Hugh Howey takes his writing seriously.

His novel Wool is a blockbuster.

But in life, he figures, just keep everybody laughing or at least smiling along the way.

And he hasn’t taken himself seriously in years.

We asked Hugh to write his dream review for Wool. When you see the writing talent in the review, you won’t be able to wait until you read the science fiction novel. Wool is a Top 5 Finalist for Best Indie Book of the Year in 2012, sponsored by Jeff Bennington and the Kindle Book Review.

The Dream Review that Hugh Howey would like to see on Amazon and anywhere else that posts reviews.

To whomever finds this bottle and reads my note, I beg you for your help. You see, the island on which I’ve become stranded has no internet. No civilization at all, in fact. Despite these hardships, I have managed to eek out a meager existence by luck and by spear. I am all alone, and so I have little in the way of entertainment, but what I do have . . . by gods!

Walter perished in the raft before I washed ashore. I ate him, just as we’d promised, and he entrusted into my hands a copy of a peculiar book. It was all he had grabbed from the boat before it gurgled beneath the sea. Not a bottle of water or the fishing tackle, just a book that I took at first to be on the topic of raising sheep.

As Walter lay dying in the raft, the sun beating on us like an angry stepfather, he had laughed a madman’s laugh and had posed a question. “Quick!” he had raved. “Alone on an island with one book. Which one?”

He had croaked this over and over, beseeching me for an answer. “The complete works of Shakespeare,” I hazarded. “The OED.” But none of my replies calmed his raving lunacy. And then he had pressed into my hands this tome I had thought to be on knitting.

That’s what I had thought . . .

If you find this note, please grant a stranded man a single favor. I know not where I’m located, so rescue would be a feeble search and only place others in danger. Know instead that I am okay, for this is the book. This is the answer to that age-old parlor question. It isn’t about Wool at all, not in the literal sense. And I love it above all the bard’s works. It survives dozens of readings, more layers of meaning becoming apparent with each pass. And the characters! I am no longer alone on this island. I now live underground, and I couldn’t be happier.

Do me this favor: Take my words and post them to Amazon. Give this book five stars for me. And please tell Walter Smithson’s wife that he died well but he tasted something awful.

To purchase a copy of the novel, please click here: Wool