As promised I am trying to make this blog more about books and quilting and less about ankles. Since I am participating in Book Chick City’s 100 books in a year challenge I thought I’d post a review of the book I found most interesting in January. I was somewhat chuffed to see that I had finished nine books in January. This is a large number of books for me to have read these days. Of the nine books I finished I was most impressed with Ashfall. Ashfall is a young adult novel which posits the question of what one young man would do to find his family after the volcano in Yosemite explodes and wrecks havoc with the environment. When we first meet Alex he is pretty much a typical teen guy. He is far more interested in staying home alone and playing video games than going on a road trip with the rest of his family. The initial action happens pretty fast. Almost as soon as Alex’s family is out the door Yellowstone’s volcano explodes and Alex is trapped in a burning house. He manages to escape to find shelter with the neighbors. Events force him from that temporary shelter and Alex head out on the road to try and find his family. Along the way he meets a young woman Darla and her mother.
What most impressed me about the book was the realism shown in trying to survive after the volcano explodes. Alex is not some mythic character able to fight off bad guys. He is a fifteen year old boy who happens to know some martial arts but this doesn’t always help him when confronted with a larger, stronger opponent with a weapon. The author is not out to romanticize life after volcano yet he never uses the gritty reality of living post eruption for shock effect. There are some very uncomfortable moments in the book especially in the depiction of the so called refugee camp run by FEMA. Imagine those poor souls trapped in the superdome during Katrina magnified by a hundred and you get the idea that the refugee camp was not a place you wanted to be. The author also made me think about my own survival and whether I would be able to do some of the things in the book the characters do. As an example, think about your pets – there is no food, silicosis is a very real possibility for all living creatures – so do you try and save your pet or do you do the merciful thing?
The action comes in fits and starts throughout the book but I think this was a good decision on the part of the author. It allowed us to get a deeper feel for the characters of both Alex and Darla. We are allowed to see both strength and weaknesses, physical and mental in Alex and Darla. Much of their physical fight is tied up with their emotional dilemma. Alex is persistent that he will find his family and Darla has to come to terms with the death of her mother. For awhile, Darla, who had been caring for her farm long before the ashfall, really loses it. As an aside here – thank you, thank you, for depicting a girl clever and inventive enough to create machinery out of spare parts, do mind numbingly hard farm labor and still realistically come across as a girl. To watch them both struggle made me feel all the more for them.
The author did not make the entire novel bleak. Throughout the book we get lovely small vignettes of people still helping one another. Even though the cost of survival is huge some people still tried to maintain some kindness and loyalty in the new world.
Overall Ashfall is a very fine example of a post apocalyptic novel in either the YA or adult area. If post apocalyptic literature is your bag definitely try this one out.
