This book seems more like a dystopian than mystery/thriller as described. I just see our society heading in the direction of The Warehouse! AND, it creeped me out!!!!

My thanks to Netgalley and Crown Publishing for this advanced readers copy. The release date is set for August 2019.

A corporate thriller set in the not too distant future (or it could be going on now) in a world that has seen upheaval and a giant retail site has taken over lives where you can order anything, it will get to you just as fast and in a nation of high unemployment the owner is seen as almost a God. That company is called the Cloud. The problem is the Cloud's employees are overworked, underpaid and are being psychologically pushed to the limit to perform faster and better or get the ax. Someone needs to get into the really tight security and put a bug in the system that could take it all down. The story is really scary because although futuristic this particular future feels way to close to being a reality. Smart, scary and an interesting look at corporate espionage this will make you think twice before hitting the purchase button on that giant online store. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

The Warehouse (August 2019)
By Rob Hart
Crown Publishers, 368 pages
★★★★

Remember how we were told the movie The Circle wasn’t about Google, though it was? Rob Hart’s new novel The Warehouse isn’t about Amazon, but of course it is–with a bit of Apple mashed into the batter. Picture a not-so-distant future in which climate change has drowned the coastline, blazing sun has parched much of the land, water and food are in short supply, economic downturn has produced high unemployment rates, and gun violence and marauding gangs plague the cities. (How sad that it takes so little imagination to conjure such scenarios.)

Amidst this bleak landscape stands a beacon, Cloud, a company that’s also a way of life. Those who secure employment at Cloud leave the outside world behind and move onto a Cloud campus where they work, eat, play, and bed in a carbon-neutral climate-controlled environment. Cloud uses its army of drones and driverless trucks to provide its residents and the outside world with all the material goods it demands. Yeah, like I said: Amazon/not Amazon.

To those on the outside and many on the inside, Cloud is Utopia. Its founder, Gibson Wells, appears a benefactor. He’s the star of his own videocasts, which play incessantly inside the campus, even when you’re enjoying a yummy Cloud Burger, touted by all as the best burger ever. Think of Wells as possessing the folksiness of Walmart founder Sam Walton, the omnipresence of 1984’s Big Brother, the business acumen of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and the tech savvy of Apple’s Steve Jobs. Think especially of Jobs, as “Gib” is dying of pancreatic cancer, which not coincidentally is what killed Jobs. You’ll think of Jobs again when you consider that every employee of Cloud wears a CloudBand on their wrist, which monitors work productivity, keeps track of earned credits in this moneyless enclave, reminds each employee of when to wake up, and is the key in and out of cell-like dorm rooms. You need your CloudBand even to use the bathroom. But it’s okay, because Gib assures everyone he’s trying to improve the world through Cloud, and that things are way better there than on the outside. He’s probably right about the latter.

As you might expect, Utopia has some holes in its fabric. It is highly stratified, which one can tell by the color of the shirt one wears: red for the “pickers and placers” that work in the warehouse preparing goods for shipment, green for food and cleaning service personnel, yellow for customer service representatives, brown for tech support, blue for security, and white for managers. The reds are the lowest on the food chain; they are little more than flesh-and-blood robots who rush pell-mell to scale warehouse racks, grab a product, and run it to a conveyor belt to be shipped to customers. Missing quotas is not to be taken lightly, as it could send you back outside.

Oddly, red is the shirt Paxton hoped to secure. He worked as a prison guard on the outside after his invention of the Perfect Egg was stolen by Cloud and wrecked his business. So, of course, he finishes orientation and finds blue security shirts in his room. Another new recruit, Zinnia, hopes for brown shirts, but gets a picker’s red instead. Her official story is that she had been a teacher in Detroit until education went entirely online and a single teacher could serve millions. That’s her cover; she’s actually a corporate spy trying to find Cloud’s vulnerabilities.

The Warehouse is a pas de trois between Gib, Paxton, and Zinnia. The book is a pastiche of various books, movies, and ideas. Cloud’s control over workers owes similarities to efficiency theorist Frederick Winslow Taylor as filtered through Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, and a careful reader will find echoes of everything from 1984, Animal Farm, and Lord of the Flies to Soylent Green, Mad Max, and Blade Runner. The Warehouse lacks originality, but it compensates through a clever and compelling rearranging of its various blocks. About the time you think you know where it’s headed, author Rob Hart veers in a slightly different direction. The same can be said of his characters and their motives. Hart keeps us just unbalanced enough to make us doubt whether they will do as we suspect. That’s a good thing because often they don’t!

Let me give Hart another shout out for introducing secondary characters that have just enough depth to advance the plot in feasible ways. There is also moral ambiguity within The Warehouse that lends verisimilitude to the beat-the-clock drama that sets up the conclusion. If you think of the very world Hart constructs, who would be most likely to be correct: those resigned to the status quo, the skeptics, the starry-eyed converts, or the saboteurs? If you guessed “yes,” ask Amazon to ship you a copy of The Warehouse.

Rob Weir

This review will run on off-centerviews.com in August.

I didn't think too much of this one, to be honest. I was hoping for a Cory Doctorow-style take on how Amazon really works but instead we were following around a handful of lackluster characters going through the motions. A good editor would've moved the application scene to the beginning, since it took some uninteresting trudging around to get there. Maybe next time.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. The concept was interesting. The points of views were well done. I felt the ending was rushed, abrupt and open ended. I do not know if there is a sequel planned, if so, that would explain the open ended ending, if not it was a bit of a let down.

Received an ARC from #NetGalley

Not so much a thriller in the classic sense, although there are chilling elements. Really more of a cautionary tale whose reality may be closer than we think. The outside world is more Mad Max than ever -- climate change, gun violence and a disintegrating government have rendered America almost uninhabitable, except for one behemoth that controls the only viable possibility for employment and has applicants scrambling for jobs no matter how menial, meaning giving up whatever lives they may have on the "outside" to live within the confines of the MotherCloud, don a color-coded polo shirt, and fit into an automaton slot (Freedom is something you have until you give it away). Insidious and creepy, focussing on two new hires each with their own agenda. Reminiscent of Dave Eggars's The Circle, but a shade better. I can even see the movie trailer, with Don LaFontaine-like voice intoning "In A World....".

The story begins with a blog post by a man named Gibson Wells. He owns Cloud and at first, seems like a good guy. After you meet Zinnia and Paxton and hear things from their POV, you may change your mind about him.

Zinnia is a corporate spy hired by an anonymous rich guy to take down Cloud from the inside. Paxton is a former prison guard/inventor who used to market his invention as a vendor on Cloud but eventually got put out of business by them. Since he didn't want to go back to the prison work, he decided to work at Cloud until his patent came through and he could sell it to Cloud.

As we learn more and more about the state of the world it becomes clear that this is basically a "company town" like in the old west or steel mill days. You don't get paid money, you get credits. You live at Cloud, buy all your food from them, wear a trackable wristband, and even purchase the water you shower with from them. In exchange you get a star rating, five is great, and one equals immediate dismissal

Cloud is for sure code for Amazon, which gives me mixed feelings as I affiliate link over there every day. 🤷 When I figure out a way to link to independent bookstores easily, I will.

Boy oh boy, is the world Rob Hart has created in The Warehouse ever messed up. And it's just near-future enough, and realistic enough, that it's creepy as all get out. If you enjoy dystopian novels that hit close to home, this is definitely a page-turner. It's smart and clever in a relaxed, never-pretentious style.

Gibson is the CEO of an online retail giant named Cloud. Gibson doesn't seem so bad at first, but then you get to know him on a deeper level. His portrayal is so, so good. It's not over-the-top, look how evil this guy is. It's way more subtle. You get the feeling Gibson truly believes what he's doing is good for people. And then you start understanding why he thinks that way, and it messes with your head. I loved hating him.

I mean, we've got out of control climate change, a prison system full of low-level, nonviolent offenders (outstanding parking tickets, failure to pay mortgages and student loans), an abysmal job market, corporations tracking employees' every move, CEOs sponsoring legislation, privatized everything. It's a nightmare. And Cloud seems like a utopian oasis in the midst of all that. Seems like.

I loved the Le Guin reference, so perfectly incorporated into what was happening. And there's a quote at the end that makes my anarchist-leaning heart super happy and energized. The Warehouse is an entertaining novel, for sure, but we should pay attention to its messages and consider ourselves warned.

If you take the worst of mega companies like, Amazon and China’s Alibaba and give them ultimate power you will get The Warehouse. The author, Rob Hart, explores the idea of a dystopian world where one company rules supreme. This story hits so close to home it will make you shutter in horror and give you nightmares.
In the near future, the world is ravaged by global warming, food shortages, lack of clean water and jobs. Amongst this chaos one company rules supreme, Cloud. They tout themselves as nothing short of God. But they have a seedy underbelly that few ever see.
Zinnia has been hired by a wealthy individual, whose identity she does not know, to infiltrate Cloud so they can be exposed. This will be her most difficult job ever and the most lucrative, if she can complete it. Once she gets hired, she immediate starts looking for ways to break through their security. Cloud tracks all its employees, ALL the time, through a watch. The watch must be worn at all times and can only be taken off to recharge. She must figure out a way to take the watch off and not get caught.
The solution lies with Paxton who is already drawn to her. He is in security and knows things that will help her and he can go places she can’t. How can she dupe him? If he knows what is truly going on at Cloud, will he be willing to help her?
The author is obviously drawing parallels between Cloud and Amazon just as The Circle did with Facebook. As the CEO of Cloud says repeatedly throughout the book, the market decided. We as consumers want the cheapest product delivered right to our door yesterday. The company that can do that will be the winner in the end, not the consumer! The scariest thing about this book is, the world Hart imagines I can already see beginning to take shape.
The world building was not extensive because it did not need to be. Yet, what the author described was spot on. It was easy to imagine how bad things could get when control rests with one person. The pace of the story was excellent and it never dragged for one minute. Each reveal was thoughtfully executed so you wanted to reader faster as the story progressed.
The characters were especially well done. Zinnia and Paxton charters were easy to relate to. Though I must say, I did not like the character of Paxton because he was too much of a push over. Yet, I think this is what the author intended. Paxton represents the attitude I see a lot of in America today, that as long as I am doing OK ignore what is happening elsewhere. Don’t rock the boat and stand up for what is right.
I remember, in school, reading The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984 and Animal Farm. The Warehouse falls right into the same niche as those. If you liked them, you need to read this one. In addition, I think this book should be a must read for everyone. Highly, highly recommend!
I received a free copy from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

I am a sucker for dystopias. The problem is, I’ve read so many by now that they’re almost always disappointing, and I will fully prepared for more of the same with The Warehouse.

I was not prepared to tear up, not just once, but TWICE.

The world in this novel is completely recognizable and relatable, because...well, we already sort of live in it. Add that ennui-inducing Black Mirror-esque thread of bleak desperation and easily conceivable technological advancement, and you have this book.

I absolutely loved this book. Now I need to go sit somewhere quiet away from my electronic devices and think existentially about my own mortality for a fair bit.

The Warehouse by Rob Hart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Do you remember that scene in Idiocracy where you could walk into that small town called Costco and get your law degree and get a special Starbucks?

Yeah, well this novel isn't that. But it is definitely Amazon on steroids, employing pretty much the last of humanity (or 30 million of them) as little drones send disposable products all around the world to disposable people.

Sound intriguing? Make no mistake, this is definitely a dystopia. Your job performance is on a five-star rating system and if you get a single star, you're FIRED. Sound slightly familiar? Just make this a company town with its own credit system, accommodations, and insular paranoid big-brother total tracking nightmare, throw the newbies into the mix, and THEN tell me whether or not YOU ALREADY LIVE THERE. :)

I liked this book. It's nastily familiar and a pleasurable easy read full of twists and turns and espionage and counter-espionage. It does have a big warning as a core message, but I didn't mind how stark it was. After all, we're in COSTCO/AMAZON now, baby! :)

A gripping look at corporate espionage in one of the largest big-box retailers. You are monitored by your watch band. You stay in employee housing. You wear color coded shirts based on your job title. You wonder how this corruption is coming into a utopia. A book of twists and turns, suspense, and it keeps you wanting more.

If Amazon joined forces with.... oh, wait, this is just what if Amazon keeps growing at its current pace... you would get Cloud (the Amazon-esque company at the center of this book). The story follows two people who go to work for the all-encompassing company/life that is Cloud. These are some of the best (and only) jobs available, but they have very different reasons for applying. From there they move into the routine of working for what is nearly the only company there is.
Set in the near, dystopian, future, this first novel by Rob Hart is an interesting look at what happens when one business manages to be come the only business that matters. He brings together ideas of the economic pressures that a large company can bring to bear success marries it to climate change and company-store mentality in a way that seems frighteningly prescient.
The three main (and point of view) characters are Paxton, an erstwhile Corrections Officer/CEO; Zinnia, a woman with past she is hiding; and the CEO of Cloud, Gibson Wells. As each tells their portion of the story, we get a look at how they came to be where they are and where they might go from here. Since they are characters, their POV is not just limited, but also not always wholly honest. This makes for a bit more of an interesting way of looking at the story rather than just "big business bad" simplicity.
Probably my biggest complaints involve the limited world building outside of the facility (which is immaculately described) and occasional dry writing that made it hard to focus.
Overall, as a "where are we headed" look at society, I think this book works and I would recommend it to those who enjoy near future dystopias.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

This dystopian novel reads like a movie, replete with big name actors playing heroes and villains. Interesting and horrifying, with a frightening dose of what feels like realism. Thank you for the read!

The Warehouse is a dystopian novel sure to thrill (or terrify) fans of books like The Circle, 1984, or Brave New World. As prescient as Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale feels in 2019, The Warehouse may feel in 2029. It's a book that posits itself as a near-future thriller - giving readers both a riveting character-driven espionage story line while refusing to allow pure escapism with warnings of climate change and boundless technology.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Rob Hart, and Crown Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All thoughts are my own.

The Warehouse by Rob Hart, an Incredible Read. A dystopian view of what the world may be coming to, The Cloud has taken over the world!

If you loved Dave Eggers "The Circle", this is the perfect read ! The Warehouse is a dystopian story of a future (sadly probably not too far off) where "Cloud", the online retailer (think: Amazon) essentially rules everything. People can't go outside, the environment is shot, and really the only place you can get employment is at Cloud, which clearly is problematic. Cloud doesn't really pay their employees a salary, rather they all live on a "credit" system and their on-campus housing all comes off their "paychecks" as well. This story mainly follows two newcomers to Cloud, Zinnia and Paxton and the two very different reasons they each had for pursuing employment at the giant online retailer. This is a bit of a thriller (the perfect amount) which is a super fast read and had some super fun turns I didn't expect. I would bet my bottom dollar this becomes a bestseller. Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book, which is set to release on August 20, 2019!

In the not-too-distant future, a company very similar to Amazon known as Cloud, has firmly established dominance in the marketplace. In fact, they’ve grown so large that they now have live-in compounds attached to their warehouses where their employees can reside. They say this is all a part of their green initiative in an attempt to cut down on pollution due to unnecessary commuting. However, their large presence and seemingly unlimited power have far reaching effects.

Upon arrival to Cloud facilities, employees are divided up into departments and are given color-corresponding polo shirts. Blue shirts are security, tan shirts are tech, etc. The story follows new recruits, Preston and Zinnia, as they arrive for orientation. Preston, a former CEO, entrepreneur, and most recently prison guard, whose business crumbled under the mighty fist of Cloud and its head-honcho Gibson Wells, finds himself in a blue polo on the security team. Zinnia ends up a part of the redshirts, or “pickers”, and is responsible for fulfilling orders by taking items from the warehouse stacks and dropping them onto conveyor belts for shipment. However, there’s more to Zinnia than she is letting on. She’s been hired by an outside entity to try and figure out the inner workings of the facility and just how Cloud is so energy efficient.

One of the things I liked the most about The Warehouse is the way that Hart unloads information about the future. There isn’t a big info dump, but we’re made aware how much it costs to fly or rent a vehicle, the warm weather is seemingly unbearable (climate change in full swing) and the power spectrum of the economy with small business seemingly no longer able to exist. These tidbits come from casual conversations that just feel natural. It would have been easy to do all your world-building up front, but by going this route, it kept me reading in huge chunks.

Inserted at the beginning of every chapter are blog posts from Cloud founder and CEO Gibson Wells. Wells is dying of cancer, so the posts are meant to relay the history of the company and potential changes to leadership. These really helped to relay to the reader how seemingly easy it was for a company like Cloud to grow so large, so quickly. Through his addresses, Wells is portrayed as a good guy – albeit self-righteous – but the fact that it’s being posted on a Cloud website and makes reference to his own in-house Cloud News Network, you can smell the bullshit (the phrase “fake news” makes an appearance). This adds a sense of urgency to Zinnia’s quest to uncover the truth as she creeps closer and closer.

Following the footsteps of such cautionary tales as Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Hart’s story reads like a blueprint for the future. Given the way the world is trending, I can easily see a company growing to the size and scope of Cloud – and that’s terrifying. The Warehouse is destined for big things having already been sold in 20 countries with the film-rights quickly snapped up by Ron Howard. The more eyeballs on this story, the better.

Notwithstanding, I also recognize the painful irony that I read this on my Kindle.

THE WAREHOUSE by Rob Hart is a fantastic near-future dystopian sci-fi thriller that kept me turning pages and also makes me leery of shopping w/ that company whose name starts w/ "A" and ends w/ "mazon."

The setting of <i>The Warehouse</i> reminds me of the setup for indentured workers in <i>Ready, Player One</i>. (In the book, not the movie.) Parzival's description of the locator anklet and the monitoring camera attached to each worker's ear falls into the spooky techno-surveillance that we were warned of in <i>1984</i>. The workers at the Cloud facility in this novel are also monitored, although with smart watches that track their job performance, health, location, everything. Which makes it really hard for corporate spies to sneak in and complete a mission, but not impossible.

The book toggles back and forth between Gibson, the owner and founder of Cloud, who is blogging as he makes a final tour of facilities around the country before he hands over the reins to his successor; Paxton, whose small business was driven into bankruptcy by Cloud and now has to go to work for his rival; and Zinnia, who has ulterior motives for getting a job inside the MotherCloud facility. Readers hear Gibson's view of how his policies and innovations have "saved" America; Paxton's view as a security guard working in the facility and dealing with drug dealers, suicides, and his own feelings about Cloud's destruction of his own business; and then Zinnia's view as a worker on the floor of the shipping hub and her interactions with other workers and management.

Needless to say, there is much more going on that what corporate headquarters and all their PSAs are willing to share with the public. And just when you think you have it all figured out, there is a twist (of course), that makes it even more convoluted. When you reach the end you will be questioning how close to reality and the present day that some of these scenarios really are. (That doesn't make you paranoid.)

For fans of dystopian fiction, near-future cautionary tales, and espionage thrillers.