SILO, A Review of Novel #1
SILO is an Apple+ series that is about to release a second season. Recently, I began reading the novels. The first installment is called WOOL, and follows pretty closely the first season of the Apple+ version. This novel is rated PG-13 for adult themes. There is little or no explicit violence and no explicit sex scenes.
Hugh Howey first wrote this novel as a series of short stories/novellas. He put those stories together and indie published WOOL as a novel around 2012.
First, The Short No-Spoiler Review
Three reasons I recommend this novel, and one reservation:
- WOOL puts forward an interesting concept of post apocalyptic human existence that feels unique within the dystopian genre
- well-drawn characters overall
- enough mystery to keep the reader turning pages
My one reservation, some parts of this novel are too long and boring.
The Longer Review:
A potential issue with self-published novels is that the editing process is not well done. The author cannot afford to hire a top-notch editor and the consequence is either lots of typos or poor writing.
Overall, Howey did an amazing job self-publishing…could not find any typos, but he overwrote parts of the novel. As a reader, I sense this when I start skimming text. There is too much nitty gritty detail about everything that is transpiring. These are details the writer might need to know, but the reader does not. All that detail slows down the action, the excitement. In the worst case scenario, the reader stops reading. I did not stop reading because I actually cared about the characters and wanted to know the outcome of the story because Howey did not give me the answer to my questions until the end. So I needed to skim a few parts, but I did read until the final page.
Toward the end of the novel, when there are a couple of events that involve long scenes where I actually knew what the outcome would be, I skimmed the equivalent of about 50 pages of text.
I think most readers will know when they hit those sections. There is just too much detail and when the reader in essence already knows what is going to take place, we want to get to the next part of the action ASAP, so we skim. I have skimmed text while reading indie published novels, but I have also skimmed tradtionally published novels a few times. In theory, the great editor will catch these slow spots and help the writer edit them out. In practice, this is not always the case.
Regarding WOOL, the core of the story is good enough that most readers will overlook the overwritten parts. And the Apple+ TV people are certainly tightening everything up in a ways that is not boring. Season 2 just began (Jan of 2025)…and looks promising.
