I won’t name names, but if you’ve read this book there are probably 1 of 2 existing companies that you immediately thought of when presented with the world of Cloud. Me personally, I immediately thought of both!
The Warehouse – a novel by Rob Hart
- Category – Sci-Fi Dystopian Thriller
- Length – 368 Pages
- Read Time – 3 Days
- GR Rating – 3 Stars
I was really into this book when I started it, most of the way through my intrigue was peaked, I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Then the ending of the book happened & I was left thinking, okay wtf was that about. Let’s get into it…
In The Warehouse, we follow Paxton & Zinnia as they start their new jobs at Cloud. In a USA where big corporations have been allowed to go unchecked & usurp government powers for their own profit (sounds familiar already), most of the population works for Cloud. Paxton seeks employment at Cloud after his small business is run out of business by Cloud. Zinnia on the other hand is basically a corporate spy, hired to infiltrate Cloud & learn the businesses secrets.
Cloud is a mega tech-corporation which produces, sells (online) & distributes all kinds of products (via drones), everything from nutritional items to home goods & everyday essentials. Sounds a little familiar again doesn’t it. The gigantic Cloud facilities are built in remote locations & only accessible via the Cloud transit which picks up perspective employees a few miles away & ferries them back. Upon arrival positions are assigned to the new employees based on the results of an assessment they are given & along with their new job assignments employees get assigned in-facility apartments. What could possibly go wrong when directly linking your housing to your place of employment, AT your place of employment. Fairly early on we see the signs of turmoil & disruption at Cloud. Every employee is assigned a smart watch which not only serves as their employee badges but also their apartment key & wallet. That all seems pretty standard, however what isn’t standard is the watches also serving as tracking devices for Cloud to monitor every persons location, movements & bio-metric data day to day. Employees standing within the company is dependent on not only their job performance but also how well they interact with other Cloud employees & what kind of life they lead “outside” of work.
Zinnia is assigned a picking position & spends her days sprinting back & forth picking order items & trying to figure out how she can bypass the need to wear her employee watch to move around the facility freely and snoop. Paxton is assigned a security job and takes an immediate liking to Zinnia whom he spends some personal time with post hiring. Aside from the warehouse & employee apartments, cloud facilities have restaurants & some light entertainment such as the arcade Zinnia likes to frequent. We aren’t given too much detail about the mundane day to day of working at Cloud, switching POV’s between Paxton, Zinnia & our narrator Clouds founder & CEO, Gibson Wells.
In the end Zinnia finds out more than she bargained for & discovers that she was actually hired by Gibson Wells. Hired to find any leaks or exploitable weaknesses in the companies systems now that Wells is dying & passing the company on to his daughter. The ending of the book was a bit vague, I guess we can conclude that the burger secret will get out but we can just as easily conclude that the secret will die with Zinnia, who knows.
The plausibility of this bleak “corporate town” existence makes this book a bit distressing.
Thank you for joining me for another review, I’d love to read your thoughts on my review & of course on the book too.
- Have you read this book?
- What was your favorite part? (Zinnia’s fight scene at the medical station)
- What was your least favorite part? (The burger secret, wtf was that about)
- How many stars do you rate this book?
Hasta la próxima – V
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