Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Silo Origines

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Silo Origines by Hugh Howey

25 reviews

silvereyedathena's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

4.5 stars

"Donald was verging on the sad realization that humanity had been thrown to the brink of extinction by insane men in positions of power following one another, each thinking the others knew where they were going."

Maybe it's that the TV show hasn't gotten this far, so my brain wasn't as jumbled as I was with Wool, but the writing on this book was leaps and bounds better than that of book 1.

Wool struggled to make a long-form novel out of 5 shorter works. Shift's structure is far more successful. The book is broken up into 3 parts, but each part makes sense in its own right while contributing to the whole. There are 3 separate stories making up the 3 parts, with a 4th running the length of the whole book tying everything together. The narratives of Donald, Mission, and Jimmy are their own tightly constructed, solid works of fiction set during different eras within the Silo universe. Meanwhile, the narrative of Troy offers more answers - and questions - and intrigue about what's happening "behind the scenes."

Howey has really stepped up his game on subtlety, symbolism, and dramatic irony, too. There's a lot happening between the lines on the page, which is a skill I adore and admire in any author. We're in close third-person perspective all the time, which means we're limited by the awareness of the POV character. And those POV characters may not be entirely reliable - even to themselves - by virtue of age, awareness, hormonal distractions, or, say I dunno, hypothetically being drugged with a powerful amnesic either knowingly or unknowingly. So, much like some of our characters, we have to piece the mystery together from the clues at hand. And there's so much more showing instead of telling compared to Wool that it makes the mystery so much more compelling and satisfying when the clues pay off.

This book is also the first in the trilogy to make me cry. Hard.

[Minor SPOILER]

To be fair, this was predictable, given the subject matter. Solo finds a cat - Shadow - in his mostly dead silo. They become pals. After 16(?) years of being alone, he finally has companionship. Which terrified me, because we know there are bad things happening in this silo, and we know silo from book 1 that he doesn't have Shadow by the time Juliet shows up many years later. So I was bracing myself for Shadow to get brutally killed. Fortunately, he doesn't. But there's still a section a few years later of Solo laying Shadow to rest, reflecting on how much easier Shadow made it for him to survive, and god damn it I'm crying again. That wrecked me. I'm grateful Howey let Shadow die of old age (presumably), and intellectually I can acknowledge Howey's skill in making me feel this strongly. But I'm too much of an empath for this and I do not like this deep feeling of pity, grief, and despair (particularly as I look over at my own cat, who is curled up trying to sleep on my foot and giving me curious looks because my crying is causing his pillow to shake). It reminds me of when I was a kid and so many school-assigned books involved "person stranded all alone who must survive because isn't it just so ~inspiring~" crap, like Island of the Blue Dolphins and Hatchet. This stuff just upset me, depressed me, and evoked a deep, psychological terror of being lost and abandoned in the wilderness forever.

[END SPOILER]

So good job, Hugh Howey - you wrecked me. You talented bastard.

The season 2 finale of Silo gave us a sneak peak of the show diving into this book for the next season, and I'm now really looking forward to season 3. As mentioned in my review of Wool, the show really embraced the trilogy and improved on book 1. I'm excited to see how they tackle something as good as book 2.

Content Warnings

jomojobo's review against another edition

3.25

challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

bookscatcoffee's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

I loved this sequel! It’s so rare for an author to explain the origins of the dystopian world, and to have that be the entire sequel was masterful!

“All it took was for a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power, and then pay for their innocent choice.” It did take me awhile because the subject matter is grim, but I truly appreciate the craftsmanship! Definitely worth reading! 5 stars

Sequel to Wool, dystopian sci fi

Content Warnings

maddie_can_read's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I loved the first novel in the series and felt like I couldn't put it down. I still enjoyed this novel but it did not feel as gripping as the first one did.

After about the 40% mark, I felt like it started to drag, get a bit convoluted, confusing, over-explained (but also some parts not explained enough). I feel like it's better to leave some mystery if the explanation is confusing/ murky/ not great. I think the difference between Shift and Wool might be because the first novel was originally a collection of several novellas combined? I think Shift would have benefited from being a lot shorter/ tighter. Shift just didn't fit together as nicely as Wool did.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Dust does to wrap things up.

The Jimmy/ Solo parts really reminded me of the Jimmy/Snowman character from Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, but going into this detail about Jimmy made me wonder why Jimmy wasn't completely unhinged in the first novel when he met Juliette. He has been all by himself for 30 years.

I enjoyed the Donald/ Troy reveal but while interesting it wasn't surprising.

I wish the love between Donald and his wife had been more detailed/ believable because it didn't seem to make sense why Donald was so upset at loosing her (enough to kill) when it seemed like he was almost about to cheat on her at the beginning. I feel like I didn't understand why Donald was angry enough to kill, especially like the only ally/ person he liked from the before times. This was disappointing because I thought the depiction of romance in the first novel was pretty good.

I also wished we had seen more of the impact that murdering had on Donald and Jimmy. Especially Donald because he seemed so blase about it!

Also wished the Mission plotline had connected more? While I absolutely loved seeing the twist of them being reset, it felt like it should've connected more? Also did not get how they were reset.

Content Warnings

sophieamreacher's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Slow at times but intriguing, upsetting, and thought provoking. It will be interesting to see where book 3 goes.

Content Warnings

forestghouls's review against another edition

3.75

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

I didn’t like it as much as “Wool”. It definitely suffers from Second Book Syndrome. Although I thought the story about Solo was interesting, I don’t think it added much to the book overall. I wanted to learn more about the Silos, the purpose, and Donald’s reason for existing and his character development/ goals. Instead, the ending was padded with a backstory of a character seen at the end of the first book. I understand he could come back in the next book, but I think Donald’s story was more important for this one.

Content Warnings

ella_bibliophile_98's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Went deeper into the reason behind the silo in book 2 which is interesting but also hard to follow at times due to the introduction of a few new characters

Content Warnings