The Warehouse

The world has succumbed to global warming and life outside is rough. Enter Cloud (read Evil Amazon), a company which builds large cities called MotherClouds which offer jobs,housing,food to people. Paxton, a former prison guard and Zinnia, a school teacher join Cloud as they have no other choice. The story revolves around both these people and their intentions of joining Cloud.All the employees of Cloud are forced to wear smart watches called CloudBands which help them in various day to day activities as well as help Cloud track their employees. If an employee even wastes a single minute while working, the watch knows it and decreases their star rating which is a scale of measuring an employee's efficiency. At one point in the story, one of the main characters is told not to utter the word 'union' because if it falls into the wrong ears, they may get fired.Rob Hart has done a great job in exposing what's wrong with the world right now. At a time when the world needs all the help it can get, corporate companies like Amazon are greedy for more wealth in exchange for technologies that can help people.The writing style is great. The story is told in three different perspectives, namely Paxton, Zinnia and Gibson Wells who's the CEO of Cloud. The story seems to be dragged a bit in the middle but the ending is absolutely amazing. Rob Hart makes a strong, fearless statement as to why the world's failing due to these large corporate conglomerates. The world building is really great and the characters are well fleshed out.I seriously fear that the world might come to this stage at some point of time where governments fail and corporates like Amazon take over the world. Woudl recommend this book to everyone.

The Warehouse is a satirical sci fi thriller. The target of the satire is most obviously Amazon, but it could equally be any of the current crop of self righteous tech behemoths, Google, Apple, Microsoft. As a Sci Fi novel, it is set in a fairly near future where global warming is rampant, and retail has become a virtual monopoly in the hands of The Cloud, and its owner Gibson Wells.The story is told by three voices , Wells himself and two new employees. Paxton was a small businessman whose enterprise was ruined by continuous price pressure from the Cloud. Zinnia provides the heart of the thriller, she is a corporate spy, paid by a mysterious client to infiltrate the Cloud.The early part of the book is largely taken up with establishing the Cloud as an environment. Workers are assigned to different tasks, identified by the different t shirts they wear. They work, eat, sleep on company premises, everything they buy is through company outlets. At work they are constantly monitored, assessed, graded. In one particularly telling section, the passage of time is denoted by staccato chapters which say little more than work, eat sleep, repeat.The impact of the constant assessment, negative and positive feedback on Paxton is clearly reminiscent of the brainwashing of Winston Smith. While it doesn't go as far as "Paxton loved Gibson Wells" it isn't far off. Indeed when Gibson visits the facility where Paxton and Zinnia work, his reception definitely resembles North Korean adoration for the dear leader. This is very clearly a vision of capitalist authoritariansim. A Brave New World, perhaps.Of course, in Wells' own account of the world he has created, he is a hero, a philanthropist, who has challenged the bureaucratic establishment to provide a new American utopia. It is Wells who gives the book its greatest moments. Author Rob Hart perfectly captures the self righteous tone of the Nietzschian, Ayn Rand inspired, libertarian silicon valley entrepreneurs. As Paxton and Zinnia discover the truth of the world around them, so the true nature of Wells becomes apparent behind his own words. A self justifying soft collar exploiter. A neo-Victorian mill owner dressed in the language of business school ordure.Of the three elements of the book, the Sci-Fi setting is a necessary backdrop to the satire. The thriller element is perfectly fine, with the tension building up nicely but is not really the main event.I had two minor quibbles with the book. Firstly the satire hits an off note with one waste-related twist at the end. What comes before has a degree of subtlety, but one event is about as nuanced as saying [insert fast food restaurant of choice] is excrement. Secondly, if the US economy is as wrecked as portrayed, and people are so desperate to work at the Cloud, Who is buying all this stuff?Overall, however, the Warehouse deserves to be mentioned alongside Orwell, Huxley and Chaplin.

I'm a little nonplussed by all the rave reviews. It's perfectly readable, but by no means a literary treasure, and the story is perfectly OK. But it's full of holes (won't spoil the plot here but you'll see if you read it) and the world it portrays is far from convincing. Large parts of it are missing and it simply doesn't add up. I kept thinking 'wish I were reading the Circle', so much more rounded, deeper and far better written, if you want the evil all embracing tech corporation thing. Or for dystopia, something like Station Eleven. This is kind of a bit of both, but does no more than nibble at the edges of either.

This came up in my recommended list, great reviews...especially from the media....so figured I'd give it a go..& it's ok.That's it, lower case ok, not great, not as good as the hype would lead you to believe, but it'll pass some time while we're all under house arrest.Sadly as I mentioned it is really an exercise in ticking political SJW boxes in 2020.Strong manly super warrior lead woman.Weak Male.Pretty girls all run the gamut of nasty male sex predatorsNod towards the transgender agendaNod towards same sex marriageetc etcIt was boringly predictable in all these respects.Maybe I should write a follow up connected to Apple in of Amazon like this?

I can’t remember how I ended up with ‘The Warehouse’ on my Kindle but the blurb sounded like something I would be interested in and reminded me of ‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers (which I loved), so I had reasonably high hopes when I started reading this and maybe that’s why it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.This book is set in a very near future US where there is still a government but it is of little consequence. Global warming has hit and people are desperately scrambling for jobs and most end up working for Cloud; a monopoly with unfettered power, which seems to be obviously based on a possible future view of Amazon. Cloud proclaims itself as a force for all that is good, delivering goods by drone and the perfect employer shaping the nature of work and life where employees live on site and their every need is met by the caring Cloud. It all sounds too good to be true and as the story goes on, we begin to understand that it is actually a nightmare that we could end up finding ourselves in in the future.The story is told by three voices; Gibson Wells - founder of Cloud, Paxton - a new employee of Cloud that was a small businessman whose enterprise was ruined by continuous price pressure from the Cloud, and Zinnia - another new employee but is actually a corporate spy paid by a mysterious client to infiltrate Cloud. New employees at Cloud get sorted into roles based on their personalities and previous work experience. Each role wears a different coloured t-shirt, so it’s easy to see who does what. Employees work, eat and sleep on company premises, everything they buy is through company outlets and whilst there they are constantly monitored, assessed and graded through watches that they are required to wear at all times.The positives - the storyline was good, gripping and kept me interested. The characters were strong and Well’s character was very interesting, he paints himself as a hero and philanthropist who has challenged the bureaucratic establishment to provide a new American utopia. He clearly believes in his vision. The world building is great and you can really visualise the facilities and day-to-day life; the repetitiveness of it and the pressure to remain in good standing.The not so positives - there was a weird twist involving the meat supplied by Cloud that I didn’t think was necessary and didn’t add any value for me. When we finally found out how people were tricking the watches, I felt disappointed and thought that it seemed like a lazy way to explain the situation. There were a few scenes that were longer than they needed to be - the endless training videos and item collection bits but I understand that it was setting the scene of boredom and repetitiveness. There was a scene off-campus that I didn’t understand the value of, I think the meaning here passed me by.Overall, if you have read ‘The Circle’, you cannot help but compare ‘The Warehouse’ with that and ‘The Warehouse’ fell shorter for me. The writing was good but the story and plot not as strong. I think if you came to ‘The Warehouse’ first, you will enjoy it more.This is a solid book with a good story that calls on Orwell's ‘1984’, Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’ and Eggers ‘The Circle’ but it wasn’t as strong as those for me.

I was recommended this book just over a year ago and even though I had added to my wishlist of books to read I only just got round to reading it now but I am glad I finally got round to read it as I really enjoyed it.As soon as I started reading this book I instantly got the feeling it was largely based on the business model of companies like Amazon, which later proved to be correct, and although this story is set in the future a lot of the issues it highlights are things which are very much present nowadays.I felt like the actual story was slightly different from what I had initially read in the summary of the book but not in a way where I was left disappointed. If anything it was in the books benefit as the actual story that was told ended up being better for it as we were able to get a better understanding of the various characters and a feel for why and how they ended up where they were.It’s an eye-opening and sometimes scary look at the possible ways businesses like Amazon could end up going and how they could have a significant role and control in our day to day living if they are not regulated better. As much as I appreciate how much of an influence Amazon has on how I currently shop online I’d be the first to be totally against ending up in a place reminiscent to what was portrayed in this story: it’s one step too far for me.