"Shift" in Time and Ideas

A Review of Shift, 2^nd book in the Shift Series by Hugh Howey

If you like a novel that pulls your attention into the drama and the characters, you’ll love Hugh Howey’s Shift Omnibus. I read it in my car during every half-hour lunch break, often still reading it as I walked back into the building. For those of you who haven’t read the first book in the series, Wool, STOP! Read it first, so events are clearer. Plus there are spoilers in this review. For those of you who read have Wool, the second book, Shift is even better.

Shift is aptly named for its contents. It follows one man, Donald, through different work shifts with increasing tension and dangerous outcomes. These outcomes effect the people living securely away in other silos, safe from a toxic environment filled with certain death. It also answers some of the questions which remained after reading Wool. Shift is divided into three novellas which follow Donald through his shifts. “First Shift – Legacy” jumps between 2049, when plans begin that lead to a world which can’t support humanity, and 2110, when Donald is awaken for his shift in Silo 1, the command center of 50 silos. “Second Shift – Order” happens in 2212 and jumps back and forth between Silo 1 and Silo 18 during the year of an uprising. “Third Shift - Pact” takes place in 2345, and involves Silos 1, where Donald is mistakenly identified as the man in charge, and Silo 17 as another rebellion is in progress.

The Prologue to “First Shift – Legacy,” has the same contrasting imagery of life and death as Wool contained. “Troy [a.k.a. Donald] returned to the living and found himself inside of a tomb.” He is, in fact, inside a cryonic chamber and has just been reanimated. Howey fills us with Troy’s sensations of the frosted glass through which he can see dark shapes hovering, the weakness of his muscles surrounded by a paper gown and the horrible taste in his mouth. He is given water and pills that “stung his throat… [and made’] memories fade like dreams upon waking.” He must forget his past life so he can work his shift in the here, beneath the hills of Georgia, and now, 2110. He emerges with “the feeling of deep time and yesterdays mingled.” This is the cycle of Donald’s life: waking, trying to remember what the pills make him forget then being refrozen in a “coffin” to dream of his past life.

In these dreams of his past life, we learn that he was once Congressman Donald Keene, who originally majored in architecture and is recruited by Senator Thurman for a special project. Donald has a keen eye for details, and one that pertains to Senator Thurman is his waiting room, which is “stripped of its obligatory law books until only a handful remained. These tomes sat silently in the dim corners of the glass cabinets.” There are also pictures on the wall of Thurman shaking hands with the last four presidents, in which Thurman hardly seems to change, as if “unfazed by the passing decades.” We have to wonder if this isn’t some hint the Thurman as already been using the cryogenics we read about in the Prologue. Donald also notes, “The two arrangements spoke volumes: the uniform from the past and the coins from those currently deployed, bookends on a pair of wars. One that the Senator had fought in as a youth. The other, a war he had batted to prevent as an older and wiser man.”

It is these minute details that create the Silo world. Details about the people like the Mission Jones in Silo 18, where “Deathdays were birthdays. … An old man dies and a lottery is won. Children weep while hopeful parents cry tears of joy.” As we saw in Wool, population is staunchly controlled in the silos. Of course, it would have to be. Resources and space is limited. Hence the continual paradox of death meaning life. And just as we grow to dislike the cold and memoryless people manning Silo 1, we grow to care about the people in the other silos who live out their daily lives, rather than sleeping through enormous periods of time. The people who work as their daily jobs as porters delivering heavy packages up dozens of flights of stairs, or mechanics in the “down deep” who keep the vital equipment running for producing energy and oxygen. They are real people with families and dreams and hopes. So that when a silo is threatened with a “shut down” during a rebellion, we know it means death to the elderly and children alike. We know it means letting the outside in and an end to lives that never saw the sun.

Shutting down silos is not what Donald wants to do from his secure location in Silo 1. His dream was to save lives, not destroy them. That’s why he worked with Senator Thurman to build the silos, which were supposed to be storage for toxic waste to bring in revenue for Georgia. Even as Donald designed the plans according to Thurman’s specks, he questioned their true purpose. Thurman’s no fool, though. He has Donald working with his daughter, Anna Thurman, with whom Donald had an ex-martial affair. Anna distracts and redirects Donald from the true purpose of the silos.

By Donald’s third shift, we are back at Silo 17 and another paradox: “The Loud came before the quiet. That was a Rule of the World, for the bangs and shouts need somewhere to echo, just as bodies need space in which to fall.” We meet Jimmy Parker, who is still in school, and Mrs. Peterson, his wizened teacher. We also encounter Solo again, who fell in love with Juliette “Jules” Nichols in Wool: Casting Off. Jules is major of Silo 17 now and making more threats. This time to Silo 1, where she’s going to get them, too.

But telling you more would mean ruining many of the twists and turns that Silo contains. What you really need to know is that the book it spell-binding and the silo worlds are built with incredible detail and depth. So much depth that I also read the third book, Dust. I haven’t read all three volumes of a trilogy since Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. It’s that good!

Casting Off Old Ideas

A Review of Wool: Casting Off by Hugh Howey

In Casting Off, Hugh Howey continues both the story and the metaphors which began in Wool. And, yes, dear readers and fans of Howey, this book is just as engrossing as the first two. Howey maintains continuity from Wool by opening with another “cleaning.” Just as in the first book, which opened with the Sheriff waiting for his cleaning, a new Sheriff now awaits the same fate. This Sheriff is Juliette “Jules” Nichols, assigned by Mayor Jahns and Deputy Marnes at the end of Proper Gauge. Now we see her facing the same excursion in the toxic outside world to clean the lens on the only camera to the world at large. Questions immediately pop into our mind. Why is she repeating the journey of the previous Sheriff? Is this going to be another series of all flashbacks into what lead her to this dismal destiny? Are we really going to move forward in the story line?

Flashing back was inevitable, but we learn the journey from Sheriff to cleaner has only taken Jules a few days. During that short time, Jules tried to learn how to be the silo sheriff. It’s a self-tutorial that leads her to extended hours of reading case files and staring at the jail’s camera of the outside world. Jules is much more of a pragmatist than many of the other people in the silo. Where they look up, above ground hoping to one day return to the outside, Jules sees their hope as “sad and empty dreams” where gray dust constantly molests gray hills and there hasn’t been life in hundreds of years. Jules knows that “the future was below,” safe in a silo which needs repairs. Below is her world and she is the ultimate mechanic of its social intrigues. Jules must solve the problems that rise up from the deep, one of which is Mayor Jahns’ murder.

Mayor Jahns’ last words to Jules were, “People were like machines. They broke down…Her job was to not only figure out why this happened, and who was to blame, but also to listen for the signs of it coming.” Deputy Marnes is one of those broken people in the Silo 17. He loved Mayor Jahns more than he ever let her know… until it was too late. Now his mourning casts a shadow over the sheriff’s office, just as the people’s mourning casts a shadow over the silo. The silo needs a new Mayor to go along with its new Sheriff and it seems that it will be the blind leading the blind. Both will have to learn as they go. Jules reads the Law portion of the all-important Pact, which is supposed to keep the silo a smooth-running machine. Yet she has unsolved murders, civil disruptions and the distasteful Head of IT, Bernard Holland, who claims the right to serve as interim mayor until elections can be held.

Jules is up to the challenge! She takes up the challenge and searches records, talks to people and narrows in on some of the secrets of Silo 17. During that time, she meets Lukas, a star gazer and an artist who becomes attached to Jules. Her friends in the down-deep of the silo send her words of encouragement and Walker, an old eccentric electrician, sends her a mysterious note saying, “The truth is a joke.”

Jules takes that final walk through the airlock to the outside world, where she is the first – SPOILER ALERT! – cleaner to make it over the hill and out of sight of the camera. You’ll be surprised by more of the silo’s secrets, which Walker knows and uses to help her.

I share this spoiler with you for two reasons: 1) it marches us up the hill with Jules and into the next book, The Unraveling, and 2) because we don’t read simply to get the facts. We are drawn into stories by good storytellers, and that is exactly what Hugh Howey is: a good storyteller. He takes devious political plots mixes them with murderous schemes on a grand scale, then seasons them with vivid, yet simple, details told with real human emotions. These details are Hugh Howey’s strength. They are what allow him to build a convincing contained world underground. He pulls us into the world of Silo 17 with descriptions and nuances that, once tasted, make us want more.

I, for one, am continuing to read this intriguing and well-written series. My only regret is that I didn’t get this review finishes back in December 2014 after I finished the novel. Now I’ve not only read all the Wool novels, I’m reading the Shift Omnibus and STILL loving the read. 

The Harbinger: Fable or Philosophy?

Before I began writing my review of The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn, I researched other reviews and got a surprise. I found several sources analyzing the accuracy of Cahn’s proposed Isaiah 9:10 Effect and criticizing Cahn’s argument that it applies to modern-day America as much as it did to ancient Israel. I also found reviewers who praised the book as a wake-up call for America. So I asked myself, “Why are the reviews so extreme?” Ordinarily we might expect a small variation of opinion about a book; it’s okay or it’s good. Maybe a one-star difference in overall rating. But these responses are radically different, more passionately argued with long statements about inaccuracies of facts and quality of argument. So I questioned whether I had read a philosophical argument or …what?

I went back to the beginning of the book to search for clues. Prior to the table of contents of The Harbinger, Cahn tells us that what we are about to read is a story which contains real information. I was instantly reminded of Aesop’s Fables. Even though each fable is make-believe, the morality associated with the fable is real. So we accept these morality tales, even though they contain talking animals, simply because they are teaching us something about real life. Who can forget that the tortoise’s slow, steady progress allows him to win a race with an overly confident, very fast hare? So if The Harbinger is a modern-day fable, why are so many reviewers complaining about argument quality and fact accuracy?

Perhaps the answer is in the presentation. Cahn formats the story as a Socratic argument: a dialogue about a philosophical idea. The main character, Nouriel Kaplan, relays his story – through dialogue - to a well-known, yet unnamed news reporter. Within Kaplan’s story is another story - also told totally in the dialogue between Kaplan and the Prophet – about how he anonymously receives an ancient seal with Paleo-Hebrew inscriptions and begins a quest to unravel its mystery. The set-up is good for a philosophical argument and yet Cahn doesn’t use it in that manner. Kaplan parrots everything the Prophet says and, likewise, the Reporter recaps everything Kaplan says. There is no opposing point of view and no argument ensues to persuade the reader that what is being said is either accurate or right. As a Socratic argument, the book falls far short of the mark. However, The Harbinger is NOT a philosophical argument. That’s not the purpose of the dialogue or the story within story use of repetition.

The purpose of the duel dialogues is so the information about the nine harbingers and their relationship between the downfall of ancient Israel and post-9/11 America can be repeated numerous times. As an educator, I know that most people must hear something at least five times before they remember it. Well, Cahn is using repetition of key information so the majority of readers will internalize it. It is the morality of the story that is the theme, NOT the correctness of his supposition. It is the warning that America is morally off-track and, as such, at risk of further humiliation, violence and defeat.

I gave The Harbinger a five-star, two-thumbs-up, must-read book based on perceiving it as a fable, a twenty-first century morality tale drawing parallels between ancient Israel’s pride with its fall and America’s arrogance prior to and since the terrorists acts of 9/11 with our possible future demise. Not unlike the warning in Proverbs 16:18 about pride going before a fall or Aesop’s arrogant hare losing the race to tortoise. But I’ve just skimmed the information in the book, which draws logical conclusions from compelling historical events... allowing for some flexibility. Don’t take my word for it. Read it and be enlightened. Read it and weep. Read it and change your own moral standing…and possibly our nation’s overall morality. The choice is yours. Just read it and draw your own conclusions.

Acceptance: Sometimes Difficult to Accept

Jeff Vandermeer’s Acceptance completes the Southern Reach Trilogy with detailed descriptions and complex sentences, sucking us into a world that’s changing. Here is where we expect answers, demand resolutions to the why those changes occur and what will happen to the major characters: the Biologist, Control, the Lighthouse Keeper, the Psychologist, and her assistant, Grace. Yet here is where we find true changes; changes in perspective on the landscapes of Area X, and changes in point of view.

The first book, Annihilation, is written from the first-person point of view of the Biologist on the twelfth expedition into Area X. Authority, the second book, is written from the limited third-person point of view of Control as he struggles in his new position as Director of Southern Reach. As changes have occurred within Area X, the border expanding, the wildlife being absorbed and mutated, so do changes in perspective occur within the book. Acceptance includes multiple points of view: the Biologist’s first-person perspective AND the third-person limited from Control’s eyes.  Acceptance adds the third-person point of view through the Lighthouse Keeper and we see the Psychologist’s childhood in ground zero of Area X and learn about the strange Science and Séance Brigade through his eyes. But the changes don’t stop there. A second-person point of view is added which observes the Psychologist prior to the twelfth expedition. The unknown voice speaks directly to the Psychologist and we have to wonder who this new speaker is?  We can only assume it is the voice of Area X’s creator, but this is never confirmed. This whole jumping back and forth between different types of viewpoints creates a feeling of unease in the reader and pulls you into the chaos and confusion of those expedition members who came back from Area X different, changed, damage psychologically and physically so that they died in less than a year. All accept for Lowry, who continues his deranged pursuit of conquering Area X from the safe distance of Central…or is it a controlled lab so his own changes can be easily observed?

                The affect is unnerving as we scramble over these changes in point of view, changes in Area X and changes in us, because of the answers we are compelled to seek. Like Control, who clutches Whitby’s terroir report, we seek answers to our questions: Who or what is behind the changes in Area X? What does it mean for humanity? But like the Lighthouse Keeper’s father told him, “Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt.” So we follow the Lighthouse Keeper into the cryptic world of Area X as it impregnates Earth with – we know not what - and are only partially satisfied with the answers.

                Answers, like candy, often leave us with more questions, and though this is true in the world of Jeff Vandermeer’s Acceptance, it is perhaps the most original dystopian I have read in a long time. The writing style, the characters and the plot are compelling and definitely worth the read!