Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick
Apr. 19th, 2012 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
”No, she thought. No, please. God. I’m not seeing this.”
Seventeen-year-old Alex is hiking through the wilderness when it happens: an earth-shattering electromagnetic pulse that destroys almost everything.
Survivors are divided between those who have developed a superhuman sense and those who have acquired a taste for human flesh. These flesh-hunters stalk the land: hungry, ruthless and increasingly clever …
Alex meets Tom, a young army veteran, and Ellie a lost girl. They will fight together and be torn apart, but Alex must face the difficult question of all: in such a vastly changed world, who can you trust?
17-year-old Alex is dying from a brain tumour and decides to take one final trip to the Michigan wilderness to make peace with herself. While she’s there an electro-magnetic pulse explodes in the atmosphere that kills thousands.
Many of the survivors are now flesh-eating cannibals. Of the other survivors, Alex is one of the small percentage who’ve gained a superhuman sense – super-smell that can detect a person’s emotions.
In the wilderness she meets Tom, a young army veteran and Ellie, an 8-year-old orphan whose grandfather died in the pulse. Together they fight to survive but that’s no easy task in a world where everyone is out for themselves, everyone has secrets and no one can be trusted.
Ilsa J Bick’s debut YA novel mixes apocalyptic, superhero and dystopian fiction but despite some great ideas, it never really took off for me.
I liked the thought that went into how the superhuman senses work but it doesn’t seem to go beyond being a cool concept. Alex never really experiments with her abilities, even when it would help her get what she wants in the second half of the book.
The book splits from a survival story into a dystopian plot after a key event that happens off page and is never really being explained.
I liked the idea that the pulse has given Alex a second chance and her uncertainty of its permanence. I also liked that she has survival skills and knows how to use them. However in the second half she’s hindered by a love story with Chris, whose grandfather governs the small town of Rule (a town of survivors with dystopian and religious overtones that have been done elsewhere better). Chris is so underdeveloped that I didn’t buy Alex’s feelings for him.
Tom’s experiences in Iraq give him an interesting backstory and I was sorry when he disappeared from the story, mainly because I did at least buy his connection with Alex as it came from shared experience.
I hated Ellie. Even allowing for her age she doesn’t listen and her stupid behaviour triggers every disaster in the story. It ‘s doubly irritating because neither Tom nor Ellie explain why she must do as she’s told, instead reinforcing her behaviour by telling her it’s okay.
Ultimately this book just didn’t gel for me and the cheap cliffhanger ending annoyed me rather than encouraged me to read on.
The Verdict:
Ilsa J Bick’s debut YA novel mixes apocalyptic, superhero and dystopian fiction but despite some great ideas, it never really took off for me. My biggest issue was with Ellie, an 8-year-old whose selfish, unthinking behaviour triggers each plot point in the book and made me root for the cannibals to take her. However I was also disappointed by the way the plot degenerates into a set-up for yet another YA love triangle and the dystopian village in the second half has all the normal elements that I’ve seen in other books and done better. For these reasons, I’m unlikely to read on with this trilogy.
Seventeen-year-old Alex is hiking through the wilderness when it happens: an earth-shattering electromagnetic pulse that destroys almost everything.
Survivors are divided between those who have developed a superhuman sense and those who have acquired a taste for human flesh. These flesh-hunters stalk the land: hungry, ruthless and increasingly clever …
Alex meets Tom, a young army veteran, and Ellie a lost girl. They will fight together and be torn apart, but Alex must face the difficult question of all: in such a vastly changed world, who can you trust?
17-year-old Alex is dying from a brain tumour and decides to take one final trip to the Michigan wilderness to make peace with herself. While she’s there an electro-magnetic pulse explodes in the atmosphere that kills thousands.
Many of the survivors are now flesh-eating cannibals. Of the other survivors, Alex is one of the small percentage who’ve gained a superhuman sense – super-smell that can detect a person’s emotions.
In the wilderness she meets Tom, a young army veteran and Ellie, an 8-year-old orphan whose grandfather died in the pulse. Together they fight to survive but that’s no easy task in a world where everyone is out for themselves, everyone has secrets and no one can be trusted.
Ilsa J Bick’s debut YA novel mixes apocalyptic, superhero and dystopian fiction but despite some great ideas, it never really took off for me.
I liked the thought that went into how the superhuman senses work but it doesn’t seem to go beyond being a cool concept. Alex never really experiments with her abilities, even when it would help her get what she wants in the second half of the book.
The book splits from a survival story into a dystopian plot after a key event that happens off page and is never really being explained.
I liked the idea that the pulse has given Alex a second chance and her uncertainty of its permanence. I also liked that she has survival skills and knows how to use them. However in the second half she’s hindered by a love story with Chris, whose grandfather governs the small town of Rule (a town of survivors with dystopian and religious overtones that have been done elsewhere better). Chris is so underdeveloped that I didn’t buy Alex’s feelings for him.
Tom’s experiences in Iraq give him an interesting backstory and I was sorry when he disappeared from the story, mainly because I did at least buy his connection with Alex as it came from shared experience.
I hated Ellie. Even allowing for her age she doesn’t listen and her stupid behaviour triggers every disaster in the story. It ‘s doubly irritating because neither Tom nor Ellie explain why she must do as she’s told, instead reinforcing her behaviour by telling her it’s okay.
Ultimately this book just didn’t gel for me and the cheap cliffhanger ending annoyed me rather than encouraged me to read on.
The Verdict:
Ilsa J Bick’s debut YA novel mixes apocalyptic, superhero and dystopian fiction but despite some great ideas, it never really took off for me. My biggest issue was with Ellie, an 8-year-old whose selfish, unthinking behaviour triggers each plot point in the book and made me root for the cannibals to take her. However I was also disappointed by the way the plot degenerates into a set-up for yet another YA love triangle and the dystopian village in the second half has all the normal elements that I’ve seen in other books and done better. For these reasons, I’m unlikely to read on with this trilogy.
