Shift

Hugh Howey

Random House

Otago Daily Times, October 26th 2013

In Wool, Hugh Howey described a post-apocalyptic world where what remains of humanity has huddled for generations beneath a poisoned earth, waiting for the day it will be safe to re-emerge.  Now in Shift he takes us back 300 years, to reveal the beginning of the story, and to introduce us to the man who finds himself unwittingly and unwillingly in the position to determine the ultimate fate of the human race.

When newly elected congressman Donald Keene is asked to design an underground safety bunker for a nuclear waste storage site by his mentor, Senator Thurman, he has no expectation that it will ever be used. But when an unknown enemy launches a nuclear attack during the opening of the new facility, he finds himself sheltering in his own creation and learns that it is one of fifty secretly constructed under the Senator’s instruction with just such an eventuality in mind.

While the inhabitants of the other forty-nine will live out their normal life-spans, Donald and the others in Silo One are to spend the next hundred years or so in cryogenic sleep, awakening for 6-months shifts to ensure that the rest of the plan is implemented.  Above all else, it is essential each silo believes itself the only one and that any knowledge of the past is suppressed, at any cost.

Over the course of several shifts during which he is faced with a series of crises Donald discovers both the true extent and ruthlessness of Thurman’s vision, and just how thoroughly his former hero has manipulated him. And still he is being used, pushed into positions of increasing power and responsibility, this time by somebody who believes he is the one man who will do not what is correct but what is right.

The novel is divided into three sections that correspond to each of Donald’s awakenings, and contains multiple narratives. ‘Present’ events are interleaved with his memories of the past, and with perspectives from characters in other silos, including a boy whose older self we have already met in Wool, and the novel ends at the point where the two novels intersect. 

Keeping track of the shifting time-lines is at times a challenge, and there are some stylistic problems with the writing, the most jarring being the tendency for characters to use “gentleman” in situations where most people would use “man”). These are minor irritations, however, and are more than compensated for by the twists and turns of the plot.

Like Wool, Shift was published as a series of shorter e-books, one for each shift, and it just as fast-paced and eventful as its predecessor. The story becomes more and more fascinating as Donald peels away successive layers of secrecy and lies, while the intervening snapshots from other silos are used effectively to control pace and tension, both of which increase as the plotlines within and between the books begin to intersect. 

The final chapter is not a resolution but a culmination; a critical threshold has been reached and the ultimate crisis is coming. Shift was even harder to put down than Wool, and I can’t wait to see where Howey takes us next.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/fast-paced-fascinating-tale-future