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aviationcat's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
kingabee's review against another edition
2.0
After reading and loving the first two books in Moira Young’s Dustlands series I thought maybe post-apocalyptical YA are exactly what has been missing in my life, so right away I went through all the kindle books I’ve bought to see if I have anything to fit the criteria. Thus I found ‘Ashes’.
Sadly, Ashes is nothing like Dustlands. It seems that everything that Young did right, Bick did wrong. Inevitably there will be a lot of comparisons in this review.
It starts off nicely. Alex, a teenage girl with brain cancer, is on a lone camping trip where she hopes to finds herself. Suddenly, a ‘zap’ happens, which miraculously cures her from cancer but kills everybody between the ages of twenty-five and sixty. What’s left is scared old people and teenagers who in their majority (bar a few exceptions like Alex) have turned into zombie-like figures and are out to eat the old people. Let me tell you – the generational gap has never been quite this painful. Since the dawn of time, old people said that young people were wild – yet, this time it’s literal.
The first part of the book is the survival sort of story which includes Alex, another spared young person – Tom and a little girl called Ellie (a set-up almost identical to Blood Red Road). It should be great - survival, forest, a girl and a guy against the world and zombie-like freaks… I have dreams like that and they are happy dreams. Yet, the book doesn’t quite reach its potential. Its biggest problem is probably the cardboard characters who never act in any consistent way that would give us some clue as to their personalities. Ellie switches from being an utter brat to being a bright, lovely and loving girl. Alex is sometimes a damsel in distress, who almost faints when she needs to clean Tom’s wound and sometimes she is as hard as rocks, telling another character, she’d been practising surgical stitches with her doctor mother when she was still a little girl.
The obvious romance between Tom and Alex is hard to believe because we haven’t got a clue who these two even are. Even though Alex is probably a fairly nice person, I’d take a rough on the edges Saba from Blood Red Road over Alex anytime.
Ilsa Bick also tries to cram way too many things into this book, never developing anything. She introduces love triangle quite early on before we can develop any feelings for any of the characters. She abandons the survival story in favour of some random post-apocalyptic misogynistic dystopia, that, frankly, has already been done to death and is neither here nor there in this book. The second part of the book is where plot loses any sense of direction and pointlessly goes in circles just to be finally wrapped up with one of the most eyebrow-raising endings.
The author tries to make up for the shortcomings of the plot with fore-shadowing (like “This was the last good day”) and unnecessary cliff-hangers at the end of each tiny chapter which annoy rather excite. The chapter would always end mid-scene (quite like a commercial break on the tv) which made no narrative sense – what was the point of those chapters if they didn’t correlate with scenes and events?
None of it is rescued by Bick’s writing which is average at best of times and poor at other times. Her third person narrator is usually eloquent enough only to break into random teenage talk for no reason:
“Like the way Reglan made her all twitchy, with a horrible, total-body sensation of ants swarming over her skin. So she’d been a total spaz and nauseous, which sucked.”
There is no need for that troglodyte language when you narrate in the third person!
Funnily enough, Saba, the narrator of Blood Red Road uses very poor grammar and says things like ‘I ain’t affeared of nuthin’, yet her whole narration sounds more smooth, congruent and beautiful.
So no, I won’t be continuing this series, because despite a cliff-hanger ending I couldn’t care less what happens to Alex, and whether she ends up with Tom or Chris or eaten by zombies.
Sadly, Ashes is nothing like Dustlands. It seems that everything that Young did right, Bick did wrong. Inevitably there will be a lot of comparisons in this review.
It starts off nicely. Alex, a teenage girl with brain cancer, is on a lone camping trip where she hopes to finds herself. Suddenly, a ‘zap’ happens, which miraculously cures her from cancer but kills everybody between the ages of twenty-five and sixty. What’s left is scared old people and teenagers who in their majority (bar a few exceptions like Alex) have turned into zombie-like figures and are out to eat the old people. Let me tell you – the generational gap has never been quite this painful. Since the dawn of time, old people said that young people were wild – yet, this time it’s literal.
The first part of the book is the survival sort of story which includes Alex, another spared young person – Tom and a little girl called Ellie (a set-up almost identical to Blood Red Road). It should be great - survival, forest, a girl and a guy against the world and zombie-like freaks… I have dreams like that and they are happy dreams. Yet, the book doesn’t quite reach its potential. Its biggest problem is probably the cardboard characters who never act in any consistent way that would give us some clue as to their personalities. Ellie switches from being an utter brat to being a bright, lovely and loving girl. Alex is sometimes a damsel in distress, who almost faints when she needs to clean Tom’s wound and sometimes she is as hard as rocks, telling another character, she’d been practising surgical stitches with her doctor mother when she was still a little girl.
The obvious romance between Tom and Alex is hard to believe because we haven’t got a clue who these two even are. Even though Alex is probably a fairly nice person, I’d take a rough on the edges Saba from Blood Red Road over Alex anytime.
Ilsa Bick also tries to cram way too many things into this book, never developing anything. She introduces love triangle quite early on before we can develop any feelings for any of the characters. She abandons the survival story in favour of some random post-apocalyptic misogynistic dystopia, that, frankly, has already been done to death and is neither here nor there in this book. The second part of the book is where plot loses any sense of direction and pointlessly goes in circles just to be finally wrapped up with one of the most eyebrow-raising endings.
The author tries to make up for the shortcomings of the plot with fore-shadowing (like “This was the last good day”) and unnecessary cliff-hangers at the end of each tiny chapter which annoy rather excite. The chapter would always end mid-scene (quite like a commercial break on the tv) which made no narrative sense – what was the point of those chapters if they didn’t correlate with scenes and events?
None of it is rescued by Bick’s writing which is average at best of times and poor at other times. Her third person narrator is usually eloquent enough only to break into random teenage talk for no reason:
“Like the way Reglan made her all twitchy, with a horrible, total-body sensation of ants swarming over her skin. So she’d been a total spaz and nauseous, which sucked.”
There is no need for that troglodyte language when you narrate in the third person!
Funnily enough, Saba, the narrator of Blood Red Road uses very poor grammar and says things like ‘I ain’t affeared of nuthin’, yet her whole narration sounds more smooth, congruent and beautiful.
So no, I won’t be continuing this series, because despite a cliff-hanger ending I couldn’t care less what happens to Alex, and whether she ends up with Tom or Chris or eaten by zombies.
b_clagg's review against another edition
4.0
4-24-12. Fast paced and difficult to put down. Anxious to read book two.
malima's review against another edition
DNF at 57 %
Look, I enjoy the characters, and I am very curious about what caused all of this to happen, how it's going to develop and what this means for the future of humanity. The writing style is also good.
But at some point I just have to admit to myself that I don't enjoy the zombie and wilderness survival stuff, and that no amount of interest in all the other parts of this story will keep those parts from boring me.
Look, I enjoy the characters, and I am very curious about what caused all of this to happen, how it's going to develop and what this means for the future of humanity. The writing style is also good.
But at some point I just have to admit to myself that I don't enjoy the zombie and wilderness survival stuff, and that no amount of interest in all the other parts of this story will keep those parts from boring me.
jillian1218's review against another edition
5.0
Part wilderness survival story, part eco-disaster, part zombie apocalypse, Ilsa J. Bick’s young adult genre mash-up does not disappoint. Seventeen-year-old Alex is four days into a camping trip in the Waucamaw Wilderness of Michigan -- but not an average camping trip: with a brain tumor worsening, she ditches out on treatment, compelled to scatter the ashes of her parents across Lake Superior -- when she’s suddenly struck down with blinding pain. But it’s not The Monster in her head this time; an electromagnetic pulse has swept through the sky, frying everything in its path. As it turns out, “the Zap” results in billions of people dropping dead and has turned most children and teens into zombie-like cannibals. Banding together with two other young people who were not effected by The Change (an 8-year old girl whose grandfather was killed during the zap and a hunky young army veteran on leave), Alex and her compatriots make their way out of the woods in hopes of finding safety. But a world in turmoil is a frightening thing and Alex soon realizes that places of refuge are not always as safe as they seem. Blood and guts abound in this heart-stopping page-turner, which is to be expected of a zombie apocalypse tale. Bick weaves multiple layers through the book and infuses it all with reach details, loads of suspense, and lots of grit. Definitely a book worth devouring.
kim_j_dare's review against another edition
3.0
When an electromagnetic pulse zaps through the atmosphere, it creates havoc in the world-- shuts down power, sets off nuclear devices, and kills a good chunk of the world's population. Oh yeah, and most of those who are left are turned into zombies. 17-year-old Alex, a brain cancer patient who has been treking through the woods on a journey to find closure before her death, finds herself saddled with a grief-stricken and angry 8-year-old in the aftershock of the pulse. They're then joined by Tom, a young soldier on leave, and together, they try to make sense of what the world has become.
The first half of the book is intense and fast-paced, but somewhere around the middle, the pacing gets very disjointed. Parts of the story are very good; much of it was so dense that I started to lose interest during the second half.
The first half of the book is intense and fast-paced, but somewhere around the middle, the pacing gets very disjointed. Parts of the story are very good; much of it was so dense that I started to lose interest during the second half.
outoftheblue14's review
4.0
Alex, a sisteen-year-old girl with brian cancer, was hiking into the woods when an elecrtomagnetic impulse swept the country, destroying every electronic device and killing thousands of people between 25 and 60. Alex teams up with Ellie, an eight-year old girl whose grandfather was killed by the pulse, and Tom, a young soldier on leave from Afghanistan. They soon discover that the United States are in disarray and that among the teenagers who were spared, many have turned into flesh-eating monsters.
This book is action-packed and full with heart-thumping twists. It's almost as if it were divided into two parts: the first half featuring Alex, Ellie, and Tom fending off for themselves; and the second half, in which Alex is separated by her companions and finds shelter into the community of Rule. The first part was much more interesting than the second; even though the mystery of Rule was engaging, there was just no match. I wanted to learn more about Tom and what happened to him, and kept waiting for him to turn up.
The main character, Alex, is a strong girl who lost both her parents in a car crash a few years before. She was living with her aunt and fighting against brain cancer. At the beginning of the book, she's decided she will not undergo another cycle of therapy and has left her aunt's house to go hiking alone. Then, the mysterious pulse happens. The United States are now filled with teenagers turned into flesh-eating zombies. Well, there's not proper zombies, since they never died; but they behave exactly like zombies, so it's safe to consider them so.
Alex, Ellie, and Tom are left to fend off for themselves. They are actually very good at that. As a trained soldier, it's natural that Tom would have some experience in survival techniques. Alex, however, was way too good at that. The explanation given by the narrator was that she learned it all about from her father, but he has already been dead for years. Moreover, when the group finds shelter in the ranger's cabin, they could very well spend the winter there. Instead, they decide to move up north in order to find a "secluded" place where they can settle and start farming. But they already were in a secluded place... one provided with food and various equipment (including a generator!). Why would they need to leave? It's obviously a device to keep the plot moving, but I'd rather a more sensible motivation was given.
As for Alex's powers... I found that to be the weakest element in the plot. We already have a mysterious electromagnetic pulse (where did it come from?), mysterious killings (why did everyone between 25 and 60 die? Why only spare children, teenagers and old people?), and flesh-eating zombies (why were some spared?). You don't need superpowers, too.
Once Alex arrives in Rule, the narrative pace slows down considerably. It's obvious something's wrong there, and Alex is driven to find out exactly what. She's also alone, now, so she needs to find help. The book ends in a big cliffhanger - it would have been frustrating, had I not started to read Book 2 immediately.
This book is action-packed and full with heart-thumping twists. It's almost as if it were divided into two parts: the first half featuring Alex, Ellie, and Tom fending off for themselves; and the second half, in which Alex is separated by her companions and finds shelter into the community of Rule. The first part was much more interesting than the second; even though the mystery of Rule was engaging, there was just no match. I wanted to learn more about Tom and what happened to him, and kept waiting for him to turn up.
The main character, Alex, is a strong girl who lost both her parents in a car crash a few years before. She was living with her aunt and fighting against brain cancer. At the beginning of the book, she's decided she will not undergo another cycle of therapy and has left her aunt's house to go hiking alone. Then, the mysterious pulse happens. The United States are now filled with teenagers turned into flesh-eating zombies. Well, there's not proper zombies, since they never died; but they behave exactly like zombies, so it's safe to consider them so.
Alex, Ellie, and Tom are left to fend off for themselves. They are actually very good at that. As a trained soldier, it's natural that Tom would have some experience in survival techniques. Alex, however, was way too good at that. The explanation given by the narrator was that she learned it all about from her father, but he has already been dead for years. Moreover, when the group finds shelter in the ranger's cabin, they could very well spend the winter there. Instead, they decide to move up north in order to find a "secluded" place where they can settle and start farming. But they already were in a secluded place... one provided with food and various equipment (including a generator!). Why would they need to leave? It's obviously a device to keep the plot moving, but I'd rather a more sensible motivation was given.
As for Alex's powers... I found that to be the weakest element in the plot. We already have a mysterious electromagnetic pulse (where did it come from?), mysterious killings (why did everyone between 25 and 60 die? Why only spare children, teenagers and old people?), and flesh-eating zombies (why were some spared?). You don't need superpowers, too.
Once Alex arrives in Rule, the narrative pace slows down considerably. It's obvious something's wrong there, and Alex is driven to find out exactly what. She's also alone, now, so she needs to find help. The book ends in a big cliffhanger - it would have been frustrating, had I not started to read Book 2 immediately.
brianna3645's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
reader4evr's review against another edition
3.0
Rating: 3.5
I was kind of nervous to read this story because I had heard it was very gorey and graphic. There were some gross parts of this book but overall it wasn't what I expected.
The storyline was interesting and had me guessing a lot. The whole concept of this EMP that would go off and effect certain people is kind of scary because sometime you wonder if that could really happen.
Alex was just ok, she was determined and likeable but sometimes I didn't like what she was say or do. I was a fan on Tom and I felt for him and his background. Wasn't a fan on Ellie although she really did act like a true 8 year old and she drove me nuts with her behavior. I wonder if Alex will ever met up with Tom or Ellie again.
I thought the book was way to long but the one thing I did like was that the chapters were short so maybe that would appeal to reluctant readers.
When I read the last page of the book, I said oh oh (good ending to make you want to read on in the series!).
I was kind of nervous to read this story because I had heard it was very gorey and graphic. There were some gross parts of this book but overall it wasn't what I expected.
The storyline was interesting and had me guessing a lot. The whole concept of this EMP that would go off and effect certain people is kind of scary because sometime you wonder if that could really happen.
Alex was just ok, she was determined and likeable but sometimes I didn't like what she was say or do. I was a fan on Tom and I felt for him and his background. Wasn't a fan on Ellie although she really did act like a true 8 year old and she drove me nuts with her behavior. I wonder if Alex will ever met up with Tom or Ellie again.
I thought the book was way to long but the one thing I did like was that the chapters were short so maybe that would appeal to reluctant readers.
When I read the last page of the book, I said oh oh (good ending to make you want to read on in the series!).