Ashes (Ashes, #1)

by Ilsa J Bick

[rakesandrogues]

I was a non-believer. I knew that there was a ton of hype surrounding this book in the blogosphere, but the cover didn’t appeal to me. I was wrong. ASHES is hype-worthy. I can’t even count the number of times that I said “Yuck!” out loud. In a good way, of course.

ASHES is a non-stop sensory overload. And that’s how you know that Ilsa J. Bick is a fabulous writer. It’s one thing to see a scene unfold right before your eyes, but it’s on a whole different level when you can actually smell and taste what’s going on. She’s an unbelievably descriptive writer especially when it comes to the gruesome zombie scenes. The book gets quite graphic and violent so if you tend to get queasy, I wouldn’t pick this up… but then you’d be missing out.

One of the many reasons why I loved ASHES was the fact that Bick tries to get the characters to come to a scientific reasoning as to why everything is happening. Bick doesn’t take the easy way out by saying that everything happens just because she says it did. Alex’s knowledge is limited to what she knows from her AP Bio science class and random tidbits that she’s picked up over the years. She may not be a scientist, but she’s also not an idiot. I think it gives ASHES a more realistic feel because I think that people would definitely try to figure out what on earth is happening if they were in this situation. You can’t always be running from zombies. There’s definitely a lot of time to think about what’s going on. As to the question of if this can really happen? I’m not sure about that. I’m no science expert, but Bick’s writing definitely makes me hope that it never does.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a love triangle in this book. Uh oh. But for once, I can actually say that I did not mind. I know we’re all tired of the silly and unnecessary love triangles that are taking over the YA market but it actually works in ASHES. Why? Because ASHES does take place within a few months and SO MANY THINGS happen in that amount of time. I’d hate to give out spoilers, so trust me when I say that it works and it’s quite a dilemma.

So now that I’ve been properly exposed to a zombie book, I want more! Specifically, I want more ASHES. I felt satisfied once I completed ASHES but I feel an insane urge to find out what happens next. There is no cliffhanger ending, but you will be left with a ton of questions that will be dying to be answered.

Why I’m Biased: I’m almost immediately turned off by anything that sounds remotely dystopian / post-apocalyptic just because there were so many of them this year. I’m obviously way too quick to judge.