It's been over six months since the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Alex and Darla have been staying with Alex’s relatives, trying to cope with the new reality of the primitive world so vividly portrayed in Ashfall, the first book in this series. It's also been six months of waiting for Alex's parents to return from Iowa. Alex and Darla decide they can wait no longer and must retrace their journey into Iowa to find and bring back Alex's parents to the tenuous safety of Illinois. But the landscape they cross is even more perilous than before, with life-and-death battles for food and power between the remaining communities. When the unthinkable happens, Alex must find new reserves of strength and determination to survive.
I was excited going into Ashen Winter, because I wanted to know what new problems Alex would face in the months after the eruption. Well, I was sorely disappointed. There is a permanent winter occurring and it's much worse than anyone could have prepared for, but other than that, this is almost the same book as Ashfall but with different details. Early on, Alex decides that it's time for him to go find his parents or learn if they're even still living. Instead of skis, he's got a makeshift snowmobile and a sleigh of supplies. At least he's better prepared this time.
Ashen Winter is very repetitive for the first two-thirds. I had to skim a few chapters here and there, or else I felt like I wasn't making any progress. Alex is essentially making the same journey in reverse. He starts off with Darla and plenty of supplies, then ends up alone with no supplies before finally reaching his destination. Finally, in the last third was when things got interesting for me. The plot shifts and I was more invested, but still, it was dragged out in places. Also, I felt like Alex was the same, more heart than brain. A lot of hardships could have been avoided if he thought more before acting.
Ashen Winter does have a cliffhanger ending, which makes me eager to start the last book. It sounds like it's finally going to delve deeper into the larger problems that the country is facing, rather than just Alex setting out to find someone who he doesn't even know is alive or not. Alex is getting involved in the bigger picture, instead of his own little bubble.
