Monsters: Book 3 (Ashes, #3)

by Ilsa J Bick

Alex is tough. She has survived the EMP blast, she has lived among the flesh-eating Changed, and she has been separated from Tom for months. And she hasn't given up.

But on the brink of starvation and in the grip of a winter that just won't end, Alex discovers a new and terrible truth:

The Changed are still evolving.

And... they've had help.

• ISBN10: 0857382667
• ISBN13: 9780857382665
• Publish Date: 26 September 2013 (first published 1 August 2013)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 29 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Hachette Children's Group
• Imprint: Quercus Children's Books
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 608
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

To be quite honest, I didn't like this series. There were some amazing ideas, and awesome scenes, but overall, all three books are terribly boring. Monsters is huge, and it felt long and dragged out. I was hoping it would be better, since I did enjoy the ending of Shadows, but nope. It starts out with just about everyone being frozen, starving, and/or hallucinating. The story still jumps around like crazy, but at least this time I had a slightly better grasp on who most of the characters were. Sadly, I still had no investment in any of them, except Alex, and maybe Tom. Both of which didn't have enough pages, so I was skim reading more often than not.

The weirdest thing about this series was that it reads like one epically long book, rather than like a series. Neither of the sequels have any kind of recap; they just pick up where the last left off. Although, Monsters does have a glossary of characters. Too bad it's at the very end and I had no clue it was there! It would have served it's purpose had it been at the beginning, but since I had already finished slogging through the book, I didn't bother reading it.

Monsters is super slow in the first half. It's beyond boring despite there being a lot of violence and near death experiences. It just felt like the previous book happening all over again but with the characters in different locations. Plus it frustrated the heck out of me how close Alex, Tom, and Ellie were to each other, but kept conveniently missing one another. Then in the second half, it's pretty much nonstop action, lots more violence, and gore, and more evil conspiracies. For the most part I found a lot of the gore to be gratuitous. The author uses way too much detail in just about every aspect of the novel, which certainly doesn't help with pacing, or making me want to read further.

As a conclusion, Monsters left me with a lot of questions. Part of this is probably due to me not reading as carefully as I should have been, but the book really wasn't holding my attention. Plus the end is pretty open. I'm still not quite sure what was happening with The Changed and The Spared, and those caught in between. For once I would have liked a concrete ending rather than the cliffhangers the author had been giving us.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[Suz @ Bookish Revelations]

The Ashes Trilogy is one of the most intriguing and brilliant dystopian trilogies that I've read in quite a while. I was lucky enough to be sent review copies for each of the books in the series, including the newest one Monsters, and have fallen in love with the dark and terrifying world that Ilsa J. Bick has created. I powered through all three of these books in the span of a week and when it was over, was still left craving more. I cannot even begin to tell you the many times that Bick had me on the edge of my seat anticipating the next twist or turn she was going to throw out at me from her bag of tricks.

In this darkly rich and terrifying post-apocalyptic world, absolutely no one is safe from the Changed who are now changing and evolving with help from another source. Originally inspired and alive with overwhelming danger and horrifying truths uncovered, Monsters will deliver you to brink of insanity and plunge you into a world where hope and safety are dwindling as fast as lives are being lost. The atmospheric chaos and brutal violence is palpable and the fear is as thick as the tension. The monsters are quickly rising up from the ashes and wrecking havoc in their wake. The world is turning darker than ever and what little hope that was left once flickering, is starting to burn out with each new demise of what once was.

Through it all, Alex has been to hell and back, literally. Living with the monster in her head, left on her own to face incredible insufferable terrors, inevitable death and destruction at the hands of the monsters, and dangerous betrayal. It's been a long and winding treacherous road that she's been following, leading her to even more darkness, horrifying secrets discovered, and with no hope of rescue on her horizon at any point in the near future. Even while facing starvation in a bitter winter that is hell bent on taking her down as much as the monster in her head, she still plunges on. She still pushes ahead and fights as hard as she can, showing readers that in a world where there is little hope, just maybe a flicker still burns inside of her. The depth of her fear never holds her back from being incredibly brave, which is something that I can admire greatly in any character.

The cast of characters that Bick introduces in this trilogy are amazing and they all have their place and importance in the story being told. The way that she weaves them in and out of the story is absolutely amazing, given that it's such a big cast and they all have their own way of contributing bit by bit. Another aspect of the story that I really enjoyed was that the romance between Alex and Tom didn't overshadow the story that she was telling, but rather complimented it. Their whole reason from the beginning to the end of this series, was to be reunited with one another, yet it was told in such a way that it didn't detract from the main plot of the series or each of the books. Along their journey readers were given a chance to encounter new characters and get to know them, as both Tom and Alex fought their way back to each other. This made the idea of them coming together so much more real and believable. It will make you want to root for them, to see them end up together as they are so amazing and perfect for one another. Their story is about love, survival, and hope in the face of extremely overwhelming odds. It's absolutely beautiful!

To say that Monsters was a head trip, would be an understatement. It literally was about all of the the monsters inside of your head, the demons that you fight, and try to stamp down every chance that you get. It's the spiderweb in the darkness that ensnares you and feeds off your fear, hastening your survival, and beckoning you away from the light. All of this and so much more, is what the characters in the Ashes Trilogy has to deal with in the final riveting installment of this epic series. If you are a fan of dark dystopian novels, then this is the perfect trilogy for you. It is brutal, cunning, dangerous, full of survival, and has so much to offer.