A Book A Week

"Remember, freedom is yours until you give it up"

If ever there was a book that perfectly captured the predicaments of our modern times, it would be The Warehouse by Rob Hart. We face a time of massive technological advancement, political divisiveness, and the ever-mounting threat of a global climate crisis. With the reality of huge economic and social challenges looming over us, it seems as if we have turned inward to the technology that has become an essential piece of our day to day lives. In The Warehouse, Rob Hart imagines a not-too-distant future in which the above-mentioned instances have come to fruition.

A group of people is on a bus headed to one of the massive campuses that house Cloud. Cloud is the giant corporate conglomerate that has innovated its way to becoming the single largest means of commerce in the world. Think Amazon but on a much larger scale. At this point in history, Cloud is the singular provider of all consumer goods and most of the world's employment. Drones fill the sky delivering everything from bandaids to groceries. Each cloud campus has become a city of its own, housing all of the company's employees. If you work at could, you work, eat, and sleep on campus. Each person on this bus hopes to become part of Cloud's extensive ecosystem.

Two of the hopeful new recruits are Zennia and Patton. Patton has reluctantly decided to apply for a job with Cloud after his own small business was overtaken by the company. If you can't beat them, you might as well join them. Patton hopes to earn enough working for the company to eventually file for a new patent and become his own boss again. With the all-encompassing nature of Cloud, this will be extremely difficult to achieve. Zennia is much more reserved than Patton. She reluctantly reveals that she was a teacher before packing up her life to pursue a career at Cloud. Little does Patton know that Zennia is on a much more nefarious mission, the kind that could get them both killed.

When the publisher offered me a copy of The Warehouse to review, I was immediately drawn by the premise. Echoes of Eggers's The Circle and Orwell's 1984 ring through Hart's book. Hart roots his speculative fiction into a thriller that gives the narrative a momentum that helped to keep me engaged in the world he was building. Alternating perspectives between the two main characters give the reader insights into their motivations and makes the back and forth between the two all the more riveting. Interspersed between the main chapters are journal entries of Cloud's founder and CEO. With these, Hart illustrates the precarious balance between the well-intentions of large companies and the darker reality of what actually happens within them. The Warehouse is one of the most compelling books that I've read this year, a cautionary tale for our times that is an essential read for everyone.

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
(2019, 30)