Ashes: Book One of the Ashes Trilogy [Kindle Edition]

The concept of this title was more than intriguing to me and whilst I liked the lead character and the first part of the story, the author seemed to lose cohesion as well as believability by the second part of the title, almost as if it had been well planned and required extending to turn it into a full novel. It does have some clever twists, some interesting notions but with the loss of cohesion alongside a mishmash of characters I soon found it hard to continue reading in any seriousness.

All in this was a great shame to be honest but with this being the first part in a trilogy it is balanced on a fine edge of either going into the realm of ridiculous or whether the author can pull it back. I'll wait and see but if it doesn't improve I'll leave the third well enough alone.

17-year-old Alex is dying from a brain tumour and decides to take one final trip to the Michigan wilderness to make peace with herself. While she's there an electro-magnetic pulse explodes in the atmosphere that kills thousands.

Many of the survivors are now flesh-eating cannibals. Of the other survivors, Alex is one of the small percentage who've gained a superhuman sense - super-smell that can detect a person's emotions.

In the wilderness she meets Tom, a young army veteran and Ellie, an 8-year-old orphan whose grandfather died in the pulse. Together they fight to survive but that's no easy task in a world where everyone is out for themselves, everyone has secrets and no one can be trusted.

Ilsa J Bick's debut YA novel mixes apocalyptic, superhero and dystopian fiction but despite some great ideas, it never really took off for me.

I liked the thought that went into how the superhuman senses work but it doesn't seem to go beyond being a cool concept. Alex never really experiments with her abilities, even when it would help her get what she wants in the second half of the book.

The book splits from a survival story into a dystopian plot after a key event that happens off page and is never really being explained.

I liked the idea that the pulse has given Alex a second chance and her uncertainty of its permanence. I also liked that she has survival skills and knows how to use them. However in the second half she's hindered by a love story with Chris, whose grandfather governs the small town of Rule (a town of survivors with dystopian and religious overtones that have been done elsewhere better). Chris is so underdeveloped that I didn't buy Alex's feelings for him.

Tom's experiences in Iraq give him an interesting backstory and I was sorry when he disappeared from the story, mainly because I did at least buy his connection with Alex as it came from shared experience.

I hated Ellie. Even allowing for her age she doesn't listen and her stupid behaviour triggers every disaster in the story. It `s doubly irritating because neither Tom nor Ellie explain why she must do as she's told, instead reinforcing her behaviour by telling her it's okay.

Ultimately this book just didn't gel for me and the cheap cliffhanger ending annoyed me rather than encouraged me to read on.

Ashes was a book that provided plenty of the darkness and grit that its title suggested. When an EMP causes all electronics to faulter and also interferes with the teeny tiny electrical pulses in the brains of humans, a whole heap of...stuff...hits the fan! Only the very young and very old survive intact, save for a few exceptions such as Alex, the protagonist. Others survive, but as maddened inhumane creatures, similar to the "sickos" in Charlie Higson's "The Enemy" series, or the raging "infected" in "28 Days Later".

The idea of the masses succumbing to a force that leaves them insane and blood thirsty is not new. The dystopian premise of technology falling down around our ears is not new either. So what about this book made me love it as much as I did? It was a combination of things really. I loved Alex as the protagonist. She goes to the mountains to bury her past and to admit that, due to a brain tumor, she has no future. Instead it is her tumor and the treatments she's had for it that saves her from the EMP and allows her to begin her story. These are things you find out in the first pages so I don't think I'm spoiling anything for you.

I loved the was Bick toyed with my expectations of the lovey dovey part of the story. I was expecting that to be straight forward and predictable, but she caught me off-guard! I could go into a ramble about this aspect of the story, but then I would be spoiling things! I'll simply say that I expect the sequel to leave me reeling.

Mostly, I loved the crumbling world Alex found herself in after the EMP. It reminded me of Prentisstown in the Patrick Ness novels. Haunting, patriarchal and oh-so-very insane! I'm thoroughly looking forward to the sequel to this (already on my Goodreads Wishlist) and finding out how Bick tortures her protagonist further.

This is a must-read for fans of dystopia.