Silo Book Series Explained: Are There Only 3 Books Or More? Here's How to Read Them

Apple TV+ intrigued many viewers when it released a teaser for Silo this spring. With the charismatic Rebecca Ferguson in the lead, the show looked incredibly promising. Its bleak premise captivated many people who rushed to watch the series when it debuted in May. Needless to say, it quickly won over audiences worldwide.

Centred on the survivors of a long-forgotten cataclysmic event, doomed to spend their entire lives in an underground bunker, Silo is based on the series of novels by Hugh Howey. These are commonly referred to as the Wool Saga after the name of the first novel in the series. The subsequent books have different titles. So, just how many books are there in total?

Here's our guide to Hugh Howey's Wool book series.

Canonically, the saga is divided into three major parts – Wool, Shift, and Dust. The first two are further segmented into smaller stories. The Wool cycle comprises five volumes:

• Wool,

• Wool: Proper Gauge,

• Wool: Casting Off,

• Wool: The Unravelling,

• Wool: The Stranded.

However, you can legitimately consider them as book parts. For instance, Silo is currently on parts three through four.

The Shift branch consists of three stories:

• First Shift – Legacy,

• Second Shift – Order,

• Third Shift – Pact.

The Shift series is a prequel to Wool and explores the events that occurred before the first book. If you're a beginner to Hugh Howey's Wool saga, you can start with either Wool or Shift. The former introduces all the key characters and their story arcs and gives you an overall understanding of the plot. The latter offers more exposition of the main idea of the series and can serve as a solid intro to the post-apocalyptic world.

Dust is a standalone novel. It's big and has no subdivisions. In 2021, Hugh Howey teased a new chapter in the Wool saga, suggesting we might expect a new book in the near future.

Furthermore, the author has penned a trilogy of short stories for the so-called Apocalypse Triptych, an anthology of dystopian post-apocalyptic stories written by various authors. Hugh Howey’s contributions include In the Air(included in The End is Nigh), In the Mountains(included in The End is Now) and In the Woods(included in The End Has Come). These are all set in the Wool universe too.

While you're deciding which book to start with, don't forget that the next episode of Silo comes out on Apple TV+ on 23 June.