2.5

Shift is presumably a bridge book for the Wool series, and it belongs to that intensely unsatisfying genre known as the combo prequel and parallel novel. Shift shifts perspectives between the time before the Silo was built, and then a variety of times in the history of the Silo, before eventually catching up with Wool.

Howey’s prose is visibly less assured, especially whenever it comes to the times dealing with the Donald character’s feelings for his wife and his college girlfriend. It’s not even forced romance so much as it is insane manipulation in a story already dripping in it, with a milquetoast character who goes along to get along (It's also impossible to ignore that the villain of the piece is a Democrat. Scary!) Everything that happens in the story outside of Silos 17 & 18 is so much table setting and a world much less clearly defined than the one that we discovered in Wool- and the story of an earlier time in Silo 18 is resolutely uninteresting.

Shift has some deadly sophomore missteps, but its history of Solo is its saving grace - enough to carry you back across enemy lines to visit Juliette in Dust.