DUST by Hugh Howey is the third and final book in the WOOL series. It returns to the roots of the first book and gives us that final and satisfying conclusion we were all waiting for.

Oh wait. Did I say satisfying? I meant disappointing, uninteresting, and anti-climactic. Quite frankly, DUST doesn’t live up to the amazing foundation that the 1st book built.

Where to start? Well, first as a disclaimer. I just want to say that despite the short comings of books two and three, I still enjoyed what Hugh Howey created as an indie author. WOOL is an incredible and imaginative book and is definitely one of my favorites. To say that the expectations were high for books two and three would be a massive understatement.

So should you read book three? In my honest opinion, if you only read WOOL then I suggest you ONLY read WOOL. Each book progressively dismantles the mystery of the silos with answers that leave you saying, “oh . . .” rather than “OH!”

Which is a shame because the beginning of DUST had wonderful promise. We’re reunited with Juliette, Lukas, and all the wonderful characters of the first book. Unfortunately, like toilet paper stuck to your shoe, we’re also reunited with Donald, Thurman, and Charlotte, the bland and boring characters of the second book.

Well, Charlotte isn’t boring but she’s a little redundant. More on that later.

DUST had a great start. Juliette has discovered a digger which can claw through the earth and create a tunnel to Silo 17 where she had to leave behind her friends Solo and the kids. We’re treated to life in the Silos again, relationships are flourishing, and you want to root for the characters. At least, I did until I hit the middle of the book.

Where DUST started to crumble was when Juliette and company break through into Silo 17 and bring Solo and the kids over. Suddenly, the entire mythology that Howey had built for the silos had changed drastically. One example of this is the appearance of a market bazaar in Silo 18 that’s full of smoke, performers, and is a place for a black market of some sort. At no point did this market exist in the first book and the things that happen inside of it are completely out of character with the atmosphere that was established in the first book.

It’s like watching a baby with dark skin, brown eyes and brown hair suddenly have red hair, blue eyes and fair skin when they get older. There’s also a church that appears from out of nowhere and I’m still confused as to why it was even included. Howey made it seem like this church was critical to life in the Silo. Well if that’s the case, why wasn’t it mentioned in the first two books?

Things get even more bizarre when a minor character from Silo 17 dies. It seems Howey wanted this to be an important moment but the character’s themselves didn’t really care and neither did I as a reader. Then a seven year old girl from Silo 17 ends up in the bazaar and somehow gets led off to the church and is forced into a marriage contract with a crazy church person.

What the hell is this sh**? None of these themes ever came up in the previous books and it is horrifically out of place. What does a man wanting to get hitched to a seven year old girl have to do with escaping a silo in the hopes of finding a poison-free world?

It is because of these drastic changes to the dwellers of the Silo that I started to develop a hatred for these people. Why would I want these dirtbags to survive when they’re getting people killed, forcing children into marriage, and are squabbling with each other for resources? It is implied that these people have spent hundreds of years living together, working together, sharing with one another.

Why then, when they migrated to Silo 17 did they suddenly become bickering jerks? I understood that the resources were limited but generally these people worked together and co-operated with one another. I could understand Howey wanting to make things more believable by having them fight each other for resources but he failed to show the qualities that made these people worth saving.

If that wasn’t bad enough, we’re also forced to read through the boring chapters that involve Donald and Charlotte. Donald is just as boring and bland as he was in SHIFT and Charlotte is a palette swap of Juliette. Essentially, their goal in Silo 1 is to finally free the people of the silos and blow up Silo 1. Unfortunately, Thurman is in the way and they’ll need to overcome him in order to set off the bomb.

Everything involving Thurman and this plot to blow up the bomb in Silo 1 is extremely anti-climactic. There’s no big finale, no reaction from Thurman, no real emotional or gripping moments to suck you in. It ends in a poof when it should have been a bang.

Once Juliette and company escape from the Silo and venture out into the toxic wasteland; you’re expected to feel relief and happiness that these characters are finally free of their sheltered prison. Instead I was left wondering how any of this was supposed to make sense.

The world was supposedly ended by weapons of mass destruction. Yet there’s green forests, grass, blue skies, beautiful weather. This implies that the WMD’s did not destroy everything but if that was the case, where the hell is everyone else?

The world ending nanomachines ended up just hovering around the entrances of the silo and nothing else. So… does that mean the nanos didn’t really attack the world? Is this an M. Night Shyamalan thing where The Village turned out to be some commune in a state park?

I didn’t care anymore. The people I had wanted saved from the first book were now expendable in my eyes. Reading to the end of this book became a chore and left me wondering why I bothered to read these other two books. The first book was perfection, the second and third book couldn’t sustain the mythology.

It didn’t make any damn sense. You cannot base your books on the fact that the world has ended and then suddenly reveal that actually, the world is perfectly fine. Why hasn’t anyone else searched for them? Why was a senator the one who survived and not the President of the United States? If the other countries are destroyed why, how?

When a reader is asking this many questions about your book, it’s not because it’s a fun mystery to keep thinking about. It’s because your narrative has seriously failed on multiple levels to make sense. These are plot holes that are so wide that an entire universe can fall into it and it did. WOOL’s universe to be precise.

If you’ve only read the first book then I envy you. I had originally wanted to avoid the other books in this series because I was satisfied with how the first book ended. Unfortunately, it was curiosity that got me to read the other two books and man do I regret that decision. Do yourself a favor and skip SHIFT and DUST.

You will find the answers to your questions and leave yourself feeling underwhelmed when the big reveal is nothing but a tiny sputter.