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octavia_cade 's review for:
Wool
by Hugh Howey
Interesting take on a planned dystopia, one where the determination to bring about apocalypse is mitigated somewhat by provision for the survivors. That provision, however, is dependent on ignorance - as soon as the survivors know what's going on, there's a risk that they'll manage to off themselves as a consequence. This is a premise dependent on one of my most hated tropes, to be fair - the You Can't Handle The Truth!!! trope, one which is deeply patronising and one which I've always felt to be mostly inaccurate. Case in point here is Juliette: when she does find out, she's able to adapt. It's still a really entertaining read, if one that's a trifle long for my taste. What it's missing, I think, is a slightly more aware exploration of that trope - there's a difference between an uprising prompted by knowledge of origins and an uprising prompted by the fact that people you work with every day are actively lying to you. Wool is very much an environment of the present, and doesn't quite differentiate between present and past enough for me, but I still really liked the heroine and the setting is a compelling one.