Well, this was one of my biggest misjudgments in a long time. I’ve been meaning to read Dust for several, several months to wrap up the Silo trilogy, the sci-fi series taking place almost entirely underground in mile-deep bunkers, but the last book, Shift, was such a lifeless 600-paged slog, that I was dragging my feet on continuing for ages. However, Dust was, ironically, a breath of fresh and invigorating air. It is the best Silo book by far, and one of the most exciting reads I’ve picked up in ages.
The first book, Wool, took place mainly from the point of view of Juliette Nichols, a leading mechanic who was trusted to be the new mayor of her silo and ended up entangled in a conspiracy that had her sent out to clean, a death sentence for dozens of people over the years who dream about a different life or dare to wreak havoc in the delicate lives of their neighbours. Except Juliette didn’t die, ended up walking past the hill that no one has made it to before, and she found out their silo is not the only one, and someone is pulling the strings.
We then find out in the second book, Shift, just who that is. A guy named Donald was a U.S. Congressman three centuries ago and was tasked with building the silos for the slimy then-president Thurman. Then a huge nuclear war with Iran (maybe they knew, except in reality, it’s America and Israel who caused it) wiped out the rest of the population, and the only reason Donald and those closest to him have survived all these years is from being cryogenically frozen, and thawed out whenever they are needed with their knowledge of how the silos all function and what life was once like.
This final book blends Juliette and Donald’s stories ensemble, with Juliette back in Silo 18 trying to dig her way through to the now-desolute Silo 17 where she met its only remaining inhabitants, Solo and a few kids, and whom she promised to return to save. Juliette also thinks that Donald, who she has been talking to over the radio, is the one to have caused all their suffering, and she’s not entirely off…but he and his sister Charlotte saw something on one of their drone’s cameras when they were exploring the outside, something that will either save the survivors or doom them to an inescapable demise.
At this point I feel like I’ve been with these characters for ages, and the concept alone is so obviously claustrophobic, so unfair, so soul-draining, that there was an excitement within me throughout this whole book simply since this is the last one. Maybe that’s an unfair compliment when comparing it to the others. Like I said, the previous book was a slog. Shift felt more like a collection of short stories rather than a clear narrative, and it was all so boring. Something I like to do after reading a book I really didn’t like was imagine, “Hey, what if I was tasked with writing this story? And I had to follow the same narrative? What would I have done to make it good?” And as I dreamed up the ways I would’ve told it, I yearned for that kind of book instead of what we got. And yet, Dust had a lot of what I was imagining. Strange, huh? It was exactly what it needed to be.
The whole book has a big “Enough of this” feel, characters tired of living in fear and suppressing their hope. A lot of this series has had them just walking around in the dark, trying to survive and outlive the dilemmas and feeling any attempts to actually fix them will lead to death. Plus there’s also the fact this book is about 100 pages shorter than the others, both of which were quite too long. We keep caught up with the characters from Shift, which are not as likeable or involving, but with Juliette back in the main driver’s seat, having Donald and Charlotte back adds to the thrills instead of taking away from them. The middle has an unexpected tragedy that hits really hard, the climax has everyone tense on all fronts, and the ending is too big to spoil.
If you want to try out the Silo books, like I did while in the middle of watching the masterful television series on Apple, I recommend reading the first one, Wool, skipping over Shift and instead read a synopsis of it somewhere, and then get yourself into Dust. One way or another, this is one of the most built-up and satisfying endings to a series I’ve read in years. And maybe it’s also the fact that Shift had a prolonged doom lathered throughout it that makes beating it in Dust all the more gratifying.
My grade: 5 stars out of 5
William J. McGinn 
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