Review: Wool by Hugh Howey

Wool Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey

550 pages

Broad Reach Publishing

Nook Edition April 6, 2012

From the book description:

Thousands of them have lived underground. They've lived there so long, there are only legends about people living anywhere else. Such a life requires rules. Strict rules. There are things that must not be discussed. Like going outside. Never mention you might like going outside.

Or you'll get what you wish for.

Review:

Brilliant!

Let me start by saying although I love science fiction, I’m not a fan of dystopian stories. So when such a novel overcomes my innate objections to this sub-genre, it has to have great characters, narrative, detail that makes it real, and a satisfying denouement. Wool hits all the points.

Howey’s character development is most impressive. I’m going to get a tad technical here, so please bear with me. Wool was written in third person limited, which means the only character whose head the reader should be able to see into is the point of view (POV) character for that scene or chapter. Here’s an example where Howey added flesh to another character through the eyes of the POV character:

Jahns glanced over and saw that her deputy's gaze had crept toward that dark crook in the hill. He covered his mouth with a fist of sharp knuckles and faked a cough.

    Most of all, it was the quality of the writing that allowed me to suspend my disbelief and ignore the some of my objections to the plausibility of the silo “world”—essentially an underground biosphere. I still wonder why Howey didn’t use geothermal energy and heating, the best source of power readily available to this underground environment that he created. One thing that made me buy into the author’s vision was his attention to detail while leaving enough for the reader to imagine and play with. I felt the reader needed this insight into how the silo could provide a livable environment that would support a viable population for hundreds of years.

    Even though most people don’t read such things as acknowledgments, I would have liked one, and was disappointed that it was missing from my edition. Perhaps there’s one in the print edition.

    This is one book that I will read more than once.

Review: The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of his DNA

The Last Days of Richard III and the fate of his DNA: the book that inspired the dig [Kindle

Edition]

by John Ashdown-Hill

192 pages

The History Press, January 31, 2013

A must read for Ricardians

In August of 2012 a team of archaeologists from the University of Leicester went digging in a social services parking lot with the idea of hopefully finding evidence of the Grey Friars Friary. Not only did they locate the friary, they found Richard III’s remains.

In 2003, before the dig was ever considered, John Ashdown-Hill started his investigation of finding a living descendent from the female line of Richard’s mother, Cecily Neville. The female line of descent is necessary because children inherit an exact copy of their mother’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), but only the female passes this copy to the next generation. The author describes the process of finding a living descendent of one of Richard’s sisters and of the mtDNA analysis. The mtDNA was now available for comparison to the remains’ mtDNA. As exciting as this information is (for me), this is the present day science. This book is so much more.

Ashdown-Hill paints a fresh picture of a man, who despite terrible personal tragedies—his only legitimate son had died suddenly in April of 1484 and less than a year later, his wife died after a long illness (probably tuberculosis)—looking forward to remarrying and producing an heir and to a long reign as England’s king. Although there can be no doubt that Richard genuinely grieved for his son and wife, he nevertheless was planning for the future. This refreshing image is different from what most historians and novelists have portrayed.

The reader also gets a sense of what daily life was like for Richard, what some of his duties were, and how he would execute them.

One Ricardian myth the author dispels, is the one that purports Henry Tudor antedated his reign to August 21, 1485 (the battle where Henry defeated Richard was fought August 22). Ashdown-Hill could not find any extant contemporary evidence to suggest Henry’s reign was backdated by one day. The suspicion is the myth began ca 1647 from an error translating (from Latin to English) Richard III’s Epitaph (Buck’s translation with the dating errors are presented in Appendix 6).*

I found this book to be rich in detail and informative about Richard III’s last 150 or so days and about the role of DNA in confirming the remains. Not only is “Last Days” a significant historical reference, I found it a delight to read. John Ashdown-Hill achieved what is rarely seen in such a scholarly work—a reference that can be read from beginning to end without compromising the facts. I can’t recommend this book enough.

*Note: Several on Facebook who responded to this post pointed out that the antedating is part of the Parliamentary Rolls from Henry VII’s first parliament in 1485. Per Chapter 9, footnote 10:

This interpretation is based on Crowland, pp. 194– 95. However, the relevant passage does not, in fact, say that Henry antedated his accession, and there is no evidence to support such a claim in the surviving acts of attainder against Richard III’s supporters.

[Ashdown-Hill, John (2013-01-31). The Last Days of Richard III and the fate of his DNA: The Book that Inspired the Dig (Kindle Locations 3964-3966). The History Press. Kindle Edition.]

Pronay, N. & Cox, J., The Crowland Chronicle Continuations 1459– 1486 (London, 1986).

My search of the digital edition of Parliamentary Rolls for Henry VII’s first Parliament (November 1485), shows that Henry VII antedated his reign by a day. I emailed this information to John Ashdown-Hill and he is investigating this new (to him) evidence with the intent to amend the edition to reflect this information.