Ashfall

“...not eating when there's a full refrigerator downstairs is a totally different experience than not eating because you have no food and no idea where your next meal will come from. Hunger of choice is a painful luxury; hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.”

Following the eruption of the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park, teenage Alex finds himself in a world changed. Alex sets out from his hometown in Iowa to find his parents and little sister, who were on their way to visit some extended family in Illinois. Along the way, he meets a variety of dangers: a terrain comprised of ash, and people driven by a primal need to survive.

It took me a little while to get into this book, I'll admit. The above quote is from about the quarter-way mark, which was when I started to become invested in what happened to Alex. And once Darla was introduced shortly after, I was totally hooked.

The main hurdle that I had to get over was the writing style. Mullin writes in a way that is both sort of detached/clinical, and sort of conversational. A lot of times, it felt like a recitation of facts: this is happening, and now this, and then I did this. In other words, a lot of tell, not show:

“By late afternoon, the ash had pretty much dried out. Pushing the skis through it got tougher – they ground against the ash instead of sliding. I unclipped my boots and tried walking. In some places, the ash had dried onto a fairly compact surface that wasn't too bad to hike on. In others, ash was blowing and collecting in drifts. There, my feet sank quickly in the fine, dusty ash, and pulling them free was difficult. I put the skis back on.”

This was just a random example I chose to illustrate the writing style and is not indicative of the book as a whole: there is plenty of action, some of it graphic, and I found that the technique actually helped me deal with some of the more gruesome scenes. I appreciated the brutal look at survival in a natural disaster wasteland, especially in a novel aimed at a younger audience. It's never too early to learn about how terrible people are, kids!

Another thing to note, especially about my darling Darla: I was happy that both of the kids were pretty badass in their own right, but not overly so. It made sense that country gal Darla was strong and resourceful, and Alex brags about his taekwondo achievements early in the book. Maybe they are a little too capable considering everything they go through, but it seemed realistic to me.

Overall, I felt this was a strong debut from the author and a great start to a series. Thank goodness I am reading this a million years after it was released so that I can start the next one ASAP. 4/5