With Amazon "Prime Day" last month, the company, and its growing influence in America, has been something to think about. The Warehouse, by Rob Hart, illustrates everyone's fears about a mega-corporation wielding unchecked power over the workforce, consumers, and society. This book is thrilling, not just due to an addictive tale of corporate espionage, but because many of the elements are already happening in real life. This book grabbed my attention and didn't let go until the exciting finish.

What I Liked:

Setting:

The story is set in America in the not so distant future. The company known as "The Cloud" (a fictionalized Amazon) rises in influence after a terrible Black Friday incident makes most people afraid to shop in brick & mortar stores.


What I enjoyed most about the set up for this book is that much of how The Cloud does business is eerily similar to how a certain company operates. But it's taken to a whole other level of control. From The Cloud's hiring practices, to how it gobbles up small companies, this book understands all the small ways that The Cloud influences society to the point where they dominate everything.


Characters:

The story follows Paxton, a down-trodden inventor who lost his company when The Cloud stole his product idea. He gets it in his head that he will work for The Cloud and then confront the company's founder, Gibson Wells. But once he starts working for The Cloud, he starts to forget why he was so angry. Working at The Cloud is easy. It's simple. He doesn't need to think for himself. He just needs to follow the rules without question.


Zennia is a new employee at The Cloud, too. But her motivation for working there is more nefarious. In a world of high-stakes business, corporate espionage can be, literally, cut-throat.


The story also shows the point of view of the company's founder, Gibson Wells. One can understand how his vision for the world could be easy to follow. He is both brilliant in his leadership and clueless about how his company operates. Or is he...?

Story:

The novel is a classic fish out of water story with Paxton and Zennia learning how this world operates. Paxton slowly makes compromises that accumulate to a point where he actually enjoys working at The Cloud. Zennia also starts to accept all the small things that make working for The Cloud so dehumanizing. It's fascinating how all these small alterations in what we are willing to accept for safety and convenience add up to a situation that is so familiar and so scary.

Oh gosh, this was one of those deeply affecting cautionary tales that you finish and need to put down and just sort of sit and recover from for a while. Set in a near-future where the trajectory of global (but especially American) capitalism has come to its merciless inevitability, the largest employer in the country is Cloud, an Amazon on steroids which has conquered the market in pretty much everything. Cloud has set up gigantic complexes called MotherClouds that are essentially cities where their employees live and work, and this story is told through the viewpoints of three people drawn to a MotherCloud for vastly differing reasons.

The first, and my favorite, is Zinnia, a corporate spy hired to find out how Cloud could possibly be fulfilling its mandate to use clean energy to power its complexes. Tho she tried to get hired as a tech person (in a work society stratified by the different colored shirts you wear,) she finds herself working as a warehouse picker, constantly running to fulfill on-line orders. The second is Paxton, the former CEO of a company that was essentially driven out of business by Cloud. Fueled by an unformed urge to stick it to Cloud while also getting back on his feet, he accepts a job in security, and is probably the most psychologically affected of the three by the events of this book. The final person is the founder of Cloud himself, Gibson, who is dying and going on a farewell tour of his corporate facilities. His viewpoint chapters are primarily in the form of folksy blog posts that serve as a chillingly seductive form of propaganda, in large part because he's not always wrong.

And that's the genius of this book, in the fact that it is riddled with the same sort of moral ambiguity that even the average person, the average <i>good</i> person, finds themselves dealing with on a day to day basis. Whether resisting the blandishments of politicians/business people who present their own self-interest as the public interest, or dealing with the fact that cheap goods inevitably mean depressed labor costs, this is a highly moral tale that hearkens back to the very stories it cites, and is fully worthy of joining their hallowed ranks. I especially admired Rob Hart's self-restraint, which lends a greater believability to this book. A lot of dystopian fiction occasionally borders on the hysterical -- a not incorrect response to the totalitarian rule their settings labor under -- but given that Mr Hart's target is late-stage capitalism hidden in the guise of benevolent paternalism, this books feels more prescient than unlikely, and that's really hard to digest.

But what to do when you don't want to give up the convenience of Amazon Prime? Default to no-rush shipping, for a start, and support legislation that allows, if not outright encourages, both unionization of labor and anti-monopolistic business practices. And it's not just one company that's being scrutinized here, despite the fact that Cloud is clearly based on Amazon (with a meta joke in the text about how much better the fictional company is than its "former" rival,) it's all capitalist labor practices as well as 21st century consumer culture. The ultimate goal of The Warehouse is to remind us readers that labor is not disposable, that these are real people who deserve respect and proper compensation for their work, that these people could be us. And it does so in a wildly entertaining, ultimately bittersweet manner.

I really hope Zinnia is okay.

I received this book from the publisher and I am greatly appreciative of them. This fact does not affect my rating at all. This book was really unique! I haven’t read anything like it before and I was in awe of it the entire time. It was so smart and it felt like every decision was planned and called back to later in the novel. The premise was what brought me into the novel and it’s premise stood strong throughout.

The novel tells the story of a monolithic Amazon-like company, Cloud, that has singlehandedly taken over the American economy. The areas outside of the “MotherClouds”(city-size warehouse compounds where people eat, sleep and work) have completely fallen apart and everyone seems to be looking for a job at Cloud. This story seems like it would make a great sci-fi thriller, complete with a blurb from Blake Crouch (one of my favorite authors), but instead of being a standard thriller it is more like a sci-fi dystopian with some suspenseful aspects. It was a little jarring to not have the thriller aspects I was looking for, but I grew to like it and understood the story for what it is, a story about what we are doing to the planet.

The story is punctuated by blog posts written by the CEO of Cloud, who discusses how he started his business and some other information about the company and his own ideas. He consistently spouts arguments that are discussed in our world and it was interesting to see those arguments reach such a jaw-dropping conclusion. It felt very plausible, while also seeming so outlandish at the same time.

The writing was really good and so atmospheric and it really accentuated the ending which leaves you with more questions than answers, which reminded me of the famous ending of the Handmaid’s Tale. The worldbuilding was also one of the strongest I have ever read. I wanted to know everything about this world and every tidbit we found out was like a like gem. It felt like a treasure hunt!

The characterization was also really good, with the two main characters feeling really natural the entire time and it was interesting to see their different perpectives on the same information or events.

The reveals in this book were quite good, but they felt very understated, which really influenced my rating. There were a few that were completely out of the blue, but they did not affect the ending at all and it just felt like they were added in order to have any of the questions be answered, even if they were never asked. It made the novel feel a little incomplete and unfulfilling.

Overall it was an interesting read that I really enjoyed and would recommend. It felt like the perfect slow-burn sci-fi that delivers a few punches to the gut before it’s done. I can’t get over one of those final reveals, it was so surprising! Pink shirts everyone! If you read this book, you’ll get it. Happy reading.

4.5 stars.

The nitty-gritty: Exciting action and relatable characters make this futuristic look at corporate greed a ton of fun from start to finish.

I got to meet Rob Hart at San Diego Comic Con, which made me even more excited to read his book. Rob put a cool stamp each attendee’s ARC and filled in their “shirt color.”  He wrote “red” in my book, although I had no idea what that meant until I started reading (“Huh? I’m not wearing a red shirt!”) Turns out, at Cloud—the fictitious megastore in Hart’s new novel, which is a terrifying hybrid mix of two of the biggest conglomerates in the world, Amazon and Walmart—each employee wears color coded polo shirts, depending on what department they work in. Once I realized the author had assigned me a shirt color, the story took on a whole new meaning, and the eerie vision of a future similar to Hart’s Cloud became a frightening possibility. The Warehouse is a giddy mixture of cautionary tale, corporate espionage, and even humorous hijinks, and I loved it!

The story is told by three different characters in alternating chapters. Paxton is a down-on-his-luck ex-prison security guard who invented a clever kitchen device called The Perfect Egg. But megastore Cloud forced him out of business, and now Paxton finds himself working for the very company he despises. Zinnia is a corporate spy who has been tasked with bringing down Cloud from the inside by uncovering their dirty secrets. She’s posing as a new employee and just wants to get in, do her job, and get out. Cloud CEO and Founder Gibson Wells has just found out he’s dying of pancreatic cancer and has a year to live. He wants to spend that year visiting as many of the “MotherClouds” as he can before he dies, and he’s started a blog to chart his progress.

When Paxton meets Zinnia, he falls for her in a big way, but Zinnia is only there for one reason and definitely doesn’t want to start anything. But when she finds out that Paxton has been assigned to the security team, she realizes she can use him to help her cause. But time is running out, and with Gibson Wells himself set to make an appearance, Zinnia must put her risky plan into action before it’s too late.

The Warehouse is a chilling look at what our future could be, but it’s told in an upbeat, humorous way, which is why it was so much fun to read. From the “live/work” model, where employees live in dormitories right on “campus,” to the mandatory watches everyone wears that not only open doors and act as debit cards, but track your every move, to the employee rating system that determines whether you keep your job or not, Cloud employees are subjected to the ultimate Big Brother lifestyle. Forced to wear color-coded shirts that tell everyone which department you work in, working at Cloud may be the last chance at job security for many people, but it’s also a prison of sorts, and I personally wouldn’t want anything to do with it. The reader is given brief glimpses into the history of Cloud, most notably something called the Black Friday Massacre, America’s “last” mass shooting, after which Gibson makes the controversial decision to stop selling firearms at all Cloud facilities. I did like the way Hart touches on so many current issues that Americans are dealing with--gun control, corporate takeovers, global warming and more--but he integrates these into a fast-paced story that’s tough to put down.

I really enjoyed the characters, especially Paxton and Zinnia. Paxton is a bit whiny in the beginning and creeped me out when he started hitting on Zinnia, even when she made it clear that she wasn’t interested. But his character really evolves during the story. He has a good reason for hating Cloud and everything it represents, but he’s still optimistic that the patent pending on his invention will eventually come through and will make up for his run-in with corporate greed. Paxton is a true anti-hero with a heart of gold, but he’s got some grit to him as well, and I ended up really liking him in the end. Zinnia is a woman of color who has had to fight tooth and nail her entire life, and now she’s about to cash in on a payday that could set her up for life, if only she can complete her assignment. She’s a kick-ass woman who can definitely take care of herself—and she has to on more than one occasion—but she also has a soft side that she tries to hide, and I loved when Paxton eventually breaks down her defenses.

I also enjoyed the chapters where Gibson is talking to the reader through his blog entries. He does a great job of putting on a sympathetic face, a man who has worked hard his whole life to build his empire, even though not everyone understands why he’s doing it. Even though he’s dying, he’s determined to go out with a smile, so it seems. But despite the fact that Gibson comes across as a sincere and caring man, I couldn’t help but be wary of him, and in fact he proves to be much more than you are led to believe.

As far as negatives, there were a couple of things that lowered my rating a bit. First, Hart does a great job of immersing the reader in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Cloud complex, but there isn’t a lot of information about the outside world. We know that several environmental disasters (global warming, etc.) have made America a virtual desert wasteland, but there isn’t much description about this dire state of America beyond a few scenes where the characters are outside of Cloud and suffering from heat exposure. MotherClouds, as the complexes are called, are scattered throughout the country, but aside from the millions of employees who live and work there, who the heck is actually buying stuff from Cloud, and where do these people live? I didn’t care about this while I was reading, but after I finished and I started to think about the story more, I suddenly realized I had lots of unanswered questions.

I also thought the ending was a bit chaotic. A lot happens in the last twenty percent of the story, maybe too much. Although I loved the fast-paced action and fight scenes (yes, there are some pretty good ones!), I almost felt as if the author were trying to fit in every one of his ideas before the story ended, and some of the action near the end bordered on farcical. But Hart does pull off a couple of nice twists that wrap things up nicely, although the one storyline I was most curious about ended on a vague—although hopeful—note.

Overall, The Warehouse was a blast! Hart's vision of a futuristic America hits a little too close to home, but his lighthearted approach makes this one of the "can't miss" books of summer.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

This new fantasy book is set in a near-future world where Black Friday massacres and extreme weather have just about wiped out in-store retail shopping. Into that gap has stepped Gibson Wells who developed a better package delivery system using drones. People can order goods online from 'The Cloud' and expect delivery virtually instantaneously from his mass distribution centers called MotherClouds.

Wells is worth $304.9 billion. Yes, he's the richest man in America and the largest employer by far. But as the book opens, he is dying from pancreatic cancer and has been told he has about one year left to live. He wants to spend that year driving around America in a motor home visiting as many of his distribution centers as he can so he can soak up the love of his happy employees. And while traveling, he's writing a blog, telling the wonderful story of his success.

The MotherClouds are like mini-cities where workers live, eat, sleep and play...and never leave the building for months at a time. People are desperate to be hired to work at the MotherCloud as most other jobs have dried up. The environment is so bad that cities have become uninhabitable ghost towns.

This story is also told from the point of view of two new employees and follows them from the initial hiring interview onward. One is a man named Paxton who was a prison guard at one point and would like to do anything else but work in security...and of course, that is exactly where he is assigned. The other is a woman named Zinnia who just happens to be a spy for the competition: she hopes to be assigned to tech where she can do the most damage but instead, she becomes a runner, one of those workers filling customer orders. Their two lives quickly become intertwined, headed for disaster.

Of course, one can see how the marketing trends of today could lead to this kind of dehumanizing mega-business, where people are used up and discarded if they can't meet the quota, where there is really no life except that provided by the employer. So often sci-fi provides a window so we can see more clearly what's to come if nothing changes. Who is Wells most like? Bezos? The Walton family? Apple? Google?

I'm sure this exciting book will make a terrific movie--it has all the required ingredients: action, intrigue, danger, villains and a touch of romance.

I received an arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Take Google and Amazon and combine them, mix in a company town situation like existed for coal miners and you get The Warehouse. I guess that is a simple way to describe a company that uses drones to everything anyone ever needs without them needing to leave the house. Perfect, right? But what about those small companies The Cloud has put out of business? How is the company able to run so clean and profitable? And, how come no one really questions the situation with receiving credits for work that you can only spend at the company store? As big business influences laws and individuals lose control, this book goes from being somewhat campy to a bit horrific as the story follows two new hires who have hidden agendas. I only had one point of contention. I felt that one of the big twists was left to fade away after being revealed. I'd like to assume Mr. Hart was making a point with it, but I would have liked there to be a little more to it. However, that did not distract from a read that had me shaking my head for the full 368 pages!

THE WAREHOUSE by Rob Hart is a new work of dystopian science fiction which is a LibraryReads selection for August. Set in the near future at a MotherCloud facility where employees live, eat, play and work for credits, there is some corporate espionage underway. Zinnia has been secretly recruited to find the source of the complex's power and Paxton is a prison security guard and inventor whom she meets on the first day. Much of their orientation is delivered through videos and everyone wears a shirt that reflects their job – red for pickers (order processors), blue for security, green for maintenance, white for managers and so forth. Work shifts and timing are all controlled centrally – communicated through smart watches called CloudBands which are activated with a fingerprint and track their wearer's movements, making Zinnia's task very challenging. Despite the opportunities - cool air, fresh water, a job and place to live - available through Cloud, the atmosphere is menacing; an associate of Paxton's remarks, "you'll see there's the Cloud way of doing things and the right way of doing things. Sometimes those are the same, sometimes they aren't." Gibson Wells is the industrialist who heads the company, the monopolist who has overtaken tons of small businesses (including Paxton’s), and the corporate lobbyist who has helped push through legislation like the Red Tape Elimination Act and FAA takeover. As Hart indicates in his acknowledgements, this is a thriller with a message about opportunity and about income inequality, essentially an attempt, he hopes, that "nudges us in the right direction." THE WAREHOUSE received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. Watch also for the forthcoming movie from Ron Howard and Imagine Entertainment.

Link in live post:
http://libraryreads.org/august-2019-libraryreads/

**RECEIVED A FREE DIGITAL EDITION FOR REVIEW VIA NETGALLEY**

It took a few chapters to get settled into this story, but once the action begins it's a pretty engaging tale. I really liked the detail about the Cloud systems, but I did feel like something was lacking in terms of world-building. Our experience with the Cloud facility is somewhat limited. We only get to read about a few key locations. I would have liked to explore a bit more. I also felt that some context was missing. It's easy to extrapolate from the information given that things aren't great in the outside world, but I felt like I wasn't getting the full picture.

A good read. I'd recommend it to those who enjoy dystopian novels and want a quick read.

The concept of Cloud and its MotherClouds where workers live, work, and hang out felt all too real after hearing stories of Amazon, Facebook and Google. At first I thought this was going to be another book just like The circle (very similar concept). But this added a layer of corporate espionage and someone who we know from the start is not who or what they say they are. Definitely a page turner and I enjoyed it from start to finish. Not too much sci fi, a bit of dystopian, but nothing too scary.. right in my comfort zone for this genre.

Wow, this book was really scary. Scary in a way that makes you wonder if this could really happen. Imagine a huge online retailer (cough, cough....one that starts with the letter A perhaps). This online retailer pretty much controls the economy. What you buy, where you work, and even where you live. Gone are the days with laws against monopolies. Climate change has made it too hot to go outside, coastal cities are under water, gun violence have made people afraid to go outside and then there is The Cloud. A mega retailer/employer whose green initiate will save the planet. I was completely engrossed in the story. A cautionary tale? A modern 1984? Speculative fiction? Yep.

Rob Hill cleverly turns a lot of today’s difficult realities into a very easy to believe near future. Depending on the perspective in the new world Cloud is the problem or the solution to our major problems. I thought that Mr. Hill did a great job a creating a world that was so easy to picture, close enough to where we now but twisted enough to make firmly set in the future. There is plenty that is creepy and awful about Cloud but when told from the perspective of Gibson Wells you have to consider if in this gutted world it may not be the best things can be. And at the same time you have to wonder how responsible the Cloud is for the issues in their world .

Zinnia and Paxton our main characters were interesting to follow and really helped paint a picture of what life is like living and working at Cloud. I felt like we had a pretty good idea of what Paxton’s life was like prior to his arrival at the cloud but I was left wanting to know more about Zinnia’s past. She was a badass and sometimes seemed a little detached and while there did seem to be reasons for this it would have been nice to know more about how she ended up where she was.

I also wanted to know just a little more about the world outside of the Cloud and more information about how it had deteriorated.

Besides my wish for more backstory I have to say this was a really great book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for sending me a free advanced reader copy of this book for an honest review. The Warehouse debuts August 20th.

Let’s cut to the chase: this is a book about Amazon. If you’ve ever entertained the question of what the world would look like if Amazon continues going great guns and secures a bit more political power, then this is a must-read. This is a near-future dystopia, where devastating global warming and Black Friday massacres have ensured that consumers are unwilling to leave their houses—basically ever. Enter Cloud, who will drone-ship every product imaginable to your doorstep in the blink of an eye. Their workers live in massive company towns, where you get paid in Cloud credits, eat Cloud burgers, and sleep in Cloud-issued apartments. And if you don’t want to buy into the system, too bad, because unemployment is sky high, so how else you gonna make a buck, bro?

Enter Paxton and Zinnia, two new recruits to Cloud. Paxton is an entrepreneur whose small business dreams were squashed under the weight of pressure by Cloud to lower his production costs. Zinnia is a corporate spy on the most dangerous mission of her life: to figure out how Cloud is really producing their energy. Paxton has a job on the security team, while Zinnia only manages to secure a lowly picker role. If you have any sort of plot intuition, you can kinda see where things are headed from there, and it’s a wild, compulsive read that was hard to put down.

Listen, I like Amazon well enough. To give a personal example, my book is on Amazon in the KDP program, and I truly admire the innovation they have brought to the publishing industry by introducing the Kindle and an ebook marketplace to the world. Believe it or not, at least in the publishing sphere, Amazon has been great for the little guy. Print-on-demand and easy ebook distribution are threatening to topple the long-established gatekeepers of publishing, i.e., agents and publishers, allowing authors to be their own boss and have total control over their final product.

But that’s not to say that everything Amazon does smells of roses; you don’t get to that level of success without trampling over others. So if you’re a fan of dystopian fiction, I would definitely pick this up—it’s a fast, thrilling read that will ironically probably be topping Amazon’s book rankings.

This book was riveting; I couldn't put it down! The setting is a warehouse, like Amazon's, but there is a spy in the mix, plus a bit of romance. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

The Warehouse follows the story of Paxton, when he comes to interview for a position at Cloud, the multi-billionaire corporation that employees thousands of people in jobs ranging from security, packaging, health-care, cleaning, tech, and much more. Working at Cloud provides financial stability as well as a place to call home. On the surface, Cloud seems like a good place to work, but Paxton brings with him a side to Cloud that others might not have experienced, unless they were running a small business some years back.

Set in the future, when all deliveries are made using drones, guns are no longer a part of America, and many big cities have collapsed, giving rise to MotherClouds that become big cities themselves, much has changed form today's time. Rob Hart's book is a deep study of the drive and choices that led to this future, the effects on the people of the world, and the comfort that it provides. With pieces of insights from Gibson, the visionary behind Cloud, and Zianna, hired to destroy Cloud, the reader is exposed to multiple perspectives on the company and its functionality. I found all three characters to be well thought out and built. With Gibson, especially, his narrative invoked sympathy at times. Paxton, though, is at the midst of everything, struggling to define what freedom truly means.

I really enjoyed this book. It was seasoned with commentary on a number of issues that we face today - the access to guns in America, the reliability on delivery systems like Amazon (not yet drone operated but that's in the works), green energy, the business vs the government, law and order, and waste management. There is so much here, layered with multiple human experiences. I am thankful for the publisher and author for making an advanced reader copy available to me through NetGalley. I look forward to delving deeper on The Warehouse on my blog in the near future.

Paxton and Zinnia get off of a bus in the middle of nowhere for a job interview. Without being told exactly why, we see the town is deserted, there are no vehicles except the bus from the Cloud Company taking you first to a weeding out sort of interview and then on to a large city created by and for a large company. You will see that both Paxton and Zinnia are hired to work and live in the company created city. The founder gives us his story as to how and why he created his cities and his companies as the story unwinds. You will see Paxton's reasons for taking a job and also Zinnia's. They are there for purposes other than the necessity of having a stable job and a safe place to live.
There are hints as to why the environment outside the cities are so unsafe and inhospitable but, never a full story. Unfortunately, using my own imagination, the idea of the world degrading to the point it has in The Warehouse is not as far fetched as you would think. The idea of a large company taking over all sales, housing, health care and any other needs people have is frightening in how easily it could be done.
I really enjoyed this book. The what ifs it brought to mind were interesting and scary and the way Rob Hart weaves the stories of the characters together is very good.
Thank you to Net Galley and Crown Publishing for the opportunity to read and review this book. It will be released August 20th and it is well worth the read.

Yep. This book is awesome. We've got ourselves in a whole "If Amazon was a Black Mirror episode" situation and it's really damn amazing. Workers who wear trackers to make sure they hit their numbers, make sure they take "breaks" when they're supposed to. Trackers that can tell how fast they're moving, if they're climbing without help. It's all a hot, crazy mess. Oh, and there might be a love story....and a possible coup afoot. How could this book be better? Honestly, I can't answer that. But maybe you can, when you read it. As you should, because, like I said, it's damn amazing.

The Warehouse publishes 8.20.19. And you should immediately buy it. Totally worth it.

Think Amazon and Walmart on steroids: What would happen if either (or both) of these already giant companies went wild and, quite literally, took over the world's commerce?

At first blush, the yin-yang is easy to envision; virtually all small business would be wiped out and the only "secure" jobs essentially would be low-paying gruntwork (albeit with substantial benefits). On the other hand, the convenience for consumers would be unmatched. With state-of-the-industry order technology, huge distribution centers staffed by hundreds and a sky littered with delivery drones, anything people might want would be at their fingertips almost instantly. The question then becomes - and worthy of note is that it's a question that's being asked today - to what extent are those consumers willing to overlook the exploitation of other human beings in order for their own needs to be satisfied?

This entertaining yet often disturbing book gives readers some idea of what life might be like should that happen (some, of course, will argue that we're already at that point). The scene is set at the mothership of a ginormous company called Cloud, which has "campuses" all over the country complete with living quarters, health care and recreational opportunities for the thousands of employees at the facilities. During working hours, they perform jobs assigned to them by managers supposedly according to their skills; to keep them all in line, there's a rating system that, if in any way violated, would land them back in the outside world to fend for themselves (with the promise they'd never again be employed by Cloud). That outside world is dog-eat-dog - pretty much literally - and the long lines of people waiting to submit their resumes to Cloud is a testament to their desperation to escape as well as serve yet another deterrent to any employee who might consider bucking the carefully contrived system.

Enter central characters Paxton and Zinnia, both of whom applied for jobs at Cloud, each for a different, nefarious reason. I won't reveal what those reasons are, but only that neither expects to be working there after their goals have been realized. They meet for the first time briefly on the tram ride that takes them to their work and living quarters. Paxton is more interested in Zinnia than she in him, but early on, she sees an advantage in cozying up to him. Meanwhile, Gibson Wells, the creator and CEO of this monster company, is dying of cancer. Considering himself to be the savior of the free world, he starts a blog to lay out the reasons - more like justifications - behind all he's done that will culminate in the announcement of his successor. He's also announced plans to personally visit all his Cloud facilities before he succumbs, ending with the MotherCloud at which Paxton and Zinnia are employed.

Told through alternating perspectives of the three characters, readers begin to get the full story - complete with a few timely surprises that keep things really interesting and, in the process, provide some food for thought that carries over to the real world (as evidenced by the twinge of buyer's remorse I felt just after finishing the book as I pushed the "place order" button to get the items in my Amazon cart). Oh well, at least they haven't activated drone delivery in my neighborhood (yet).

Thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for the opportunity to read and review an advance copy of this entertaining and thought-provoking book.

Wow! What a ride. Scariest thing about this book is that it's not the typical dystopian world that you don't recognize. So what happens when an Amazon or a Walmart takes over the economy and the US? I feel like it's totally something that could happen even as soon as 10 years from now!

The world that Rob Hart builds is so realistic and believable. I like the relationship that blooms between Paxton and Zinnia. I also enjoyed seeing Paxton's growth and development through the book. You really see how you can get sucked into something that you've sworn to hate.

The only thing I didn't like was the ambiguous ending. Just tell me what happens one way or another!

***Full review to be added to NetGalley, Goodreads, and my blog closer to publication date. It will be added to Amazon upon release.***

The Warehouse is a somewhat foreboding and unexpected look at what could happen if a large e-commerce company were to become the leading--nearly sole--provider of products in the country.



The world-building in The Warehouse is crucial to this story and overall I think Hart really excelled in this area. His creation of Cloud and all that inhabits it was vivid and done in such a way that it felt extremely realistic. There is immense detail given in relation to how the company works, including surveillance, the divisions among employees, the places they are and are not allowed to visit, the tracking, the day-to-day monotony of each area of work life, and so much more. I loved all the little details that Hart included in order to make Cloud feel like an authentic corporation, such as the inclusion of the initial welcome and training information that the employees get upon starting (looking to set up for retirement at Cloud? you'll find out how!) to the rating system in place among employees to keep them working diligently. It brings everything to life.



The world outside of Cloud is also a rather important point of interest for the story and is something I won't go into much detail about, but I do wish that there had a been a bit more background given on the events of the outside world and how they led to Cloud being what it is. There's a general overview given so it's not a mystery per se, but it is still something that I would've liked to know more about, including how people outside of Cloud survive. We get so much about how so many people live in Cloud, but I'm curious about the people outside of Cloud who are constantly ordering from them.



The two main characters we follow are Paxton and Zinnia, each coming to work at Cloud for vastly different reasons, but both falling prey to its greedy, soul-consuming environment. I can't say I ever really felt connected to either character or felt exceptionally attached to them, but I was still invested enough to where I had motivation to keep reading this story and find out what would befall them. I related to various sentiments and situations that each found them in at various times, but as characters overall I just never really liked either one, though Paxton himself seemed rather harmless. All that being said, I don't mind if I don't really like characters as long as they are still interesting and the story is still strong, and both of those were true of The Warehouse. They both had well-developed character arcs that were handled with a deft hand and accurately depicted how an environment like Cloud can affect one's mindset.



The pacing of The Warehouse matches the tone and plot of the story extremely well. It's a steady pace at all times, even if it's a period of time when there isn't a lot technically happening and it doesn't seem as though the action is moving the plot forward. There are plenty of moments of monotony and repetition that Hart adopts in order to convey what life is really like at Cloud, and because of that these areas feel a bit slower at times even though things are still moving at the same pace. I can see this being hit or miss with people, but I didn't personally mind it all that much. The ending is also a bit abrupt and left me with mixed feelings. Part of me really likes the note that Hart ended this book on, but there's also a part of me that wanted a little more from our characters. In the end, though, it just ends up feeling like something that might happen in real life, which we all know isn't always that exciting and thus felt fitting.



The Warehouse is not technically a horror novel. There's nothing overtly 'scary'--there's no ghosts jumping out at people--but there are plenty of things that are inherently frightening and are a deep cause for worry. This takes on a lot of topics about consumerism, corporate greed, climate change, acceptance/standing by, and many other topics that are relevant to our lives today. It's scary because a lot of the elements at play feel eerily plausible and it creates a great reason to step back and reevaluate our role in our world.



Overall, I've given The Warehouse four stars! This is a solid book with dystopian vibes that will really make you think about things while keeping you hooked on every page.

I so want to jump on the bandwagon with all the readers who’ve loved this book. Alas, I’m an outlier, left feeling this story could’ve been so much better.

The Warehouse is set in a near, dystopian future, which both fascinated and irritated me. Life inside The Cloud facility is brilliantly portrayed. I felt what it was like to live and work there. Yet, life beyond the walls of this isolated facility remained mostly a mystery. We’re given hints of a desolate and desperate society, but I wanted to know more so that I understood the desperation. Had the nation become a sort of police state? Did we still have social services, police, firefighters, hospitals, schools? Was the nation even functioning? None of this was explained.

The pacing is maddeningly slow and monotonous. I know this was done, at least in part, to show us the monotony of life there, but I quickly grew bored. I didn’t need to experience endless mind-numbing monotony in order to understand it. And so I skimmed, a lot.

Still, I persevered because I wanted to know how it all turned out. I expected all the buildup to lead us to an explosive ending. But, no, what we’re given is an abrupt and lackluster ending. We’re left with more questions than answers, intentionally perhaps, though the fizzling out and dangling threads only left me irritated.

If you enjoy dystopian novels that expound on a certain mega-conglomerate internet company’s potential to take over the country and maybe the world, then this book offers a lot to consider. But, while I give props for the concept, the execution left me disappointed.