In 'The Warehouse', Rob Hart delivers a horribly plausible picture of a near-future dystopian America and an intriguing, I-need-to-know-how-this-will-work-out thriller. What I liked most was that 'The Warehouse' doesn't fall into the simple black-and-white, good-guy bad-guy mode that so many techno-thrillers have. There are no simple answers here and no oversimplified people either. The result is an engaging, thought-provoking piece of Speculative Fiction that left me wanting to read more of Rob Hart's work.

The story takes place in an America where poverty is widespread as the effects of climate change destroy traditional ways of making a living or even living outdoors at all. America is now a nation where those who have money hunker down at home and have what they need delivered by drones owned and run by Cloud, a sort of Amazon on steroids. Those who don't have money try hard to win and keep a job at Cloud. Most of them live and work in MotherClouds, enormous warehouse compounds built in remote areas of America, well away from towns or cities.

The MotherCloud setup is more than an extrapolation of Amazon work practices. It mimics the neo-serfdom / modern slavery of some Chinese factory towns, made worse by the addition of a Corporate America 'Everything is good here' propaganda gloss

The plot explores Cloud in three ways. Firstly through posts on the public blog of Gibson Wells, the founder of Cloud, who, knowing that he is dying, wants to share the real story of how Cloud came to be, the good that it's done and the bright future that it offers America and Americans. Secondly through the eyes of Paxton, an inventor who used to run a small company that Cloud put out of business and who now needs to take the only job he can get, as a worker in a MotherCloud. Finally, we see Cloud through the eyes of Zinnia, who wasn't looking for a job because she already had one, to infiltrate Cloud and who gets herself hired to the same MotherCloud as Paxton.

Of the three voices, I found Gibson Wells' the most disturbing. The book opens with his first blog post. It only takes a few lines to establish his direct but folksy style and tell me that he's a skilled manipulator who can't be trusted. Here's how it starts.

'WELL, I'M DYING.

A lot of men make it to the end of their life and they don't know that they've reached it. Just the lights go off one day. Here I am with a deadline.

I don't have time to write a book about my life, like everyone has been telling me I should, so this will have to do. A blog seems pretty fitting, doesn't it? I haven't been sleeping much lately so this gives me something to keep myself occupied at night.

Anyway, sleep is for people who lack ambition.

At least there'll be some kind of a written record. I want you to hear it from me rather than someone looking for a buck, making educated guesses. In my line of work, I can tell you: guesses are rarely educated.

Gibson Wells is a wonderful, if frightening, invention. In him. Rob Hart has captured perfectly the tone I've heard from many CEO types, framing the narrative of their own success. It's spookily accurate and made all the more disturbing by the folksy simplicity of the language. Everything seems calm and reasonable and even benign until you consider who benefits and see the bladed steel camouflaged by a 'We're all just folks here' smile.

We get a different view of Cloud from Paxton, who is hired into the security section because he'd worked for years as a Prison Guard while getting the money together to start his business. Through him we get a behind-the-scenes view of how order is kept at Cloud. We also get to experience what it's like, to step out of poverty and hopelessness in a job that gives him, not just a place to live and food in his belly, but the dignity of being a valued part of something bigger than himself, even if that thing was responsible for destroying the company he'd built.

Zinnia gives us the worker drone view, even if she's actually a hornet in the hive. She is assigned to the warehouse floor, racing against the clock to pick items from the shelves and take them to the right conveyor belt. Through her work, we see how the workers are surveilled, measured and pushed to exhausting levels of performance every day. We also get to see Cloud through the eyes of someone who doesn't want to be there, who knows that Cloud has something to hide.

I became completely immersed in Cloud. Most of me hated the idea of it but part of me had to admit that it was a better option for its workers than being out in the punishing heat, homeless and hungry. I wanted to say that those shouldn't be the only two options but I found myself wondering what I'd do if they were.

'The Warehouse' works very well as a thriller. You can see the collision between Gibson Wells, Paxton and Zinnia coming but you are kept guessing about how and when and what it will mean. There are some good surprises along the way and the ending was as textured and thought-provoking as the rest of the story.

I strongly recommend the audiobook version of 'The Warehouse'. The narration is unusual but effective: Emily Woo Zeller is the main narrator but with the voice of Paxton cut in during dialogue and with a wonderfully folksy narrator reading Gibson Wells' blog. ( )

A fine, subtle, almost shy introduction to a new series set in a cut-off region (it’s clear the forebears of this society suffered some catastrophe) where one nip from something furry in the wild can land you in a pile of trouble. The pleasures of this story are many and various: we get lots of insight into an appealing range of settings and characters (like troubled, resourceful and noble Jonathan, or ingenue-but-learning queen Eleanor) and the action moves along engagingly, yet the world they live in remains a mystery. Why and how do the beasts confer strange powers (held to be a curse) and how did this society contrive to be so isolated? There are hints we’ll find out more in time. Quiet in tone as the title suggests, this thoughtful glimpse into a different, if very human, world will have you longing to know more. ( )