The Warehouse

A Novel

By: Rob Hart

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller, Jason Culp, Karissa Vacker

Cloud isn’t just a place to work. It’s a place to live. And when you’re here, you’ll never want to leave.

“On the surface, The Warehouse is a thrilling story of corporate espionage at the highest level, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find a terrifying cautionary tale of the nightmare world we are making for ourselves.” (Blake Crouch, New York Times best-selling author of Dark Matter)

Film rights sold to Imagine Entertainment for director Ron Howard!

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by Financial Times • Real Simple • Kirkus Reviews

Paxton never thought he’d be working for Cloud, the giant tech company that’s eaten much of the American economy. Much less that he’d be moving into one of the company’s sprawling live-work facilities.

But compared to what’s left outside, Cloud’s bland chainstore life of gleaming entertainment halls, open-plan offices, and vast warehouses...well, it doesn’t seem so bad. It’s more than anyone else is offering.

Zinnia never thought she’d be infiltrating Cloud. But now she’s undercover, inside the walls, risking it all to ferret out the company’s darkest secrets. And Paxton, with his ordinary little hopes and fears? He just might make the perfect pawn. If she can bear to sacrifice him.

As the truth about Cloud unfolds, Zinnia must gamble everything on a desperate scheme - one that risks both their lives, even as it forces Paxton to question everything about the world he’s so carefully assembled here.

Together, they’ll learn just how far the company will go...to make the world a better place.

Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business - and who will pay the ultimate price.

Advance praise for The Warehouse

“A fun, fast-paced read [that] walks a fine line between a near-future thriller and a smart satire...makes you wonder if we’re already too far into a disastrous future, or if there’s still some hope for humanity.” (NPR)

“Holy hell, The Warehouse is our future, isn’t it? Imagine that one day we screw up the world and our country so damn bad that we all have to live where we work in what amounts to a modern variant on indentured servitude, and then layer on top of that a bleeding-edge thriller set inside a massively autocratic corporate entity, and you still haven’t seen just how sharp, or scary, this book is.... Taut, tense, and masterful.” (Chuck Wendig)

“Wildly imaginative yet terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is both a gripping thriller and an alarming glimpse into what could soon be our future.” (Riley Sager, New York Times best-selling author of Lock Every Door)

©2019 Rob Hart (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"A compelling and intriguing thriller that holds up a black mirror to our own frightening state of affairs.... [Hart’s] tapped a real vein of the zeitgeist with this stand-alone thriller about the future of work that reads like a combination of Dave Eggers’ tech nightmare, The Circle, the public’s basic impression of an Amazon fulfillment center, and Parzival’s infiltration of IOI in Ready Player One. A hell of a prosecution of modern commerce and the nature of work, all contained in the matrix of a Cory Doctorow-esque postmodern thriller that might not turn out the way you hoped. Part video game, part Sinclair Lewis, part Michael Crichton; it adds up to a terrific puzzle.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

“What if the totalitarian regime controlling people’s lives was a mega-corporation rather than a fascist government? That’s the conceit of this intelligent Orwellian thriller by Hart, who imagines an all-too-plausible near-future.... Hart’s detail-oriented world- building, which credibly extrapolates from the Trump administration’s antiregulatory agenda, makes this cautionary tale memorable and powerful. This promises to be Hart’s breakout book.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

“An enjoyable mystery that’s hard to put down... Highly recommended for dystopian fiction fans.” (Library Journal,starred review)

Cloud

Imagine a near future where everything is run by Amazon, or a company a lot like it, called Cloud by Rob Hart in The Warehouse. If you've followed some of the controversies that plague Amazon, especially its employment practices, this book takes those issues to scary dystopian degrees.

I have such a backlog in my Audible library that I rarely get a book that I don't actively want to read/listen to. I took a chance on The Warehouse during a recent BOGO sale, knowing nothing about it or its author, and am happy I did. This was an addictive read that drew me in from the start and didn't let go until the ambiguous ending.

Good characters, effective world building, well structured, and highly relevant. I'm ready to read more Hart and, contrary to my usual attitude, I'm hoping for a sequel within this world. BTW I'm a fan of Amazon and Bezos, who I met briefly in the early 90s before Amazon took off, although I do recognize some of their shortcomings.

The only downside is the narration. Not bad, but it never works for me when speaking in a near whisper is a stand in for earnestness -- most of us listen in a car or through ear buds, we need to be able to hear what you're saying.

5

A well presented narration of a beautifully written utopian novel.
I did not want to put it down.

great listen makes you think

the book is a great listen, makes you think when you order things from online retail companies s*** is going that way freaking real and it is probably war real fanfiction loved the book!!!!

Pretty good all around

Story is interesting, narrators are good and I like how the different voices were used.

Modern dystopia ftw

Well written cautionary tale putting a cheerful, IoT enabled, ‘surveillance capitalist’ face on big brother.
We will take your freedom while supplying everything else you want. Top notch performance with distinct character voices! could always tell who was speaking.

Possible

I guess anything is possible, how ironic that the delivery system is amazon...but anything is possible.

Well done, but...

The author did a great job of setting the scene and creating a dystopian future. But..., I wish he had taken more chances. Ultimately it's a predictable story flow that doesn't really surprise the reader. Every story needs a conflict, but the conflicts hear are somewhat mild. I wish the story could have been bigger. Still, I enjoyed it. Unlike many books I have from Audible, I won't listen to it again, which is a shame.

Every American Needs To Read This Book

We are quickly heading towards the nightmare reality depicted in this story. Many are fighting to make this reality come faster. Some are fighting to stop it. But it seems inevitable. Every day our world becomes more and more like the "cloud burger" described in this book... juicy and delicious, as long as you don't know the secret.

Interesting read

Compares today and a potential possible future if people don't pay attention or stand up to monopolies in business world under the guise of helping. Pay attention when smaller companies are forced to close. Viva la Revolucion.

Thoughtful human story of our time

It’s a story that forces you to think about our current economic situations in human (story) terms. Well thought through and engaging as the story includes personal drama, suspense, and the harsh realities of choices.