kay, I’m letting you know that, growing up, I really liked the movie My side of the Mountain. But more on that later.

Shift is the second book of the Silo Series, set in a world where some sort of ecological/man-made disaster has swept the planet. Now people live in underground silos, 150 (or so) stories deep. Their entire existence is one of continuous uprisings (one every generation) with (usually) the revolt failing or total crazy chaos (in which either everyone dies or the silo is destroyed remotely.

Remotely? But that implies a controlling silo. Doesn’t it?

It does.

So this novel takes the world of Wool and examines it more closely, including how it got to be that way. How can you get thousands of people into a set of massive inverted skyscrapers without everyone else trying to force their way in. Well, this book explains the power struggle in Silo 1, how all this was created, the trick they used to populate it, the evil things that were done.

And while all this is going on, remember my opening line?

The other half of the book deals with Jimmy, a young lad left behind when the social order breaks down and the entire society of the silo collapses. From a scared kid huddling in a hidden room, he has to grow into a scared and quirky man (and readers of the first book can suspect who he is). We pretty much watch him at work and play, not understanding this world at all, just staying out of the way of whatever other survivors are out there. And he befriends a cat that comes from God-knows-where, which adds to the telling of ‘his side of the narrative’.  Worked for me, anyway.

And so that’s the deal, the two story-lines braiding together, past and present.

And now I need to get off my can and read Book 3, Dust.

Watch for the review here.

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