Proper Gauge is Engaging in More Ways Than One

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A Review of Wool: Proper Gauge by Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey continues building the Silo world of Wool in Proper Gauge. We left Sheriff Holston dead with his secret after his “cleaning” of the outside camera lenses in Wool. In Proper Gauge, it is the next day. A day when revelers celebrate the release of tension about who will do the next “cleaning.” They are grateful they didn’t have to clean the lenses, now they can express that joy. While most of the population in the silo are celebrating, Mayor Jahns and Deputy Marnes are weighted down with grief over the loss of their friend and sheriff, Holston. They also face the grueling task of finding the right person to fill the empty sheriff’s position. This choice is of supreme importance to the mayor, because “Whoever we decide will probably be here long after we’re gone.” Mayor Jahns knows that choosing the right person for sheriff is as important as choosing the right needle for her knitting project. The proper gauge in needles or in people is, not only important, but “critical.”

Deputy Marnes offers three possible candidates for the job, but only recommends one, Juliette Nichols. Juliette, or Jules, was born into a family health practitioners, but she chose a different path. She is content as Mechanical worker in the lowest levels of the silo, which is 144 floors deep, and will probably refuse the position. Mayor Jahns wants to visit these lower levels to “get us a proper gauge of this Juliette” and take time for silent mourning. Both Jahns and Marnes are older people, so the journey is a grueling trek down. Plus they are going against the flow of travelers who are going to the first floor to celebrate the cleaning.

As they travel into the bowels of the silo in search of a new sheriff, the people they pass look to Mayor Jahns with eyes crying, “Keep us going, … Make it so my kids live as long as me. Don’t let it unravel, not just yet.” But Jahns knows it “only [takes] one snip for it all to unravel.” This is a heroic quest to save their people for one more generation and we begin to see the possible threads that might unravel in a segregated society divided by floors. “The silo was mathematically divided into three sections of forty-eight floors each…” with the administrators and white collar workers live on the upper floors of the silo. The workers who keep the silo functional (farmers, electricians, mechanics) are on the lower levels. And smack in the middle is IT with Bernard Holland, whom we instantly dislike, Head of IT. We learn that it’s customary for the Head of IT to approve the Mayor’s choice for sheriff.

The quest for a sheriff also turns into a personal quest for unfulfilled love between our two travelers. It is chance to build on a relationship they both chose to keep professional for years and so, “out of nothing comes something,” has multiple meanings to the plot. But not everything that comes out of this trip is beneficial and the hitches in the overall plot of the whole Wool series becomes more complex.

I still have to give this novella kudos. It continues to keep us interested in the overall series even though it limits the number of character we are exposed to. In this way, the characters are developed into realistically people with pasts and hopes and dreams -even in what we believe is a depressingly limited world. Each peripheral character from one story becomes the main character in the next, so there is still continuity in the storytelling. In fact, our entire knowledge of the silo world of Wool grows with each reading. The rich imagery and smells carry through from the top levels to the “down deep” of the silo, and so do the political struggles over power usage and supplies. It’s still worthwhile, so I’m on to reading, the third book in Hugh Howey’s Wool Series: Casting Off.

It’s a Wooly Dystopian Conundrum

A Review of Wool by Hugh Howey

Why name a novel Wool? Wool, wool. What wool? The cloth that’s itchy on sensitive skin? The fleecy covering on sheep until they share it with us? Wool, like fuzzy heads or unshaved faces? As it turns out, wool in Hugh Howey’s novel is the steel wool used to clean camera lenses on a buried silo. A silo buried for life, for the living in some post-apocalyptic world in which the descendants of survivors only have a camera’s eye view of the outside world and that camera lens must be kept clean. So wool, steel wool, is essential to this society. The title makes sense.

The opening line gets our attention with an opposition of imagery and attitude. “The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death…” The obvious dichotomy of playing children, full of life and dying creates enough curiosity to engage the reader. The contrasts between living and dying continues as Holston takes his time, moving up each step in a methodical and ponderous way. He wears “old boots” as he climbs a metal spiral staircase, paint chipped with age and metal floor worn so thin even the diamond no-slip pattern is flatten by time and numerous footfalls. Holston punctuates this difference as he reflects on how the sounds of “childlike delight” and youthful nativity “who in their minds were not buried” are “incongruous with…his decision and determination to die.” And we ask ourselves, why is he so determined to die? Holston’s ponderings about what the “untold years had done, the ablation of molecules and lives, layer and layer ground to fine dust” help us empathize with Holston’s resignation borne of desperation.

Questions, pulled from reader with incongruities like laughing children and death, are marvelous tools for writers and Howey uses them well. We are engaged with Holston and this generationally buried society enough to read the entire account. We learn about the importance of cleaning the outside camera lenses, which needs to done every couple of years because toxic soot builds up and clouds the exterior view. We also learn that the job is fatal. The toxins in the air are still so powerful they deteriorate the chemical safety suits in a matter of minutes and kill the “cleaner.” Criminals are sometimes used to clean the lens, but at other times there are those who actually volunteer for the job, like Holston does now…like his deceased wife did a year ago.

Sheriff Holston was married to Allison, one of the few IT workers in the silo. In this limited space, controlled environment procreation is only permitted for couples who win the “lottery.” The lottery allows couples to attempt to produce offspring for one year, then that privilege goes to another winning couple. Holston and Allison won the lottery the year she volunteered for “cleaning.” The laughing children remind him of what might have been, of the child he and Allison might have had if not for the secret she learned while recovering deleted computer files. However, as Holston learns, the secret Allison thinks she discovered is not the real secret.

I highly recommend Wool by Hugh Howey because he builds his setting with rich details and his characters, though a bit stagnant, are engaging. You sympathize with the main characters and feel their pain. We don’t learn a lot about Deputy Marnes or Mayor Jahns in this first book, but we are deeply involved with Sheriff Holston, Allison and a society living in a silo. It’s not an action-packed, plot-driven escapism novella, but it does keeps moving with twists and turns you don’t see coming. And it does move quickly along, taking us into a dystopian world with rich texture and compelling traditions. We don’t get answers to questions like, “what happen to create this mess,” but we are sucked into the world of one man and his desperate reaction to the loss of a spouse and the loss of hope.

I’ve only seen one drawback to Wool. It’s a free standalone novella in the Wool Series of five separate books. (Wool, Proper Gauge, Casting Off, The Unraveling, The Stranded) It is part of the Silo Series which includes the Shift Series (First Shift: Legacy, Second Shift: Order, Third Shift: Pact), plus the final novel, Dust. It was free, so I can’t complain too much. And it did pull me in enough to read the second book in the series, Proper Gauge. FYI enjoyed it too, and now I’m working on the third book, Casting Off. More to come about those books later. My only regret is that I bought the books individually and didn’t go ahead and purchase the Wool Omnibus Edition, which contains those first five books. Don’t make the same mistake I did!

The Question of Who has the Authority?

One of the greatest challenges for any author writing a trilogy is to preserve in each successive book the momentum of the plot as well as the interest of the reader. Not all authors can achieve these goals, however Jeff VanderMeer accomplishes both of these objectives plus adds to our understanding of Area X without solving its mysteries in his second novel of the Southern Reach Trilogy, Authority. Like Annihilation, Authority is told from the limited point of view of the main character. Whereas Annihilation is told from the first person point of view through the journal of the biologist on an expedition into Area X, Authority is told from the third person through the eyes of Control, the new director of Southern Reach.

What is perhaps most fascinating in VanderMeer’s novels is his ability to effectively relate the details of both the biologist’s and Control’s observations from very different perspectives with clarity and realism. In the case of Annihilation and the biologist, we see the details relating to species of plants and animals and the ecology of Area X in which they thrive and change. In Authority, we see both the overt communication and the subtle nuisances of character in the staff working for Southern Reach. We see their quirks, their strengths and weaknesses, and their value or possible threat to the goals of Southern Reach. First and foremost, we learn about Control.

The opening segment of part one takes us into Control’s recurring dream of standing on a cliff overlooking a cove which is ever-changing, where behemoths “glide…like submarines or bell-shaped orchids or the wide hulls of ships, silent, ever moving, the size of them conveying such a sense of power that he can feel the havoc of their passage…” then he falls and keeps falling. Control’s dream ties us to the first novel, Annihilation, in which the biologist observes strange behemoths in the sea by the Lighthouse in Area X. It also hints at the ever-changing nature of the area which all the previous expeditions observed. Plus the dream shows us a human weakness in Control and hints at a link between him and this mysterious area. Then he falls, and in falling causes the reader to immediately question whether this link between Control and Area X will help or hinder the goals of Southern Reach to contain the “contamination” and keep its real nature a secret.

The second segment opens with Control’s first day as director at Southern Reach and we learn that this is his “last chance.” That first line hints at career problems which have plagued Control during his time with Southern Reach and we begin to see him as a rogue agent and a possible hindrance to the mission. Through Control’s observations of the assistant director’s reactions to him, her not sparing him an extra word or an extra look, “except when he’d told her and the rest of the staff to call him ‘Control,’ not ‘John’ or ‘Rodriguez,’ we see the antagonism that is set up between the characters. When she replies, call her “Patience,” not “Grace,” we know Control’s reign will be tenuous. Grace also insists on calling him the “acting” director, indicating the temporal nature of his tenure during the transition period in which she is still actually in charge. Control acknowledges that, “Until then, the issue of authority might be murky.” This segment sets up, not only the conflict of man versus the unknown threat of Area X’s possible expansion, but man versus man to gain power and authority which carries throughout the entire novel.

Even though it’s only Control’s first day, he admits he “already felt contaminated by the dingy, bizarre building with its worn green carpet and the antiquated opinions of the other personnel he had met.” Here is foreshadowing of the contamination from Area X expanding behind the confinements and barricades and Army guards which surround it. The very building housing Southern Reach has “a sense of diminishment” as if it has been blanketed in deterioration of hopelessness about solving the mystery of Area X. It is feeling from which Control struggles to remain aloft as he begins his job of interrogating the three returnees from the twelfth expedition: the surveyor, the anthropologist and the biologist. Control sees something different, something special in the biologist and he focuses all his attention on her as he wades through reports about Area X, meets the team of scientists studying the area and gives secret reports on his progress to The Voice via phone. We also learn the missing psychologist from the twelfth expedition was, in fact, the previous Director of Southern Reach.

Amid the antagonism of the assistant director, the peculiarities of the scientific team and the oppressive feeling of stagnation, Control and the biologist develop an unusual relationship. Southern Reach: Authority is a well-written book, not only worthwhile reading, but one to add to the personal collection of your library. I look forward to reading the third book in the trilogy, Acceptance.

C.L. Cohen

Annihilation: X Marks the Spot to Read

Annihilation is a fascinating tale that grips you from the first chapter to the last. Jeff VanderMeer pulls the reader into the story by creating a cascade of questions about the mysterious Area X which is being monitored by the clandestine organization, Southern Reach. The opening line sets the tone and style. “The tower, which was not supposed to there, plunges into the earth…” This line presents both questions and conflicting images at the same time. We not only ask how and why is the tower there, we also wonder how a tower can plunge into the ground when normally they go up toward the sky. This dichotomy continues throughout the novel, presenting us with overt questions and stimulating us with opposing visuals.

Area X, which has been abandoned for decades “for reason that are not easy to relate,” is described in vivid detail without emotional attachment. We later learn that we are reading the journal of a biologist, one of four members of an expedition sent “to continue the government’s investigation into the mysteries of Area X.” We know by end of the first paragraph that the expedition didn’t end well because she says, “Looking out over that untroubled landscape, I do not believe any of could yet see the threat.”

 The members of the expedition are only identified by their function: the biologist, the surveyor, the anthropologist and the psychiatrist. We have to wonder why? We also learn that expedition members were not permitted to bring any electrical equipment or modern tools of their trade. They are instructed to only keep a personal, hand-written journal and they are not allowed to share any of the information they record with other members of their team. This restriction seems scientifically inefficient and questionable. All the members chosen for this twelfth expedition are women. The vague and unsatisfying explanation given is that they were “chosen as part of the complex set of variables that governed sending the expeditions.” No further information is given. Thus begins a series of questions that seem to lead to more questions as we delve into the enigmatic Area X in order to find the answers.

The questions continue as we learn that something strange and inexplicable happened to all the members of the previous expeditions. Some expeditions killed each other, others killed themselves, still others unaccountably “disappeared” from Area X, only appear home and have other problems there. And yet with as much as I have already told you, I have barely scratched the surface. Each revelation in Area X leads to multiple possibilities and more questions.

This is a must-read novel whether you’re a science fiction fan or not. It grabs your attention from the first chapter and consumes you with the craving to solve the mystery of Area X. Now that I’ve read Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, I eagerly await the release of the second book in the Southern Reach trilogy, Authority, which was published at the end of May 2014. Jeff VanderMeer’s dynamic narrative style promises future reading of a first class writer equally the likes of Steven King and Michael Crichton. This series is not to be missed!

C.L. Cohen

“Among Others”: Growing Up One Page at a Time

Title: Among Others
Author: Jo Walton
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN-10: 0765331721
ISBN-13: 978-0765331724
Format: hardback, paperback, Kindle & audio editions
Paperback: 304 pages
Genre: Fantasy/Coming of Age
Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars

Distorting Time with Words

Have you ever noticed that when you’re young time oozes like syrup, but as you get older it runs like water? Psychologist Jeremy Dean confirms this observation in his article “10 Ways Our Mind Warp Time.” He says there are studies which show “people in their 20s are pretty accurate at guessing [time] … but people in their 60s systematically overestimate it, suggesting time is passing about 20% more quickly for them.” So how does an author create this illusion in a novel? Jo Walton seems to have found just how to capture it in her fantasy novel for young adults, Among Others.

Walton first captures our attention by opening with a pivotal moment in the young heroine’s life. Written as a journal entry for May 1^st 1975, we watch as 11-year-old Morganna, and her identical twin, Morwenna, approach the Phurnacite factory in Abercwmboi. Their goal is to destroy the factory with fairy magic because it “looked like something from the depths of hell, black and looming with chimneys of flame, reflected in a dark pool that killed any bird or animal that drank from it. The smell was beyond description.” Our heroines are challenged by the looming presence around the factory, which has “no vegetation here, not even dead trees. Cinders crunched underfoot, and clinker and slag threatened to turn our ankles.” And there is a sign warning about dangerous watch dogs. Though Morwenna is terrified of dogs, the brave sisters throw the magic flower they’ve brought into the black pool and the next day the factory announces its closing. Magic is real, though not the way we imagine it. A post script from the journal’s author says she write this first because “it’s compact and concise and it makes sense, and a lot of the rest of this isn’t that simple.” This statement entices us to read further.

Slowing Time with Daily Details

The story then jumps ahead four years to September 5^th 1979 and we learn that Morwenna died in a car accident and a seriously injured Morganna has been sent to live with her estranged father after running away from her insane mother. Using details about the mundane aspects of daily life and numerous references to science fiction and fantasy novels, the remaining scenes unfold slowly with only hints of magic, its unpredictable nature and the dangers of using it for self-interest. Morganna choses to be called Mor, connecting herself to her dead twin, yet in the first part of the story, she distances herself from her father by just calling him “he.” We meet “the aunts”, Anthea, Dorothy and Frederica, who control “him” by having him manage their estate. The aunts “get rid” of Mor by rushing her off to the boarding school, Arlinghurst. Walton sets the contrast between Mor’s life with her mother’s family and life at the aunts’ house, enhancing the distance from her poor side of the family and her father’s rich side. Mor’s only connection to her father is books. They share an interest in science fiction/fantasy which Mor reads with an OCD consumption. Since she is in constant pain from her injured leg and has nothing else to do, we can sympathize with Mor and understand her reading compulsion. However, continuing references to titles and authors slows the pacing and makes it a challenge to continued reading even in the face of the subtle threat of her mother’s magic.

We are almost half-way through the novel before the pacing speeds up with the introduction of Wim, a boy Mor meets at a SciFi/Fantasy book club. Like a lot of things in life, the joy of being in Wim’s presence carries Mor through the daily rituals of boarding school until the next time with meeting him. Wim adds flavor to the plot with his questionable reputation and his curiosity about magic until the final scene where Mor must confront her mother.

In order to improve my own writing, I read “Among Others” because it won the 2011 Nebula Award. Through the first half of the book, I kept asking why it won such a prestigious award when other novels held so much more interest. But after finishing the book, it makes sense, and so does the slow pacing of the first half. My kudos go to Jo Walton for using the technique of slowing time with Mor childhood and then speeding it up as she matures and for winning the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel. If you haven’t read this novel, be as patient as you would with any teenager, knowing the maturity at the end is worth it.

Red River Runs True to Form

Title: Red River
Author(s): Kelly Van Hull
Publisher: Kelly Van Hull
Copyright: 2013
ASBN: BOOGQLNDOG
Format: market paperback & ebook
Genre: Young Adult Dystopian
Part of Series: Book Two in the Tent City Series
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Kelly Van Hull continues to keep our attention in the Second Book of the Tent City Series: Red River. Many writers of dystopian fiction can fall out of balance between maintaining realism versus “crossing the line” in the sequel. However, Van Hull maintains a realistic balance in this novel for young adults despite her apocalyptic theme, the Biblical references to end of times plagues and the “advancements” which empower some of the characters. Continuity is maintained between the first and second books with the first-person point of view narration through the eyes of 17-year-old Dani. We learn that Dani’s 5-year-old brother, Brody, is the prophesized “Golden Child”. Dani’s determined to protect Brody by keeping his identity secret, even from their friends in Tent City. Like Van Hull, Dani is doing a balancing act. Dani is still undecided about her feeling for the brothers, Bentley and Jack, but that’s the least of her worries.

The novel opens with Dani discovering that Brody has the mark of the Golden Child as the young people from Tent City, along with Dani’s mother and father are on their way back to Tent City. The second plague occurs as they cross the river, which has turned to blood. This means that Bentley and Jack’s father, General Burke, can no longer be called a religious lunatic, he’s right! They now know they must face the remaining plagues soon. However, even concern about the plagues must be put on the back burner because winter in the Black Hills is approaching and they need a new camp.

The plot pacing is enjoyable, as Dani and Bentley search for a winter camp, but for me it’s just a backdrop for the inner conflict which Dani faces as she wavers between the pouting teenager whose parents are “in charge” and the strong young woman she is becoming. I like that her protectiveness of Brody keeps her firmly rooted in her own strength and that she constantly battles her own temper when she is forced to share the camp with the infamous General Burke. New characters are smoothly introduced into the sequel and flesh it out to create a lively conflict for Dani’s inner conflict. A few surprising twists toward the end makes us wonder what will happen in the third book to this trilogy.

Though I enjoyed Kelly Van Hull’s second book, Red River, it didn’t capture my attention as much as the first book, Tent City, which I gave five stars. It’s still a good read, though, and I highly recommend it for the young people and adults who are following Van Hull’s series.