Just finished the Silo Trilogy by Hugh Howey. I had heard good things about Wool, so I read it and thought it was all right; I saw Shift and Dust for cheap at a bookstore recently and finished off the series.

I thought the whole series was okay. It clearly starts off as an early work by the author, but the characters and setting are engaging enough. Even in the third book, Howey develops a bunch of plot lines just to needlessly end a bunch of them without resolution. I understand that 'just so' endings are also annoying, but sometimes it seems like he doesn't know what to do with certain characters or developments, so he just cuts them off through one device or another. Sometimes the bad guys are just comically bad while the good guys are always great (even when some of the good guys are clearly stupid and responsible - directly or indirectly - for heinous results). Howey tries to convey moral complexity but it just comes off as whiny to me without really addressing the moral quandry head-on.

What really bothers me, though, is the technical details. I tried hard to suspend my disbelief, but he gives more and more details of how his world works in the second and third books, and there are just fundamental problems that my engineer's brain couldn't ignore. I realize that Howey added most of the details (especially in the third book) to address some of these concerns, but he was clearly making things up along the way, and the inconsistencies start to strain credulity. I don't want to spoil anything, but suffice it to say he posits a closed system existing based on more-or-less familiar technology for centuries. Recycling and stockpiling addresses a lot of the problems, but I think by far the biggest real issue has to do with oil, used for both power and raw materials; there's no way there would be enough to provide for the needs of 50 silos for this period of time, not to mention the 'mines' that supposedly provide for some raw materials. The other issue has to do with the nanotechnology and the defenses/uses of it; I can't give more details without giving away lots of spoilers, but suffice to say I was unimpressed with his treatment of the subject.

I love post-apocalyptic fiction, and I love ship-in-a-bottle kind of stories, so I was predisposed to enjoy this. I had fun, yes, but wouldn't say it blew me away. Decent light reading if you're not feeling to picky.