Dust

Dust finishes off Howey's Silo Saga with both literal and figurative bangs. It maintains the claustrophobic feel and intense pace of his earlier works while making me get sadder and sadder as chapters go on. I saw a cat that had been hit by a car today and burst into tears remembering... Solo and Shadow. Every time he mentions that cat I start getting weepy. Like way weepier than I got for Lukas or Donny. Is that weird?. It does a really nice job of closing up some plot holes and connecting bits of Wool and Shift in a way that makes everything feel better connected than the transition between those two books themselves.

Also, we get Juliette back (yay!) even though I spend most of the book being really upset that nothing ever goes according to her plans and then just being sad that one of my favorite power couples barely gets a thousand words to actually be a power couple. That was a disappointing death and Lukas as a character is just wasted after Wool. We also get Charlotte, a much needed piece of perspective point of view. Donny starts turning into a real character and Solo gets to really shine. The story seems a bit faster paced than Shift and was a lot harder to put down. I have to hand it to Howey that he does a great job integrating complex female viewpoints without any hint of romantic subplot. Odd considering the controversy he stirred up a few years ago over his ex, but I will still award him 10 points for giving me women to identify with in science fiction.

The only thing I really had a problem with was the initial panic after everyone relocates to Silo 17, in particular the crazy church. I get that fighting, looting, and laying claim to as much food and land as people can makes for a pretty realistic mini-apocalypse. However 24 hours in and you're forcing 7 year olds into marriage with crazy cults? That chapter kinda snapped by suspension of disbelief, and seeing as nothing really comes of it and it has no effect on the story afterwards, it was a bit of a let down few chapters.

As a conclusion to the series, it is well worth reading and offers a much-needed ray of hope into the post-apocalyptic genre. It isn't a perfect book, but it's still an enjoyable and emotional read.