Book Review - Ashes, by Ilsa J. Bick

Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Alex is a seventeen-year-old girl with enough problems - dead parents, an inoperable brain tumor, and few happy memories - that the end of the world might well seem like welcome respite. But after the EMP leaves the world without electricity and electronic devices, leaves Alex stranded on a fictional Michigan mountain with winter just around the corner, she finds herself fighting to live (along with her survival mates and makeshift family) after all.

I really enjoyed this book, pushed through its 450+ pages in about a week, with a busy family event taking up my weekend. The nature of the dystopia - a warfare-based EMP pulse causing technological and nuclear meltdown, the death of an entire generation and a terrifying Change in another - seemed plausible enough to give me the creepy-crawlies. Alex and her fellow survivors all seemed very real to me, their personalities broad and complex, not overly simplified and stereotypical as so often happens in young adult fiction.

Ashes (both a title and a theme which is mentioned *almost* too many times in the first hundred or so pages), is already split into three sections, but it could almost be two separate books. There is a major shift about halfway through and the plot changes so drastically that I can't even really discuss it without giving away the first half. I will say that there seems to be some sort of deeper plan in that second half that evaded me. I'm hoping it's made clear in the second book of the trilogy.

I'm actually a little disappointed that I came across this book before its publication, because that means I'll be waiting even longer for the next one to be released. The cliffhanger ending of Ashes definitely has me already eager for Shadows. Well, maybe I'll get access to that one early, too.



View all my reviews

Book Review - The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Well, it's no Hunger Games. The premise is interesting, and the story had a lot of promise. Unfortunately, a lot of it was left unfulfilled. I identified pretty heavily with the main character, BUT there was a real lack of depth to 99% of the other characters, which is disappointing. I was left with many unanswered questions that I hope are resolved in the sequel, which I do intend to read.

These people are living in a world where the only thing separating them from a forest of Zombies is a chain-link fence. And yet, while you read about their terror and desperation at times, you never FEEL it. Maybe I'm spoiled by the emotional roller coaster that was the Hunger Games series, but I like to be inside of my stories. While this one carried me through, I felt more like I was riding along a path in an electric jeep rather than being chased through the jungle by the dinosaurs.

The only thing I really felt in my bones was Mary's desire for MORE of life, and the sense of loss from those whose loved ones were taken by the Unconsecrated. And while her scenes of desire with her beloved were moving, the genre was painfully obvious to me as it usually isn't in good YA - I could tell the author was holding back because of the intended age of the audience, and the work was the worse for it.

View all my reviews