A silo book like no other

This book was definitely a change of pace for the "silo". It really dove deep into what truly matters, freedom. What better form of freedom living in the silo than literary expression. ( )

This novella takes place in the Silo world that Hugh Howey authored. He has encouraged others to write about that world, which has given rise to a number of side stories. I like that idea.

This story focuses on rising rebellion of the masses stemming to some extent from the censoring of what materials can be written or read. A number of classic works were somehow smuggled in when the silo first was occupied, and there is a sub-culture of people who work at manually copying these works as well as some that have been written by their contemporaries. The authorities seek out and punish people for this activity, but because it is so infiltrated throughout the silo it can't ever be eliminated.

I did like the attention on books and the suppression of ideas. The Silo world is one of oppression, and inevitably there are uprisings over time. However, I would have liked more character development as the main characters seemed flat to me. It seemed like they existed only for the purpose of talking about the issues at hand. It also seemed unlikely to me that the entire silo was rebelling so suddenly as they hadn't even distributed all their books and yet people were rioting. It seemed like the riots must have been triggered by something else that was building up, but that wasn't clear.

I'll check out any sequel to this as the silo world is an interesting one, but I do hope the characters will be a bit more developed. ( )