Ashes (Ashes #1)

Ashes (Ashes #1) by Ilsa J. Bick

Paperback, 465 pages

Published 29th September 2011 by Quercus

My shelves: apocalyptic, books-i-own, cover-appeal, dystopian, horror, read, read-in-2012, sci-fi, series-or-companions, young-adult, zombies

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Description via Goodreads:

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 aquired a taste for human flesh. These flesh-hunters stalk the land: hungry, ruthless and increasingly clever...

Alex meets Tom, a younge army veteran, and Ellie, a lost girl. They will fight together and be torn apart, but Alex must face the most difficult question of all: 
In such a vastly changed world, who can you trust?

A srtory of high-wire tension, gut-wrenching twist, and burgeoning love, Ashes will leave you breathless.

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I bought Ashes last year and to be honest, I'm really not sure why it took me so long to get around to it. I absolutely loved the premise of this one as I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic type books, even if they do scare me a little bit! As the next book in this trilogy, Shadows, is being released very soon, I thought it was definitely time to pick this one up off my shelves.

Ashes is about a girl named Alex who has a brain tumour and seems to have given up on all of the available treatments, instead deciding to live her life by herself, exploring the wilderness. When Alex is out in theforest, she comes across an old man, his somewhat troubled granddaughter, Ellie, and her dog, Mina. After forming a bond with the old man and being frustrated by Ellie, something very strange happens. The real action of the book starts when the world is hit with several electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) which changes everything. The old man dies, and Alex is left with Ellie and her dog and no idea of what has happened.

I really loved the start of this book. Learning about our protagonist was enjoyable and so was the mystery of the big 'zap' that changed the world. I loved moving through the wilderness with Alex and was quite captivated. The first half of the book was certainly a page turner. Parts of the story were very gruesome and quite disgusting, but the vivid imagery did work well - it gave the book a rather horrifying edge - I certainly wouldn't recommend this for younger teens, though!

Unfortunately, as the book progressed I did start to become a little bored. I absolutely loved following Alex, Ellie and Tom but around halfway or three-quarters of the way through, the book felt a bit disjointed as the characters were separated and I started to lose interest. The last section of the book, where Alex is led into living with some sort of cult was okay but it just didn't capture my imagination as the rest of the book had. The whole cult situation felt a little bit random and the introduction of a love triangle was unnecessary.

Getting to know our main character was very fascinating - Having a character with a terminal illness was different and interesting, I liked reading about her past and the thoughts she had in the present-day. We got to learn more about her as the book progressed and I found her to be a very likeable character. Whilst I didn't find anything about her particularly stand-out or striking, she was strong yet still very human and vulnerable - I liked that about her. I also came to love Ellie, the girl who was at first quite hostile but came to be slightly more mature, yet still kept her fragility. During their exploration of the woods to try and find some safety, we also met Tom, a character who certainly played a big role and is one of the romantic interests in the book. I did like Tom, he seemed like a genuine, caring guy but I personally wouldn't have been able to trust someone as quickly as Alex trusted him, especially in the situation that they were in. We do meet several other characters during the book and they are all well written and quite well formed.

This book does end on quite a big and somewhat exciting cliffhanger, so I do want to know what will happen next to all of our characters. It will be interesting to discover what has become of each character and what they plan to do in regards to the cult. This book had enough positive features in the first half for me to want to read on, so I will be looking forward to trying out the second book, Shadows.