If there is a current author who gives a good account of the dystopian that is Hugh howey. Because we also enjoy authors with their post-apocalyptic-inspired approaches that end in fascinating fantasy epics. Cases like George RR Martin o Patrick Rothfuss.
But beyond a Stephen King, who has also assaulted this aspect of the uchronic towards the catastrophe of civilization in several novels, only Howey turns the fatalism of the future into a scenario maintained in his sagas. And that he already has a few under his belt ...
To this author's merit, it all started with desktop publishing, that alternative to traditional publishing houses that sometimes makes for great discoveries. Process towards success that ends up contrasting the undeniable quality of the work of any author.
To tell the truth, pending further dissemination of the already extensive bibliography of this author, we will stick with his most widespread saga, a Chronicles of the Shiloh series that you can find in a single volume HERE.
Hugh Howey's Top 3 Recommended Novels
Mirage
Typically, we start with an uninhabitable planet Earth due to the disastrous intervention of man. So, to focus minimally, it is essential to mark this novel in the first place, because of the quality that it treasures and because it seems inappropriate to skip the chronology in this first place on the podium.
The underground silo appears with its darkness as a gloomy metaphor of the apocalyptic destruction that swept everything up there. The imperative norms towards survival awaken sensations of the Nazi lebensraum, that vital space that augurs violence if necessary against everything that risks waiting for the recovery of the world on the surface. But Earth's time is what it is. And it will surely exceed the lives of many of those down there, if not all.
Until Sheriff Holston decides that perhaps it is not worth waiting any longer to verify it and goes outside on a suicide mission that, in addition, will leave everyone else freed from norms and faced with new unimagined dangers in which a character, Juliette , it gets under our skin to experience it all with great intensity.
Bleakness
The prequel in which he realizes all those details that the author omits with the intention of raising doubts about how it has been possible to get to that point where Mirage starts.
We go back to the moment before the end with the feeling that global human consciousness, incapable of assuming the disaster that no longer has any qualms, continues to act in that day-to-day ever closer to disaster. Only some humans contemplate a possible escape route. They are the chosen ones. Despite the fact that living underground, in the silo may not sound like the best option ... But someone must take care of leaving testimony, of transferring everything that was done wrong and harboring in first person the few salvageable things of human civilization.
Life will then be a mission. And the darkness that awaits them will spread like a terrifying future. The construction of those silos that penetrate up to 150 plants on Earth extends the novel further. But the descriptive component makes the plot even more interesting.
vestiges
Perhaps a novel to complete that perfect circle that is every trilogy. And with the same voluminous presence around that average of 500 pages of the rest of the saga.
An outcome perhaps not entirely necessary but also enjoyable for those who got hooked on that life underground. To a large extent, the plot is saved by Juliette's recovered role in her lighthouse side amid a darkness capable of blending in with the hearts of the rest of the inhabitants of the silo. Without offering an apotheosis ending, it does achieve that closing of the adventure that fills expectations in its proper measure.
The exterior, with its reluctance and vigilance that reaches the dreams of the inhabitants of the silos, continues to be that hidden truth that may soon become a promise of recovery. But you can't get obsessed with the idea if you don't want to end up losing your mind.
