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.