Date Finished: 1/31/15
Here's the "blurb" on this one:
In a ruined and toxic landscape, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside. His fateful decision unleashes a drastic series of events. An unlikely candidate is appointed to replace him: Juliette, a mechanic with no training in law, whose special knack is fixing machines. Now Juliette is about to be entrusted with fixing her silo, and she will soon learn just how badly her world is broken. The silo is about to confront what its history has only hinted about and its inhabitants have never dared to whisper. Uprising.
Now apparently this was originally a series of short stories that were continued and expanded upon until they became this book. And I have to say, I really liked it. Readers should know this is pretty dystopian - so if you're tired of that theme you may want to avoid it - but you'd be missing out.
Spoilers ahead:
I didn't know this was originally a series of short stories when I started this book - and I think that knowing that fact makes the first sections of the book make more sense. We are introduced to these characters, get to know them, and then *poof* they're dead. What's the point? Well, the point is getting us where we need to go.
So first we have Sheriff Holston - who essentially commits suicide by asking to go outside. His wife did the same thing 3 years ago and he's convinced he's figured out why - because humans can survive out there. Well, WRONG. Still as toxic as ever. But we have this strange interlude when he goes outside and he thinks that the world is full of green pastures and beautiful gleaming cities. Unfortunately this is a lie and the suit he wears has been designed to fail - so he dies on the hill next to his wife, whose body still lays where she fell.
Next we're introduced to Mayor Jahns who has to find Holston's replacement - and who ends up being murdered in the process. She enlists Juliette to become the new Sheriff but IT (the most powerful group in the Silo) wants their own man appointed to the job. Hence the murder.
Juliette is our protagonist - our person we root for in the face of extreme adversity. She is framed, sent out to clean but survives (due to real materials being used instead of the fakes from IT that are designed to fail) and makes her way to another Silo - 17 -- that went completely under when an uprising happened at some point. There she meets Solo, who's been by himself for thirty-something years and they try to get the Silo in working order again while keeping tabs on the uprising now happening in Silo 18.
Needless to say a LOT is happening in this story. We find out that IT is behind this subterfuge of keeping the truth from everyone - that there are 50 silos in the greater Atlanta area and as far as they know, they are the only people left on earth. There's a lesson here about how the predecessors wanted a homogenous population and that's why they destroyed the earth but to be honest I thought that description read a little bit hollow. It almost didn't matter how they got to where they are - as Lucas comes to realize (Juliette's new love interest and Bernard (antagonist in charge of IT) protege).
Juliette stages a daring feat to get mechanical functionality back to Silo 17 to drain the flood that's made it's way up many levels. I cringed reading this because she's underwater and of course runs out of air and barely makes it up alive. Meanwhile Lucas has figured out that Bernard is a murderer so he (Lucas) is sentenced to clean as well. By now the uprising staged by Mechanical and Supply has failed and things are returning to normal in 18. BUT that sheriff that IT wanted so badly - he actually listens to what Lucas has to say - and in the end it's Bernard put out for cleaning instead. Juliette comes back, gets asked to run for Mayor and says she will only do so if everyone knows the truth. So there we have it. Oh and her mechanical miracle in 17 actually works - Solo (and the random teenagers who had been living there the whole time alongside him) are getting things running again.
The writing was great on this one - nicely paced and exciting. The plot is intriguing - you really do want to know how humanity ended up isolated and existing in Silos - and presumably that's what book 2 in this series will tell us. All in all a great read - highly recommend.
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