Day 27: Wool Cont.

Today I'm going to finish off my review of Wool, covering my favorite character and what makes her great, and the end of the series. First though, I realized that more than half of my post yesterday was locked behind a wall of spoilers, which is not cool. There will be lots of spoilers in this one as well, but future reviews won't have as many. What's the point of blogging about anything if you can't read most of the post without spoiling something, right?

Trying to sum up every character in any story is impossible. They have so many little interactions and tiny personal moments that add up over the course of a novel, and to try to capture that in a single review would either be a disservice to the book, or it would mean the book has rather flat characters if I did managed to do it. Wool's characters are certainly not flat, so I'll do my best to boil down what I think makes them so great, but just know you'll have to read it to truly understand.

It comes down to a couple of things: powerful force of will and ingenuity. All of Wool's best characters (including the villain) have both of these qualities in absolute heaps, but I want to focus on the main character for this review.

Juliette is a 34 year old woman from bottom levels, also known as the 'down deep' of mechanical. She's a star mechanic, a hard worker, and when she wants something done, she doesn't quit until it's finished. We see this in her very first arc, where she pushes the Silo administration hard to let her rebuild the main generator for maintenance, a task that has been a long time coming. To do so, she has to leave the entire Silo on auxiliary power for the duration of the rebuild. Convincing the administration to let her do this won't come for free, and in return they demand that she become the new Sherriff after Holston's death. She'll have to leave her family in mechanical to move all the way to the upper levels of the Silo, the biggest possible move. Mayor Jahns, a well loved administrator, is able to convince Juliette that she'll be able to do more good as a sheriff than a mechanic, and she accepts with a heavy heart, knowing that this choice will save the main generator from an inevitable critical failure, and therefore the rest of the Silo as well. Making hard choices is what makes a character who they are, and Howey does a wonderful job of setting up difficult scenarios that let his uncompromising characters shine.

With great effort, Juliette has to adapt to the role of sheriff, investigating cases, handling paper work, and generally putting up with political intrigue (though she'd be more likely to call it BS). She adapts well, maybe a little too well, and starts investigating the mysterious IT department in regards to the recent Mayor Jahns' death by poisoning. Juliette is able to unearth secrets no one else has been brave enough, persistent enough, or cunning enough to reveal, despite the resistance of the IT head Bernard. Her ability to learn, adapt, and overcome is what makes Juliette one of my favorite characters, but the quality that really nails down her character, is how she refuses to give up on what she wants.

Over her investigation, she develops a relationship with IT member Lukas, and astronomer and something of a dreamer. In the end, she goes through hell for Lukas, going so far as to survive outside of the Silo, and in doing so, she reveals the Silo's biggest secret: that they are not alone. There are many separate Silos.

Juliette has to survive the out doors for several minutes until she can find another adjacent (and abandoned) Silo that has been empty for decades. There she finds a way to communicate with Lukas in IT, and retains a lifeline. Over the course of several weeks, she rebuilds her suit, and makes a plan to return to the Silo. This will no doubt throw the hierarchy of the Silo into complete chaos as the secrets are revealed. That someone can survive outside the Silo, that there is more than one sanctuary. There has already been a resistance brewing after Juliette was ousted, led by her old friends in the down deep.

I love the ending because everything works out. A lot of stories leave things hanging, or let the characters who deserve to prosper continue to suffer, but not here. Juliette gets to return to the Silo and be with Lukas, the uprising in the down deep over throws the secretive and authoritarian IT, and the Silo becomes a new kind of society. By the last page, everything is in its proper place.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley