I had heard for many years about how good Wool was and how I should give it a try. I finally bought a copy and it sat unread on my shelf for another couple of years until I made it far enough into my to-read list to start it. And the praise was right, it didn't disappoint. The world was interesting, the characters were interesting, and the division of it into shorter, smaller books made it more digestible and made the viewpoint transitions flow well.
Unfortunately, the second book, Shift, really went downhill. It continued almost none of the threads from the first and much of it is an extended flashback. This really crystallized for me when I was reading Descender but if a series needs an extended flashback season/volume/book then I think there was something wrong with the world building and plot at the beginning. There's some interesting stuff in here, and some questions get answered, but it doesn't seem worth the effort to read the thing.
However, Dust, brings the series to a roaring finish and is much closer to the quality of the first book than the second. If I could go back in time but was only limited to conveying information to myself about what I thought about this book series, I'd recommend I skip the second book and just read the wikipedia summary and then go straight to book 3. (of course, I would probably ignore that advice because I'm a completionist). However, please don't let book 2 put you off, all the best parts of book 2 made it into book 3 along with the enjoyable parts of book 1.
Lastly, for a donation to charity, I got an advance reader copy of Howey's short story collection Machine Learning. This includes three short stories set in the Wool Universe and they are the reason I'm writing this post. It was difficult to figure out where they are set in the timeline and when you should read them. I recommend treating them all as one story and absolutely not reading the last one before you finish Dust.
It is particularly difficult to find if there are any other stories in the Wool universe for two reasons. The first is that some people call it the Silo Series and others call it the Wool universe/series/trilogy. The other is that Howey has opened up his world to allow people to write and publish fan fiction in it under the Kindle Worlds banner which means that if you search for short stories you end up with a lot of things that may or may not be good but are definitely not by Howey.
Anyway, I'd recommend you read them in the order of Wool, Shift, Dust, and then the three short stories last. However, the books are divided into and were originally published as novellas and so if you were truly interested in reading them in chronological order you could read in the following order (ordered by the end point of the stories):
Shift: Legacy > In the Air > In the Mountains > Shift: Order > All of Wool > Shift: Pact > All of Dust > In the Woods.
Again, I don't recommend reading it this way (though I haven't tried) but it seems like it would be more of a slog going through most of what I liked less first before getting to the parts I enjoyed. That being said, perhaps reading it in this order would make the parts I didn't enjoy more enjoyable. If anyone ever reads it in this order (especially for a first time read) feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts.
