In a word: Fantastic. Believable. Frightening. Terrifying. Disgusting. Fantastic. (Yes, twice)

It’s a story about our world just a little ways down the road. We’re not there yet, but the way we’re all going, it’s a very possible endgame.

This particular future focuses on a company similar to Amazon called Cloud. We love our convenience, even if other people or the planet have to suffer for it. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to be self-righteous. I’m guilty. I have a Prime membership. I want my stuff approximately… NOW. While it’s not really ever preached about or harped on, this societal mentality is present throughout the entire narrative.

This book is much more than an interesting premise, though. There’s also a story about a man struggling over working for the very company that put him out of business, a woman who’s actually there as a corporate spy, and their subsequent meeting which turns into a relationship of convenience? Lies? Genuine feelings? Trick is, you don’t really know which ones are real and which are just BS. Even the characters we’re riding around with don’t seem to know completely.

Then there’s Gibson, the CEO of Cloud. We’re treated to a running series of blog entries from the entrepreneur as he gives us some history on himself and this massive mega-company he’s built. That probably sounds dry, but I have to be honest, they might be my favourite parts. Maybe it was satisfying the part of me that enjoys biographies, or maybe it felt like a beginners course in business and economics, but each time I turned the page to find a “blog post”, I got pretty excited.

In a First Impression Friday post, I predicted 4.5 stars and I’m happy to report I was wrong. This is a 5-star read all the way. I can’t think of a single thing to complain about. Not even a nitpick. I enjoyed this from the first page to the last.

Cloud is not just a place to work, but a place to live with a ranking and rating system to keep you striving to always be your best! We follow the creator of Cloud on his last tour, Paxton who thinks this is best opportunity though he’s not happy Cloud has essentially been a problem in his life and Zinnia who is undercover..but for what purpose?

This takes a harsh look at where our civilization is going and how some things unfortunately never change despite the lessons we should have already learned. Corporate America. The want and need of those high ratings because we are now virtually trained to react to these. It's like a mix of Facebook on crack salted with an itsy bitsy bit of Black Mirror. Not gonna lie, if the world went to (further) shit and I was afforded and opportunity to work in a place like this, I would be tempted. Just remember, everything comes at a price.

What an unexpected surprise! It’s written in 11 sections with chapters written in the voice of the three main characters and various chapters in the form of a message. I will say I glazed over sometimes during the owner’s chapters. I was way more intrigued with Paxton and Zinnia. Around the last couple chapters I had that “I KNEW IT!” moment, but I didn’t really know it y’all. 🤦🏻‍♀️. It’s in these last chapters that the book really captured me and I turned the last page seriously saying out loud, “Well now THAT was so good!” There’s not crazy twist but there are some verrrry interesting surprises. 🍔 And while I thought some sections dragged a tiny bit, once I finished I appreciated all the depth in the characters. Love it when a book surprises me in the unexpected ways.

Anybody wanna grab a Cloudburger? 😏

You load sixteen drones, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt…

It’s the near future, and the giant company Cloud dominates the economy with its massive warehouses that are essentially cities where the employees live and work. However, the CEO of Cloud, Gibson Wells, has just announced that he’s dying of cancer so there’s change on the horizon as a couple of new employees meet during the hiring process. Paxton’s dream of running his own business was destroyed by Cloud, but now he needs a job so he finds himself on a security team. Zinnia acts like just another person looking for work, but in reality she’s been paid by a mysterious client to infiltrate Cloud and uncover some of its secrets.

Unfortunately, it’s hard for Zinnia to find holes in Cloud’s security, and even harder when she is worn out from long shifts spent running to fill orders. A relationship with Paxton might be her best way to complete her mission, but can she use him like that if she actually likes the guy?

On the surface this seems like your standard dystopian tale with some idealistic folks trying to take down an evil corporation, but this book is deeper and more subtle than that. For starters, the characters aren’t stereotypes. You might expect Paxton to be bitter and angry about his company being destroyed by Cloud and having to go to work for them, but he’s actually a guy who still believes that he can achieve his dreams by good ideas and hard work. Zinnia isn’t a radical trying to change the world either. She’s a mercenary doing a job for money, and while she has no love for Cloud she’s not looking to take it down either.

We also hear from Gibson Wells in the form of messages he’s releasing as he does a final farewell tour of the company he built, and that includes some of his history. At first his folksy tale of how he started Cloud with little more than an idea and some furniture scavenged from a closed school gives us the impression that this is the American dream taken to its fullest potential. Especially when Wells lays out that part of his goal for creating the Cloud facilities was to provide good jobs while helping to stave the increasing ravages of climate change by making the greenest facilities possible. It all sounds very reasonable, maybe even honorable. Yet as we learn more and more about how Cloud actually works Wells’ defense of his business tactics start to ring increasingly hollow.

For example, all the Cloud employees are on a rating system where their performance is constantly evaluated and a star value assigned which Wells explains came from his old grade school days when he always tried to get all the points possible on his assignments. That sounds good, but when average performance might get you fired then it’s a constant battle to be great, even perfect. Which then means that the standards shift to a point where people literally have to run themselves ragged to meet the minimum performance level.

Another thing the book does an excellent job at is showing just how falling into a routine might be the most dangerous and depressing aspect of all. There are several points where both Paxton and Zinnia get into the rut of just doing their job, returning to their small apartments, watching TV, falling asleep, and then doing it again. This, more than anything, might be the thing that lets Cloud flourish. If your employees have to expend so much physical and mental energy to get through an average workday that they just want to collapse into a stupor every night then they’re never going to have the time or gumption to try and shake things up in any way.

So this is a well written book with a timely message that I thought it was excellent. It also depressed the hell out of me because I read it on device I got from the company that Cloud is obviously based on. Now I’m posting a review on a website owned by that same corporation. Even though I don’t directly work for that company it’s changed my life in many ways, and I went along with it because it was cheap and convenient without wondering too much where it all ends. Oops.

Even worse is that after reading this now, at a time when billionaires make the rules and the bottom line is used to justify everything they do, I don’t see a way that it gets better without humanity going all the way down Fury Road and just starting over.

But hey, it’s still a good book so go ahead and read it. Just maybe try to find a copy in an independent bookstore.

The Warehouse is so close to nonfiction that it’s more terrifying than any phantom or zombie or fantasy creature could ever be. While the plot pulls from standard thriller conventions, the foundational problems revealed herein are alarming. The most horrific notion is that we are already so far down the path that changing course may be impossible. We’re already living in the warehouse and show no inclination to alter our situation. After all, we can tap a button and consume just about anything we could ever want. What could be bad about that?

AH—MA—ZING!!!!

Couldn’t put this one down, and when I wasn’t turning the pages, it was in my head. So relevant and thought provoking. This could easily be the not so distant future...

Just read that Ron Howard already optioned this for the big screen-woohoo!

ARC provided by NetGalley

Summary: In the near future, global warming has turned much of the country into permanent desert conditions. Small towns are nearly abandoned and cities are hot and overcrowded. After the Black Friday Massacre, when thousands of people were shot while doing their holiday shopping, people are afraid to leave their homes for even routine errands. Most brick and mortar stores have gone out of business except for the very largest ones and a few determined mom-and-pop stores.

One man, Gibson Wells, is behind the solution. He created mega centers where people live and work. Deliveries to homes outside of Cloud are made with a well-designed drone system. When people work for MotherCloud aka Cloud, they have everything they need right on the climate controlled property, which is described as much like an oversized airport terminal.

As the story begins, Gibson Wells is dying from cancer. He is taking his last year to visit his MotherCloud centers and greet workers personally. He has yet to choose his successor.

At one of the centers, two new employees have different agendas. Paxton has an axe to grind with Gibson Wells. Paxton invented a device that cooked a perfect hard-boiled egg. Cloud purchased the product and then undercut the prices time after time, putting Paxton out of business. He wants to meet Gibson Wells and give him a piece of his mind. Zinnia is a corporate spy, sent to discover weaknesses and deceit in Cloud’s power systems.

Paxton and Zinna find themselves unexpectedly sucked into the Cloud mentality. It seems to not be quite as bad as they thought. But slowly, they discover things that put their very lives in danger.

Comments: This is a whiz-bang, first-rate page turner! I romped through it in a single day. The author has created a very believable world, in which things that actually exist today are just taken to the next horrific step. The characters are all very relatable and the alternating chapters in their voices gives the reader a well-rounded perspective.

A bit of an amusing personal aside on current delivery systems, I’m currently waiting for a package delivery. The package was apparently farmed out to an individual who does deliveries after work. The building I’m living in locks the doors at 5 pm. This package is going round and round trying to get here. I’ve tried to resolve this problem, but haven’t been able to yet. It definitely would be nice if a drone could drop it on my balcony!

Very highly recommended for readers of General Fiction, Science Fiction, Apocolyptic and Dystopian Fiction, and Contemporary Fiction. It would also make a great Beach or Travel read and I’d love to see it hit the best-seller lists.

Director Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment has already opted to adapt The Warehouse into a movie. I don’t watch many movies, but I’m already looking forward to this one!

Big Brother is always watching you. Cloud does it by way of the watches. You are worked to the bone and if you step out of line, you are ejected from Cloud with no hope for the future. Gibson is reminiscent of Trump, arrogantly defending his decisions regardless of who it hurts. Not only has he driven every competitor out of business, but he also controls the government. The sky becomes black with drones the closer you get to any Cloud city. Gibson is out of touch with the reality of how his wonderfully innovative ideas affect the everyday person. The future hasn’t gotten rid of racism, sexism, and ageism. Zinnia is almost raped her first week while trying to take a shower.

Paxton is determined to be there for a few months so he can get back on his feet. He has this wild hope of meeting Gibson, shaking his hand and telling him all the ways he ruined his life. But he is quickly seduced by the Cloud life. He falls for Zinnia and he begins to think that it might be a nice life after all, to have Cloud looking after all of his needs. There is an exciting suspenseful storyline for each of the three characters and I was quickly caught up in the story.

As I said, with any good dystopian novel there are so many similarities to what is going on in our world today and the choices that we are making that you can visualize how easy it would be to end up with that for our future. I loved this story so much and found that it moved at a face pace, I felt for all the characters and was caught up in this world. It reads more like a mystery for those who aren’t keen on science fiction. It’s smart, juicy and a great book club book because it is rich with things to discuss. This is one of my favorite novels this year and definitely on my must-read list.

A quick read about corporate life in American gone ballistic, as an Amazon-ified company takes over a dystopian future and provides a Big Brother-ish work-life home for its desperate employees.

Books like The Warehouse make me slightly uncomfortable and this book took me about half way through to really start to like it.

"The Cloud," is your home, your job, your gym, your everything. Sounds great doesn't it? Employees have more time to spend with their family when they would normally be commuting. But what happens when "The Cloud" has some shady things going on behind the scenes. Zinnia is here to find out, hired to crack whatever is going on here.

Paxton however already hates this place, the place that stopped his small business from running. He meets Zinnia the first day and hopes to make a friendship out of it. Though when he is given the one job he did not want he doesn't know if he can stick it out any longer. Then he is given an assignment: find the suppliers to the drug that is taking over the place.

Will Zinnia be able to use Paxton's job to help her achieve her goal or will she end up befriending this nerdy guy?

Thank you to NetGalley, Crown Publishing and author Rob Hart for this ARC!

A thinly, really thinly, veiled stab at Amazon is located in The Warehouse.

The Black Friday Massacres drive people to shop increasingly online. The Cloud (ahem, Amazon) picks up the slack and becomes the world’s biggest employer. It opens modern factory towns, called MotherClouds, worldwide where workers use their money to pay for rent and food.

In the distribution centers, drones make deliveries easy. However, automated watches and shelves make the pickers’ jobs untenable and injuries common. Enter industrial spy, Zinnia, who is trying to determine if the Cloud is faking its “fully green” environmental policy to grab valuable government incentives.

I have a nephew and a niece who used to work as pickers at Amazon. They had talked about the inability to reach the bathrooms during breaks and the hectic work schedule required to avoid getting fired (though both eventually were let go). In addition, my job went on a tour of the Amazon warehouse in town. I’m part of the County’s Purchasing Department but it appears anyone can request a tour. I have seen all of the moving shelves (currently just on wheels—not automated bugs like in the book but I’m sure someone is testing the bugs at some other Amazon warehouse). I have seen the frantic pace of the pickers and boxers.

Maybe it is because I knew too much about Amazon, but I didn’t like The Warehouse. There wasn’t much new to me and I think the author could have pushed it to a more absurd level. This book felt like it was projecting only about a year into the real Amazon’s future. I had some high hopes but this was a miss for me. However, I am still giving it 3 stars because the writing was good and the characters seemed genuine.

Thanks to Crown Publishing and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

In the future, Cloud is the biggest tech company around. No one has to leave their house ever again to get quite literally anything and everything they need, a choice most people take after the cryptically referred to "Black Friday Massacres".

Outside Cloud's facilities, the world isn't doing so well. Inside Cloud's facilities, people like Paxton and Zinnia find jobs, air conditioning, beds, and clean water- a situation most people would give anything for. But Paxton and Zinnia had different intentions when they arrived, intentions that may change as they take in the truth of the world they are now a part of.

This is a chillingly contemporary read. It feels like Hart's prophecy of the future. There are so many little details that just raised the goosebumps on my arms.

The characters are written well, and I really liked how they developed throughout the story, sometimes taking a far left turn from where I thought they were going. There are a lot of twists that really surprised me.

I wish the twists had been spread out a little bit more. The ending felt a little rushed because so much was going on at one time.

Hart has created a terrifyingly timely read. At times it felt like reading a really subtle horror story. I can absolutely see this book becoming a popular one.

The Warehouse is a thought provoking dystopian type thriller set in what one could imagine a near future. A parody of a well known online retailer this book features The Cloud as an online one stop retail shop where employees actually live where they work. Employees receive star ratings for their performance - I suppose that's like a product review. I don't really find this a thriller in the sense of the thrillers like I normally read - maybe more of a technothriller. It's not particularly fast moving book - its written at just a steady pace and is quite intriguing. I appreciate being given the opportunity to read and review this book - I don't know that I would have picked it up otherwise and I did enjoy it overall.

A thrilling story and one of my favorite books of the year. A scary look at what the future could hold with a competitor-less ‘Amazon’ like mega company named Cloud. Optioned for a film by Ron Howard, this will be a must see! Rob Hart’s vivid imagination and creative writing jumps off the page and he creates a world that is unnerving and downright scary. He shows how a global network’s commitment to operational excellence could derail and its’ workers livelihoods under ‘Big Brother’ can be compromised.

Gibson, the genius behind the corporate behemoth is an interesting presence who comes in and out of the story. His rambling messages is an interesting angle, mystifying and egotistical. Is he off his rocker or is he extraordinarily brilliant? Something was up but I couldn’t put my finger on it until the big reveal when everything comes together.


*will post on additional online venues shortly. Great story!

Before I get up on my soapbox with my feelings about this book let me say, read this book, it’s not as heavy as I’ve made it out to be. It’s exceedingly readable, quick and absorbing. It’s excellent.

We are going to start this review at the end of the book. Not the end of the story … don’t worry, this is a spoiler free review. I mean we will start in the acknowledgements. I do love acknowledgements in a book, because sometimes you can glean a lot of information in what the author chooses to share. In this case, the author explains his choice of dedication to a “Maria Fernandez”. Maria Fernandez, was a woman who, in 2014, worked 3 part-time jobs at Dunkin’ Donuts trying to make ends meet. She would sleep in her car between shifts and one morning accidentally died from suffocation on gas fumes. She made so little from her 3 jobs, she struggled to make her expenses including $550/month rent on a small apartment. As Mr. Hart notes, that year “Dunkin’ Brands chief executive Nigel Travis earned $10.2 million.” This tragic story was part of his inspiration for this book.

The Warehouse is dystopia cleverly disguised as a utopia. Who doesn’t want to work for a company like The Cloud (a thinly disguised Amazon)? You get a nice, though tiny apartment, are close to work, shopping, restaurants. It’s a safe place to work and raise a family. Of course, employees are also overworked, exposed to workplace hazards, micromanaged, surveilled within an inch of their lives, and exist in constant dread of their employment being terminated. But … the devil you know, right? The Cloud has nearly completely taken over distribution of goods worldwide. It controls legislation in multiple countries. Where else can you go if you can’t make it at The Cloud? You starve or you work for them.

The main story follows two new employees and their very different reasons for applying for work in The Cloud. I have to admit that the descriptions of the company itself were most interesting to me. How does it maintain its stranglehold over competition, how does it exert so much control over its employees. I found echoes of the dilema of the Joad’s in The Grapes of Wrath. On finally reaching the paradise of the fields in California, they soon learned that their meager wages would just as quickly be sucked up by obligations to the company for their living space and for goods bought at the Company Store. It’s a vicious cycle, that I believe, can be found in today at any local Walmart. Employees are hired at a pittance, trained to apply for state aid and encouraged to then spend those dollars in the stores they work at. Walmart gets cheap, cheap labor, offsets the cost to Federal aid programs, and then reaps the benefits that their underpaid workers receive. But hey, Walmart makes bucks, and we get to buy really cheap stuff. Win … win … right?

All that to say, The Warehouse is a fiction in the style of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam series. Just close enough to real life as to be completely believable, and a harbinger of coming attractions if nothing is done to protect workers like Maria Fernandez, like all of us. It’s an unflinching look at the results of the corporatization of the world, and a kick in the behind motivating us to do something about it. Ok, off the soapbox for today.

Bonus link: For a Worker with Little Time Between 3 Jobs, a Nap has Fatal Consequences – New York Times

Song for this book: Pa’ alante – Hurray for the Riff Raff

A dystopian tale that seems all too plausible, well mostly. As society crumbles with climate change and governments failure to do much, one company steps in and solves all of our shopping needs. After a deadly Black Friday massacre people just don't want to go into stores anymore. So now there is Cloud and nearly the only place to work. It reminded me a little of the movie Idiocracy, with the huge warehouse that everyone shops. As a worker you also must live there. It's a self-contained company store, with entertainment and everything. It's a bit creepy. The watch that tracks your movements and tells you were to go next when to wake up for your next shift.

The pacing of the book was great. There are a few aspects to the story-line that was kinda weird, seemed unnecessary. Some parts maybe not explored well or overdone, otherwise a decent book. It looks like we may see the book on the big-screen sometime. I'll definitely see the movie if that happens.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Synopsis

Cloud isn’t just a place to work. It’s a place to live. And when you’re here, you’ll never want to leave.

Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant tech company that’s eaten much of the American economy. Much less that he’d be moving into one of the company’s sprawling live-work facilities.

But compared to what’s left outside, Cloud’s bland chainstore life of gleaming entertainment halls, open-plan offices, and vast warehouses…well, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s more than anyone else is offering.

Zinnia never thought she’d be infiltrating Cloud. But now she’s undercover, inside the walls, risking it all to ferret out the company’s darkest secrets. And Paxton, with his ordinary little hopes and fears? He just might make the perfect pawn. If she can bear to sacrifice him.

As the truth about Cloud unfolds, Zinnia must gamble everything on a desperate scheme—one that risks both their lives, even as it forces Paxton to question everything about the world he’s so carefully assembled here.

Together, they’ll learn just how far the company will go…to make the world a better place.

Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business–and who will pay the ultimate price.

Review

Thanks to the publisher and author for a finished copy of The Warehouse in exchange for an honest review. Receiving a copy of the novel did not influence my thoughts or opinions.

An employee at two or three stars knows they have to work a little harder. And don’t we all want to be five-star people?

The Warehouse is an all-too-plausible future that we may find ourselves in if we do not correct our current course. Amazon currently has it as the #1 release in ‘Self-Help & Psychology Humor’ and if it doesn’t read like a warning label, you may need to prioritize your outlook on the nation. This is a terrifying look at what we are slowly becoming and it would be for the best that we take Hart at his word.

First off, CloudBurgers…

*vomits all over the floor*

The Warehouse made me rethink the amount of time and money I spend on Amazon. Yes, it does have a vast amount of convenience and typically lower prices, but what does putting all of my eggs into one superstore basket do for the rest of the economy? Are those Mom N’ Pop stores around my little hometown going to stick around for the long-haul, or are we soon going to find ourselves under the smile of one of the largest companies in the world?

This isn’t something you really think about as you peruse your wishlist or search reviews for the next best gadget to hit the market. It is only natural that Amazon is one of your top choices to make a purchase: things tend to be in stock, are typically cheaper than your nearby shopping center, and can be delivered to you within a pretty taut timeline. But what if they continue to grow? More big cities become like Detroit with ‘Closed’ signs up all over town; doors and windows boarded up, and off in the distance, you see a giant corporate building with high fences and armed guards.

Monopolies suck and that is why they aren’t a thing (they were at one point, and they may be at another point in time). But I digress…

Hart has written something truly powerful here, and while it can be used as a teaching moment, it is also a fantastic story that is highly engaging and, at times, quite humorous; other times, definitely disturbing (LOOKING AT YOU, CLOUDBURGERS). While things outside of MotherCloud are bleak, depressing, and downright awful, corporate looks to be a vacation destination. You get a job, housing, food, and the convenience of little to no travel for a workday. Who doesn’t want that? Unfortunately, all of these things come with hard restrictions and high expectations that most toe the line on. Much like items on King Amazon, employees are rated on a star system, and by golly, you better not find yourself going any lower than a 3 or your a$$ is grass.

The novel has three (3) distinct POVS, all of which you become quite acquainted with throughout the read. Gibson is the creator of Cloud; Paxton and Zinnia are both new employees at Cloud, each with their own motivations for being there and what they plan to get out of their time spent. While I enjoyed all of the characters to an extent, Paxton was the one that really stood out as he becomes caught in all of the chaos as it unfolds. I also probably felt a little more emotionally involved with him as his sights are set on more than just a life-saving job opportunity.

Overall, I believe just about anyone would enjoy a readthrough of The Warehouse. It is 370 pages, but they fly by as you become engaged in the story. Just know that you may never look at Amazon or Apple the same way again.

Speculative Fiction is a favorite genre, and Rob Hart does an incredible job of taking a situation we all know and are aware of and expanding it into a full-fledged horrific examination of what could be. This is the kind of book we should all be reading now. Speculative Fiction gives us a glimpse into what could be and forces us to reckon with issues we'd too often ignore until it's placed in caricature before our faces.

I'll be thinking about this book and what it says about us for some time to come.

The Warehouse by Rob Hart is a very highly recommended dystopian and espionage thriller set in a changed future where a mega-corporation is running the economy.

Cloud is a giant worldwide fulfillment company that controls almost all commerce, labor, and technological and economic development in America. Employees live in giant MotherCloud facilities where employees live, work, play, and consume all in one facility. Follow their rules and you have a job and, well, survival. Climate change has devastated the country, and after the Black Friday Massacres, well, people don't want to leave their homes to shop, especially when they can have their every need provided for by Cloud.

The narrative follows the point-of-view of three people. Gibson Wells is the founder of Cloud. The multibillionaire is dying from pancreatic cancer and is sharing his thoughts and the history of the company through blog posts. He is traveling on a bus across the country to visit each MotherCloud before he dies. Paxton, whose business was destroyed by Cloud, is lucky enough to get hired by Cloud and is assigned a job with security. Paxton begins helping look for the source of a new drug called Oblivion. Zinnia has also been hired, as a product-picker, but she is actually a corporate spy working undercover to find the secrets of the MotherCloud facilities.

Obviously, Cloud will be compared to a present day world-wide fulfillment company combined with the country-wide Mart stores. They are both big businesses that have been said to use/abuse their workers and Wells character seems to mirror the Mart founder. But now add to that view and take into account all the other e-commerce going on today, where people can order a wide variety of items through stores or shopping services and have it all delivered to their homes. We are already quickly becoming a nation of people who, maybe, have to leave our homes only for our jobs, unless you can work from home. Large businesses are already making health services and other amenities available at work. As for being tracked and watched? Yeah, that is happening too with facial recognition software, cameras, cell phone tracking, etc. Don't even get me started on social media and censoring information to control public opinion. The world building here is taking what is currently happening to the next level, which is memorable, cautionary, and terrifying.

The writing is excellent. Hart establishes the setting, introduces his characters, and sets up the plot, premise, and background. Then he does an excellent job juxtaposing the reality of MotherClouds with Gibson Wells' point-of-view. Everything immediately grabs your attention and imagination because it is so completely and utterly plausible. The characters are well-developed and presented as individuals. Paxton is the character to trust as he has no hidden agenda. Zinnia has a secret agenda and while we can follow her actions, she only shares a limited amount. Wells is concerned with his image, his legacy, so his voice is self-serving and delusional. The film rights have been bought by Imagine Entertainment for Ron Howard.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House.

http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/08/the-warehouse.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2947729842
https://www.librarything.com/work/22914796/book/172446167
https://twitter.com/SheTreadsSoftly/status/1164583678099566595?s=20
and Edelweiss

Some of the best speculative fiction comes when a writer is able to extrapolate forward in a manner that is both engaging and plausible. And when that speculation leans toward the dystopian? Well – go ahead and sign me up.

That’s what Rob Hart has done with his new novel "The Warehouse;" it’s an exploration of a near-future that reads like nothing so much as a darkest timeline look at the future of our society as it relates to the corporate monoliths that consume all that lies before them in their quest for ever-increasing growth.

By spinning out the trends toward ubiquity among some of our larger corporations, Hart takes us deep into the shadows cast by the cheerful bright lights of “progress.” His tale of those tangled in that all-encompassing web – those at the top and at the bottom alike – offers a satiric, chilling and bleakly funny perspective on the potential endpoint of our cultural fascination with the biggest of big business.

The MotherCloud is meant to be everything to the employees within it. Their jobs are there, including the massive warehouse featuring scores of pickers devoting their every working moment to fulfilling the vast and varied orders for items all over the retail spectrum. But their homes are there as well – small, efficient apartments. Their leisure time, too – recreation centers and malls and restaurants (including the ubiquitous CloudBurger, considered to be the best burger in the world despite its low price). All of it – work performance, pay, home entry, you name it – tied to the wrist-worn sensor that must be on at all times and that keeps track of everything you do. You’re rated by stars, and if you fall too low – you’re out.

Paxton swore he’d never stoop to working for Cloud, the all-encompassing corporation dominating the American business landscape. And he certainly would never wind up at a MotherCloud, one of the massive live-work centers that have become both the workplace and home of a significant percentage of the world’s workers. He has his reasons to bear resentment toward Cloud and its founder Gibson Wells – reasons that torpedoed his own dreams – but in the end, he needs to work.

Zinnia is looking to land a gig at a MotherCloud as well, but for very different reasons. She is a spy, a practitioner of the art of industrial espionage. And she has been hired for a job – the biggest one of her career – to find out the truth behind some of Cloud’s seemingly impossible claims and retrieve proof. Finding out something that the world’s largest tech company doesn’t want people to know is a daunting task, but it’s one that Zinnia is ready to take on.

Paxton and Zinnia cross paths right at the beginning of their tenures. Paxton, despite his best efforts, winds up in a blue polo: security. It befits his work experience – he was a prison guard for years – but that was part of a past he hoped to leave behind. Despite her best efforts to land in tech support, Zinnia gets a red polo. She’s a picker, working the warehouse. Quickly and clumsily, the two of them connect – and Zinnia sees a possibility, a path to her goal. All she has to do is use Paxton.

But it might not be that easy.

Throughout, we get excerpts from the online musings of Gibson Wells, the founder and owner of Cloud and the richest man in the world. He’s slowly dying of cancer, rambling and whitewashing his way through the company history as the world waits to find out who will succeed him at the top.

“The Warehouse” brings a keen satiric edge to its rendition of a corporate dystopia. The ubiquitous Cloud is so blatantly, obviously inspired by a specific company that I’m not going to insult your intelligence by naming it. That specificity allows for a wonderful gallows-humor undercurrent to the entire thing, giving the narrative that sense of timeliness that marks the very best of near-future speculative fiction.

The dynamic between Paxton and Zinnia is compelling not just because of their different motivations, both for being at Cloud and for being with each other, but because of the sheer gravitational force of the setting in which that dynamic plays out. The idea of any kind of relationship developing in a place like this – a place where your every move is monitored and filmed, a place where you go weeks without ever seeing the sky, a place that is both massive and claustrophobic – is fascinating. When the only culture available is corporate culture, things get skewed fast.

The combination of monolithic ruthlessness and disingenuous positivity is a beautiful distillation of the vaguely sinister nature of today’s corporate ethos. This world is a very plausible endgame, a 21st century magnification of the company towns of yesteryear. It’s not so much that the 1% of the 1% are exploiting the people beneath them … it’s that they’ve found a way to make those who are being exploited somehow grateful for the opportunity.

THAT’S the real power in something like “The Warehouse.” It illustrates that greed knows no boundaries, and that even those with the best of intentions can eventually wind up making the most reprehensible of choices so long as they can talk themselves into believing that it is for some nebulous greater good. That’s the perspective we get from Gibson Wells, and it is vital to the novel’s success.

“The Warehouse” is funny and bleak, putting forth an exaggerated but nevertheless still plausible take on the direction our world seems to be traveling. It is a sharp takedown of 21st century corporate culture that serves as something of a warning – our seemingly small individual choices can eventually have much larger consequences than we ever could have known.

Rob Hart’s new novel, The Warehouse, takes place in a not-too-distant future, where the Cloud conglomerate supplies every need, is the major employer, and controls most governmental regulations (or lack of). Unlike the typical Evil Corp scifi, the owner of Cloud isn’t a shadowy mastermind. Instead, founder Gibson tells familiar platitudes about hard work and bootstraps, about how there were just too many environmental regulations holding back industry, and recounts folksy stories about dedicated Cloud workers who really had no place else to go.

Working at Cloud can be a boon — when Paxton and Zinnia apply, there are dozens of other applicants, all of whom need a job very badly. There simply aren’t any other jobs, which is simultaneously dystopian and a logical extension. No one is forced to work at Cloud or to stay at Cloud, it’s just the only employer hiring.

This is such a depressingly believable setting. Cloud has safety harnesses for dangerous work, but the time spent using them hurts productivity, and without high productivity, workers will be cut. There’s a clinic, but sick days hurt productivity numbers, and workers are encouraged to pop a painkiller and get back to work. The company provides safety equipment, healthcare, and so forth, it’s really the worker’s failure to take advantage of them. Every part of this is believable, because of course we all need income to survive, and of course, a low salary in Cloud currency is better than nothing, even with fees to transfer dollars in, and fees to transfer Cloud points back to dollars, and a predatory credit card system tied in…
Rob Hart’s new novel, The Warehouse, takes place in a not-too-distant future, where the Cloud conglomerate supplies every need, is the major employer, and controls most governmental regulations (or lack of). Unlike the typical Evil Corp scifi, the owner of Cloud isn’t a shadowy mastermind. Instead, founder Gibson tells familiar platitudes about hard work and bootstraps, about how there were just too many environmental regulations holding back industry, and recounts folksy stories about dedicated Cloud workers who really had no place else to go.

Working at Cloud can be a boon — when Paxton and Zinnia apply, there are dozens of other applicants, all of whom need a job very badly. There simply aren’t any other jobs, which is simultaneously dystopian and a logical extension. No one is forced to work at Cloud or to stay at Cloud, it’s just the only employer hiring.

This is such a depressingly believable setting. Cloud has safety harnesses for dangerous work, but the time spent using them hurts productivity, and without high productivity, workers will be cut. There’s a clinic, but sick days hurt productivity numbers, and workers are encouraged to pop a painkiller and get back to work. The company provides safety equipment, healthcare, and so forth, it’s really the worker’s failure to take advantage of them. Every part of this is believable, because of course we all need income to survive, and of course, a low salary in Cloud currency is better than nothing, even with fees to transfer dollars in, and fees to transfer Cloud points back to dollars, and a predatory credit card system tied in…

The basic struggles of survival and keeping a 5-star employee rating take a lot of effort, and it’s designed that way, not in a dark conspiracy to create complacent sheeple, but with familiar metrics about maximizing productivity. Fahrenheit 451 and the rest of the dystopian warning novels weren’t dramatically destroyed, they just weren’t advertised, in a world of bombarding advertisements.

I enjoyed the way different storylines and character goals interacted with each other. There’s just enough foreshadowing that I would realize OMG, she’s in on it! or OMG, it was him all along! as Paxton or Zinnia did, and then I’d realize, duh, the information was there the whole time. I also didn’t feel the Protagonist Immunity in this novel, I thought it was perfectly likely that Zinnia’s investigation would get her killed or that they’d get fired.

My only concern was the CloudBurgers. In a dark scifi novel, that surprisingly tasty and affordable meat is never a good sign, and it’s not a good sign here. I was a bit disappointed by this reveal because I thought the rest of the novel was a little more subtle and thoughtful.

Readers of this dystopian page-turner will also enjoy Feed, Only Ever Yours, and Followers. There’s also a great Doctor Who ep, Kerblam!, about another Amazonian processing plant, and the workers who must account for every moment of their time, monitored by ankle bracelet, watched by robot Coworkers, while telling themselves how lucky they are to have an income and an annual visit home.

I enjoyed the way different storylines and character goals interacted with each other. There’s just enough foreshadowing that I would realize OMG, she’s in on it! or OMG, it was him all along! as Paxton or Zinnia did, and then I’d realize, duh, the information was there the whole time. I also didn’t feel the Protagonist Immunity in this novel, I thought it was perfectly likely that Zinnia’s investigation would get her killed or that they’d get fired.

My only concern was the CloudBurgers. In a dark scifi novel, that surprisingly tasty and affordable meat is never a good sign, and it’s not a good sign here. I was a bit disappointed by this reveal because I thought the rest of the novel was a little more subtle and thoughtful.

Readers of this dystopian page-turner will also enjoy Feed, Only Ever Yours, and Followers. There’s also a great Doctor Who ep, Kerblam!, about another Amazonian processing plant, and the workers who must account for every moment of their time, monitored by ankle bracelet, watched by robot Coworkers, while telling themselves how lucky they are to have an income and an annual visit home.