I read Wool, the first book in the Silo trilogy, before the pandemic about 5 billion years ago in 2019. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I did not know it was a series when I started it. After spending so much time reading series like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, etc. I really was trying to read more standalone single stories, and after hearing some short reviews of the second novel not being as good as the first, I did not race out to read it.
Then I watched Silo on Apple TV. I was reminded how much I dug both the setting of Wool, but also how much I enjoyed the character of Juliette Nichols. Could some of that be because of my love for Rebecca Ferguson? Of course, but also who cares? Ferguson is so great as Jules, that she became my indellible mental image of the character even though I had finished the book five years before watching the show. I was halfway through the series when I went online and ordered a copy of Shift, the second book in the trilogy.
For those that haven’t read Wool, or watched Silo, the premise is that some catastrophic event has forced humanity to live undergound in a large bunker which is shaped basically like a missle silo. The central mystery is about what happened to the outside world, and if it really is no longer safe to go outside. Hey, another life during the pandemic callback! It’s been a year for that for me, so far. Juliette Nichols is an engineer who works at the very bottom of the silo keeping the generators, and therefore everyone, alive.
So imagine my surprise when I am about 100 pages into the sequel and Juliette Nichols has not yet appeared; has not even been mentioned. Shift… um… shifts perspective to a few characters from different periods in time. One before the cataclysmic event that drives humanity underground, and the others years after. Both of these characters are men. Not to say that the story is not interesting, or that these characters are not engaging, but it is disappointing to read a follow-up to a novel with a strong female lead only to have her be sidelined for the duration of the book.
Having said that, I did really enjoy the split perspectives. The chapters are mostly pretty short and you are frequently bouncing back and forth between times and locations, but all of them are compelling. My usual complaint with a narrative like that is I always have one or two characters that I really enjoy following, and so the chapters not from their perspective are always a bit of a slog. I’m eating my veggies to get back to the steak. Would I have felt the same way if one of the segments was focused on Juliette? Maybe.
I think the main criticism most would have of this book is that it is filler. I can’t really dispute that. It is a lot of fleshing out of characters not found in the first book, and world building that’s probably not super necessary. Having said that, it worked for me. I was very into the setting of the first book and thoroughly enjoyed the expansion of it in Shift. If you enjoyed the show I highly recommend the first book and I do see myself returning to this world with the final book, Dust, in the near future.