There must be a reason why no one has read this book/seen this movie,” and it will have extra ground to make up as well. What a horrible knife edge to walk for all the things I consume! And I know that is not an uncommon occurrence; it’s why we can talk about a piece of media as being “underrated” or “overrated.”

The Night Circus, unfortunately, falls into the “overrated” category.

I first heard about it from the Goodreads Choice Awards last year and it feels like I haven’t stopped seeing it since. Everyone on my friend’s list was reading it, it showed up at Costco, and Powell’s had it on display right in front of the store screaming “Buy me! Buy me!” I succumbed and was soon flipping pages (well, clicking pages) feverishly as the premise drew me in.

Let me start off with saying that I have issues with second person narration. It is the hardest narration to use, and use seriously, and in this case I really did not like it. I can see that Ms. Morgernstern was trying to show us the wonders of the circus. She wanted us to breathe the smells (caramel and wood smoke) and revel in the sights (black and white), but it only accomplished the exact opposite, by taking me completely out of the story. There are probably only 6 or 7 chapters utilizing this narrative form, but that was 6 or 7 too many. Especially the last chapter; I groaned so hard my cat woke up to glare at me. The imagery is imaginative, but by using the second person, the soul was completely taken out of it. However, the use of third person present for the entire rest of the book did not bug me, as it seems to have bugged many others. I didn’t even notice it after a while.

With that said, the first 50 pages inexorably drew me in. By the time I had finished the book, I realized the first 50 pages were the best part. The author had so many good ideas that I soon felt bombarded with them, but none had a satisfactory pay off. I loved the idea of a contest, until the reason for it was revealed. Then it was very slowly made apparent that nothing exciting was going to happen with the contest. A good love story is always nice, but there’s not even a reason revealed for that, besides endless repetitions of “I love you.” The book was simply too long for how little of interest occurred.

If you have a soft spot for circuses, or went a lot as a child, there might be some enjoyment simply from nostalgia. I don’t, and my enjoyment was minimal.

Posted in 2/5 stars, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Read in 2012 | Leave a comment

Wool 3: Casting Off, by Hugh Howey

Posted on April 8, 2012 by

Release date: December 4th 2011
Publisher: Broad Reach Publishing
Genre: Science fiction, dystopia
Pages: 122
See the book on: Amazon | Goodreads
My rating: 4/5

Summary from Goodreads:

The silo has appointed a new sheriff. Her name is Juliette, and she comes not from the shadows of deputies, but from the depths of the down deep.

But what does being a mechanic have to do with upholding the law? And how will she be able to concentrate on the silo’s future when she is surrounded by the ghosts of its past?

Before she can even settle in, the whirring gears of the silo begin to grind anew. Things aren’t right. And the people whose help she most needs are gone.

If Juliette isn’t careful, she’ll soon be among them.

Now this gets back into what I loved about Wool 1. We start off with knowing how it is going to end, and just like in the first book, I simply had to know what was going to happen. We learn more about the insidious IT department after a whirlwind investigation that leaves us with another cleaning imminent. The last line has assured that I will be a FAN4LYFE and I can hardly wait to pick up Wool 4 to see what happens. Don’t stop after Wool 2 (which I didn’t like too much), this one is way better!

Am I the only one that finds the cover for this one totally creepy? The proportions are all off and it looks like the guy is gonna come get me if I look in a mirror in the dark or something.

P.S. I totally didn’t get that the titles were knitting references. I fail at being a Portland hipster. :(

Posted in 4/5 stars, dystopia, Read in 2012, Science Fiction | Leave a comment

Wool 2: Proper Gauge, by Hugh Howey

Posted on April 8, 2012 by

Release date: November 30th 2011
Publisher: Broad Reach Publishing
Genre: Science fiction, dystopia
Pages: 89
See the book on: Amazon | Goodreads
My rating: 2/5

Summary from Goodreads:

A cleaning has been performed, and now the silo is without a sheriff. With only one good candidate available, Mayor Jahns and Deputy Mames set off for the Down Deep to recruit her in person. Along the way, they discover much about each other, troubling news about this candidate, and stumble upon fractured alliances that could spell the doom of a silo they’ve worked long years to protect.

Wool 2 wasn’t nearly as compelling or as interesting as Wool 1. My first issue stems from a lack of proper imagery. The two characters are walking downstairs for basically the entire novelization – I believe it is 144 floors or so that they walk down. And this takes them two days. Two days?! If I’m picturing this wrong I would love to know, but 144 flights of stairs simply do not take that long to walk down, even if you are past your prime like both of the main characters here are. The climb back up takes another three or four days. So that’s a week to go up and down 144 flights…I was baffled and it colored my enjoyment of the whole story as it just doesn’t make sense.

Besides that, the story is just pretty boring. It’s more about going up and down stairs than it is about anything interesting. I am still intrigued as to where the omnibus is going to go and obviously you can’t skip this story, but this was not a good addition, especially after how amazing Wool 1 was.

Addendum – April 16, 2012

I discovered that each floor is 33 feet high, after a correspondence with Mr. Howey and some mentions in a later book, First Shift – Legacy. I also discovered I was picturing it wrong, because I couldn’t get the office building stairway out of my head. So when he mentioned a “landing” I was picturing it like this:

Pretty creepy actually

While it should have been more like this:

I just couldn’t wrap my head around the stairs being a spiral, I really wanted them to be flights for some reason. Although I still think two days to go down is ridiculous!

Posted in 2/5 stars, dystopia, Read in 2012, Science Fiction | Leave a comment

The Mists of Avalon (Avalon #1), by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Posted on April 6, 2012 by

Release date: 1982
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Genre: Arthurian fantasy, historical fiction
Pages: 876
See the book on: Amazon | Goodreads
My rating: 3/5

Summary from Goodreads:

Here is the magical legend of King Arthur, vividly retold through the eyes and lives of the women who wielded power from behind the throne. A spellbinding novel, an extraordinary literary achievement, THE MISTS OF AVALON will stay with you for a long time to come….

Even though this is a veritable tome, weighing in at almost 900 pages (and my Kindle estimated 1200 for some reason…I had balls of steel the day I decided to read this), I was tired of starting fantasy series and getting so behind in my reading. I wanted something self-contained, so I settled on The Mists of Avalon. Joke’s on me – this is merely the first chapter in a seven part series. D’oh! I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll ever look into any of the sequels.

I am completely torn on this book, and after reading about it online, it seems to be very polarizing. I fall in the middle: on the one hand, I couldn’t stop talking about it with family and friends. On the other, I felt it was overly long and after a while I began to suspect that not very much had actually happened, though of course I carried on. It left me feeling rather unfulfilled.

It is impossible for me to write about Mists without some mention of religion, but nothing here is meant to be inflammatory or insensitive. So much of Arthur’s story is caught up in both worlds – the Old Ways, where we get Merlin, Excalibur, and the Lady of the Lake; and Christianity, where we get the Knights and the Holy Grail. My brother is a Latin teacher and teaches a section on the Bible, so we had a number of vociferous discussions. Of course, I realize this is a fantasy book, but Bradley did an amazing job of making Arthur’s court – and the Old Ways – seem just out of reach. Women were so much more appreciated before Britain became pious, and the centuries of sexism following just made me feel deflated and depressed. It’s not anti-Christian by any means, as Merlin constantly points out, he feels that all gods are one god and all should be left to worship in peace. It’s not the teachings of Christianity that Morgan, the main character, is opposed to, but rather the people of the church who insist on banishing all mentions of other gods.

Mists diverts wildly from normal Arthurian legend, but Morgan la Fey has always been one of my favorite characters and I’ve always had this niggling suspicion that she was just misunderstood. Bradley took this thought and ran with it, and now Morgan will always be my favorite character. Gwenhwyfar (side note: I totally didn’t know that this is how her name is classically spelled. I associate the name “Gwenhwyfar” with Drizzt’s cat in R.A. Salvatore’s novels *blush* ) is a bit of a silly child, but you still can’t help but feel bad that she loves someone who isn’t Arthur. Nimue wasn’t in it nearly enough for my tastes. I’ve always been partial to the vengeful priestess version of Nimue and that’s just not how she is here. Igraine and Uther’s love story was very well portrayed I thought, and I quite like what Bradley did with their history.

Time moves strangely. The first 3/4s of the book takes us up until Morgan is about 28 or so, then the remaining quarter goes lickety split through the rest of her life. The quest for the Grail is smushed in there somewhere and the last 100 pages felt rushed. I remember saying “There’s no way I’m going to be happy with this ending, there’s just not enough pages left.” And there definitely wasn’t. I felt rather cheated with how she did a little epilogue with Morgan at Glastonbury – I would have liked to know a lot more about how Lancelot, Gwenhwyfar, and Arthur ended up. There was simply no closure, and for how long the book was, there should have been.

Overall, I love Arthur, and I am very glad I read this. It’s still a powerhouse in the fantasy genre today, but I can recommend it only if you are rounding out your fantasy knowledge. Even though I could hardly stop talking about it, the whole experience left me flat.

Posted in 3/5 stars, Arthur, Historical Fiction | Leave a comment

Wool, by Hugh Howey

Posted on April 3, 2012 by

Release date: July 29th 2011
Publisher: Broad Reach
Genre: Science fiction, dystopia
Pages: 60
See the book on: Amazon | Goodreads
My rating: 5/5
Summary from Goodreads:

They live beneath the earth in a prison of their own making. There is a view of the outside world, a spoiled and rotten world, their forefathers left behind. But this view fades over time, ruined by the toxic airs that kill any who brave them.

So they leave it to the criminals, those who break the rules, and who are sent to cleaning. Why do they do it, these people condemned to death? Sheriff Holston has always wondered. Now he is about to find out.

This book will own you! Just buy the omnibus and save yourself a couple bucks, because you will want to read more. I sat down to read this first one, just 60 pages long, and didn’t get up until it was finished. At first the story was hard to follow, as you’re plopped down in the middle of a world and have to play catch up for the majority of the novella. It all comes together very quickly though and I was hard pressed not to cry at the end. This is a great, quick, (and cheap!) Dystopian read. Highly recommended to anyone.

Posted in 5/5 stars, dystopia, Read in 2012, Science Fiction | 1 Comment

Joe Abercrombie’s Latest: Red Country Release Date Announced!

Posted on April 2, 2012 by

Joe Abercrombie announced today that the US date of his newest novel Red Country will be November 20, 2012. Pre-order here!

The UK gets it on Oct. 18th, I am so jealous!

Posted in Release | Leave a comment