Wool & Shift by Hugh Howey

~ Veselin ~ 8 Comments

The two big books from this small pile are Wool and Shift. I still don’t have the final, third book about The Silo.

It looks like I’m altering between post-apocalyptic books and fantasies about necromancers. Could it be me or just that writers are currently only succeeding if they imagine a future with simplicity and grave destruction? In the Silo trilogy, humans have obtained the technology to end the world and it was race for who does it first. When rather than if. The second part gives details about the technologies used to destroy the world, and they’re already a bit off from the modern trends.

The main protagonist is Juliette, a 34-year-old master mechanic with a free spirit. Most of book 1 is dedicated to her and it is fantastic – she solves one problem after another. However, book 2 chooses another path. It is about a bunch of secondary characters from book 1 and explains what happened in the past. Although this might be important to completely understand the story, some of the story lines are not pleasant.

Overall, the first part was a solid 5*/5 for me, and the second was a mixed bag of great and not so great stories for an average of 4*/5. Juliette is featured, which is probably the best part of the book.

Protest

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

Bulgaria got invited to join the Euro today. Bulgarians are not united on the subject if they want the Euro and the anti-EU political parties are capitalizing that. I witnessed their protest today.

The gathering was lead by a young lad who yelled with full force, like he’s dictating the attack in the Braveheart movie. The hot sun made the movement sluggish.

Bath

~ Veselin ~ 15 Comments

During my childhood, houses didn’t have bathrooms, hot water, or sometimes any water. So we showered at public bath houses. Then, the capitalism came, brought hot water and took away the public bath houses one by one, replaced them with banks, hotels, and museums. The one we used the most is in the process of renovation right now to become a medical center.

Except some baths here and there that survived. According to the Internet, despite the abysmal conditions, the one below still works, and is kept like that due to a series of absurds.

Fear

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What fears have you overcome and how?
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I frequently write about fear. Some of my recent posts are:

I do it because fear is like a seed that grows inside and drains your soul. Overcoming it is not a one-time act, it’s a process, a direction in life. There’s no moment in which it doesn’t try to find a crack and root itself in. There’s always something and you need to remind yourself why we should not be afraid of things we can’t control.