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  • Shift

  • Wool Trilogy, Book 2
  • By: Hugh Howey
  • Narrated by: Peter Brooke
  • Length: 18 hrs and 15 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (138 ratings)

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Shift

By: Hugh Howey
Narrated by: Peter Brooke
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Publisher's Summary

The much anticipated prequel to best seller Wool that takes us back to the beginnings of the silo. The full novel which brings together First, Second and Third Shift.

In a future less than fifty years away, the world is still as we know it. Time continues to tick by. The truth is that it is ticking away. A powerful few know what lies ahead. They are preparing for it. They are trying to protect us. They are setting us on a path from which we can never return. A path that will lead to destruction; a path that will take us below ground. The history of the silo is about to be written. Our future is about to begin.

©2013 Hugh Howey (P)2013 Random House AudioGo

Critic Reviews

"The next Hunger Games" ( The Sunday Times)
"An epic feat of imagination. You will live in this world." (Justin Cronin)

"Brilliantly written...Howey creates a starkly believable and terrifying apocalypse. More and more layers of the dystopian world are unveiled, enticingly paving the way for the sequel Dust..." 5 Stars, (Sunday Express)

"We have been mesmerised with Hugh Howey's silo stories since we first laid eyes on book one in the trilogy...We'd recommend reading Wool first but you'll want to have this one ready as we guarantee you'll be unable to put it down. Perfect sunshine reading, wouldn't you say?" (Grazia Daily)

"Wool started life as a skilful, bleak, short story. Its premise and the dexterity with which Howey pulled it off drew him readers from outside the genre; Shift is one for those who are already hooked" (Culture, Sunday Times)

What listeners say about Shift

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Some painful character voice choices by narrator

Not as good as the first book, mostly due to poor characters and character development, but decent story and good to have the backstory. The narrator was quite good in most respects, but really ruined much of the second section especially with a ridiculous voice used for some characters, especially Mission. I found it very hard to listen to the parts about him because of this

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Worthy Prequel to Wool

Enjoyed this very much. My only criticism was narrator’s annoying voice for the character Jimmy.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Not as good as Wool

Disappointing after I enjoyed Wool so much. Not as well written and narration (particularly character voices) was terrible. Sounded like South Park characters. Still worth persisting to see where the plot went.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Ridiculous Narration Good story

Backstory interesting but voice acting completely ruined the experience.

Character voices are childish and lack emotion. Makes motive and emotional turmoil non existent as even the most intense or sinister moment ridiculous as it is vocied like a laid back texas ranger or simpsons character.

Should narrate children books not adult content.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Prequel with very little of interest

Book one was brilliant and I was really looking forward to this prequel however all the "reveals" were dull and a lot of the suspense was lost because we knew the answers from book one. The characters weren't as interesting either.

The narrator of this book was also nowhere near as good as book 1.

I will finish the series but I honestly found this one tough to finish.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

concept of the story and still trying to work out whether the storyline why that Donald was told was the actual why of the pact

some of the characters need more detail. e.g. lots of details on Juliette but not the silo 1 key characters

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Not the second book I was expecting

I was a bit taken aback by the male, American narrator to be honest. After listening to the book, perhaps it was the point of choosing him, but I didn’t enjoy listening. That said, it was a good read but not at good as the authors first book of the series.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Dreadful narrator

This was possibly the worst narration I have ever listened to. It was painful and the voices just didn’t fit the characters. It was hard to sympathise with anyone as their voices were just too irritating.
I don’t think the book was as well written as the first, there were some very jarring lines, particularly the dialogue. However I find it difficult to say how much the truly awful voice influenced my feelings about this.
I slogged my way through it to the end, but I’m pretty sure I missed many details along the way.
Please have someone else read this book.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Dragged and dragged and dragged

This book really needs an edit and a new voice actor. I only stuck with it to get to the next book in the hopes that it gets better.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A 4 hour novella crammed into an 18 hour audiobook

I enjoyed Wool, this one not so much. The world building remains intriguing, but the character work is shallow and the storytelling is disjointed and lacking momentum. Donald’s self-pitying milquetoast routine occupies way too much of the narrative to be compelling, oscillating between pining for someone we barely meet and/or feeling guilty about residual feelings towards his ex. Female characters in general are thinly drawn* and are defined by their relationship to Donald rather than as players in their own right. For mine, Anna might have been a more interesting protagonist given her situation but unfortunately wishing aint getting.

*yet the fate of at least one of them still manages to feel unearned and cruel.

The Mission storyline adds little to what I had already gathered from book 1, feeling more of a frustrating interlude than an integral slice of lore. Shift 3 is the most directly relevant of the 3 parts, and yet it still manages to drag its story strands to excruciating length, primarily Jimmy's. There is exploring and there is wallowing and the longer it dragged on, the more it felt like the latter.

I’m usually loathe to rag on the VA’s, but this is a poor marriage of reader and material. The narration felt incongruously chipper in contrast to its misery-porn material, with baffling character voices ranging from adolescent Jimmy Stewart, Professor Frink to a 14 year old trying to impersonate his dad. He doesn’t fall into the hack-narration trap of comically raising his pitch when voicing female characters, but with the general lack of female dialogue, that’s not much to go on.

Shift sidelines the characters I was invested in and replaces them with ciphers who seemingly exist to explain the world rather than participate in it. The story might developed a stronger pulse if it ditch the secondary stories or left them to the side*, added a few more perspectives to the Silo 1 and let characters spend time with each other so we can see the relationships rather than have them described to us,

*or take a lead from the Expanse and keep them as short stories

Shift hasn’t done enough to deter me from finishing the series, but it was a momentum killer.

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