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BIG letdown.
The premise is engaging at first: post-apocalypse, the world we know, completely buried under sand. How much sand? Well, the skyscapers of the lost city of "Dan-var" (the "mile-high city", kinda like how Thundarr the Barbarian says "Man-hat"-tan) are 500? meters below the dunes.
The economy completely revolves around scavenging "divers" who use personally-wielded technology akin to psychokinesis to vibrate the sand such that its can be swum through, along with an infrared/radar visor to see shapes/outlines, and scuba tanks to breathe. Flippers are apparently somewhat vestigial, with propulsion derived more from the aforementioned psychokinesis.
To lend credence to this setting, there are a dozen different slang terms for sand (all footnoted!), for each of the annoying places it can accumulate. Clearly a reference to the supposed eskimos' bazillion words for snow, which is generally considered to be a cliché (first sentence on wikipedia page).
On to the plot! It starts off with good tension, like Wool did. But as more details of the physics emerge, I found it more and more implausible (in particular, the vibrating sand being quiet/usable for stealth, and also being able to *solidify* sand).
Then in the middle portion of the book, multiple characters just happen to find exactly who they're looking for in the vast desert. Completely improbable. And the exact same "rescue"-type event plays out in parallel at the same time with two different sets of people. No symbolism or significance between them, it's just as if it was all he could think to do in the setting.
It only got worse from there. The villains' reasoning/motive made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the protagonist role jumped from one member of the family to another, each of whom seemed to dwell on the same anecdotes, like cardboard cutouts. I simply couldn't connect with any of them.
That said, I'm not going to give up on Hugh yet. I actually *thanked* him on Twitter after I finished the Wool series, I thought it was *that* good. Following that up can't have been easy, and I'm sure there was some pressure involved.
The premise is engaging at first: post-apocalypse, the world we know, completely buried under sand. How much sand? Well, the skyscapers of the lost city of "Dan-var" (the "mile-high city", kinda like how Thundarr the Barbarian says "Man-hat"-tan) are 500? meters below the dunes.
The economy completely revolves around scavenging "divers" who use personally-wielded technology akin to psychokinesis to vibrate the sand such that its can be swum through, along with an infrared/radar visor to see shapes/outlines, and scuba tanks to breathe. Flippers are apparently somewhat vestigial, with propulsion derived more from the aforementioned psychokinesis.
To lend credence to this setting, there are a dozen different slang terms for sand (all footnoted!), for each of the annoying places it can accumulate. Clearly a reference to the supposed eskimos' bazillion words for snow, which is generally considered to be a cliché (first sentence on wikipedia page).
On to the plot! It starts off with good tension, like Wool did. But as more details of the physics emerge, I found it more and more implausible (in particular, the vibrating sand being quiet/usable for stealth, and also being able to *solidify* sand).
Then in the middle portion of the book, multiple characters just happen to find exactly who they're looking for in the vast desert. Completely improbable. And the exact same "rescue"-type event plays out in parallel at the same time with two different sets of people. No symbolism or significance between them, it's just as if it was all he could think to do in the setting.
It only got worse from there. The villains' reasoning/motive made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the protagonist role jumped from one member of the family to another, each of whom seemed to dwell on the same anecdotes, like cardboard cutouts. I simply couldn't connect with any of them.
That said, I'm not going to give up on Hugh yet. I actually *thanked* him on Twitter after I finished the Wool series, I thought it was *that* good. Following that up can't have been easy, and I'm sure there was some pressure involved.