donna backshall's Reviews > Shift

With Shift, Hugh Howey continues his thoroughly unique, claustrophobic and engrossing story about the world in the silo. We get a skillfully woven background and unexpected explanations for how it all came to be, and this is fed to us in intriguing bits and pieces. I found I could not bite off my next scrap fast enough!

I have shelved these stories science fiction, though these are much less science than they are simply human and somewhat tragic. Hugh Howey understands and portrays loneliness in a way I hope never to experience firsthand. He shows us how love, when it's desperate and dysfunctional, can ruin a relationship and perhaps even a civilization. Bottom line is that he "gets" people and shares his compassionate appreciation for our flaws and our well-intentioned missteps, even when this revelation is far from the sunbeams and rainbows we hope he'll provide.

Taking a breather with a couple other books before I move on to Dust, mostly because I don't want to rush through. I'm trying to pace myself, savoring each morsel of the silo pie.