Not especially long ago, I read Wool, in which Juliette Nichols finds, and then exceeds, her limits[1]. The second book of the trilogy, Shift, goes back to the very beginning to provide several hundred years’ worth of context about Juliette’s silo and everything that surrounds it.

It’s hard to say anything more, due to massive spoilers. But I can think of a few things. First, the elephant in the room. I am on record for believing that the story I watched on TV and [mostly believing, at least] that I read in that first book did not require a specific apocalyptic backstory. It was enough to know that an apocalypse had occurred, and all that was necessary was to look forward. Having read the second book, with precisely the apocalyptic backstory under discussion… I 95% stand by my original assessment. I firmly believe a good, compelling story could have been told with nothing more than a handwaved “and then we nuked each other”, for example.

However, I would be remiss if I did not say that the apocalyptic backstory that has been provided is pretty damn compelling itself. Yes, there’s a little too much love triangle subplot that I’m not wholly sure added anything emotionally, and could structurally have been solved via different means, but that’s not really the point. The point is, necessary or not, the story of how Juliette found herself, wool in pocket, at the precipice of a much wider world than she could have imagined and yet so much narrower than the reader might have? It’s a good story, and I’m glad to know it.

[1] In most of the potential ways that could be taken.