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.