Novel: Wool

Novel: Wool
Author: Hugh Howey
Rating: 4 of 5
Spoiler-free synopsis: The earth is wrecked, all humanity lives inside an underground vault called a "silo". The earth cannot support life, and the air is unbreathable.

SPOILER filled review:
If you control access to information, you control thought. If you control thought, you control action.

Wool is a pun; both for the steel wool used to clean, and to pull the wool over ones eyes. In the world of Wool, information is controlled and disseminated only to key members of IT. No one else knows anything.

The world is actually wrecked, but this doesn't really matter. The novel turns on the ability to continue to control generation after generation by remorselessly destroying their access to information.

As that, it is brilliant. I've not seen such an Orwellian world since ... Animal Farm. Even Newspeak has nothing on this, where to even think about "going outside" merits a death sentence.

That's what wool gets right. It does that beautifully. What I didn't enjoy was changing POV characters not once, not twice, but three times. I'd get accustomed to a character, and then they'd die. I don't enjoy that.

It also violates a rule from Asimov: start as late in the story as possible. This story could easily have started a hundred pages in.

Still, quite good.