Review of Half Way Home by Hugh Howey

Well, it looks like the Wool phenomenon is not a fluke. Half Way Home is another imaginative and thought provoking book from Hugh Howey. 

After reading and thoroughly enjoying the Wool Omnibus and First Shift, I tossed up between some of Hugh's earlier work, passing on Molly Fyde because it sounded like teen fiction. That's not a criticism, as I'll read anything that is entertaining and well written. 

Half Way Home is also about kids, but something about the blurb on the Amazon Kindle store won me over, and I'm glad it did.

Review of the Wool Omnibus (Wool 1-5) by Hugh Howey

I feel like I am on a bandwagon having read Wool, but bandwagons become bandwagons because they have something that resonates with people.

In the Wool series, Hugh Howey has created something he couldn't have foreseen. Amongst other things he has made readers care about his characters, imagine a believable future and he's kept them wanting for more.

I don't know if it was his original strategy, but I am glad that Wool started out as a novella. If you can grab your audience, engage their emotions and curiosity in a short form, you're probably a pretty good writer. Either that or your story has fired the what-if chemical in the readers brain, as Isaac Asimov did in the Foundation series, Frank Herbert did in the Dune series, Virginia Andrews did in much of her writing. These three writers created such a legacy, there are still books being published as prequels, sequels and spin-offs of their original works.

I'm not comparing the content of Wool to these others, but it already has the potential to grow beyond the scope and grasp of its creator. This is something most writers dream of.

This week I had possibly my first ever overdue library book

This week i had possibly my first ever overdue library book. 

Its not that I don't respect books or the public library system, it's just that over the last few years I have almost completely stopped reading physical books, magazines and newspapers. I read ebooks, ezines, blogs, web pages and PDFs all of the time.

When I recently discovered that a book I really wanted to read was not available as an ebook, I was left with no choice but to borrow the actual physical book. It was cumbersome. I didn't finish it. I lost it, then found it and returned it late.

I now read ebooks almost exclusively. Amazon's Kindle store seems to be the best place to purchase content, and they support authors by not taking too much from their earnings, unlike traditional publishing houses which consider you indebted to them until your work turns a profit. This means you get a lot more independent and first time authors on Kindle, Barnes & Noble and some of the independent sellers.

This also means you can have a hit and miss experience if you're a little adventurous.

Review of Wool 6 - First Shift by Hugh Howey

A prequel has got to be the biggest challenge a fiction writer can face, especially when you have previously created a universe as rich as the one in Hugh Howey's Wool series.

The speed with which First Shift (Wool 6) came out after Wool 5 was both inspiring and intimidating. 

Inspiring because such efficiency combined with such a quality result makes writing look easy, and I mean that in a good way. 

I'm also inspired by how thorough the continuity is in First Shift. I write and edit for a living (business writing only - I'm not tough enough to air my fiction) and haven't seen a hole in the plot.

I'm really only intimidated because of how quickly Hugh's work seems to come together.

As a result of watching the rapid success of the Wool series, I've been inspired to write something every day. Following the logic in the infinite monkey theorem, at some point something good has to come out.

Congratulations to Hugh on the success and quality of Wool 1-6. I'll definitely be making my way through his back catalogue (Molly Fyde, The Hurricane, Halfway Home etc).