View source for Ashes by Ilsa Bick

{{infobox
|title=Ashes
|author=Ilsa Bick
|reviewer=Jill Murphy
|genre=Teens
|summary=A enjoyable entrant into the busy dystopian market. A strong female central character has both internal and external demons to deal with after a catastrophic electrical pulse destroys society as we know it.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=352
|publisher=Quercus
|website=http://http://www.ilsajbick.com/
|date=September 2011
|isbn=0857382624
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382624</amazonuk>
|amazonus=<amazonus>1606841750</amazonus>
|video=CkPLp1n1AzA
}}

Alex is hiking in the wilderness when it all kicks off. Suffering from a brain tumour and with only Aunt Hannah to care about, she has a mission to complete before it's too late. She is enjoying - as much as she could enjoy anything - the solitude and her memories, cruelly truncated by the cancer, which come in tiny, sparkling, precious moments. And then comes ''the zap''. A catastrophic electromagnetic pulse sweeps across the globe and destroys almost everything. There are few survivors and most of those who do make it through have become psychotic, flesh-eating monsters. Those who haven't changed are in terrible trouble. Society is in ruins, all communication has broken down, and the flesh-eaters are hunting.

Alex is a survivor. More than a survivor. She has lost the tremors caused by the tumour. She has her memories back. And her sense of smell has become almost superhuman. She can even smell emotions. With Tom, a young army veteran, and Ellie, a small girl whose grandfather died during the pulse, Alex must find a way to cope with this new world and a life suddenly returned to her...

I'm not at all bored with the dystopian genre yet, but I will concede that the niche is getting a bit too busy. New entrants need to find something fresh and the options are rapidly running out. Ilsa Bick has gone for zombies that aren't really zombies - they're still alive - and avoided viruses and global warming and the other much-used catastrophes to set up her armageddon. So that's good. She's also chosen a wilderness setting that gives her protagonists all sorts of survival difficulties that would have existed with or without ''the zap''. So that's good too. And she has a strong-but-flawed central character with a great back story. Even better! The plot flies along and there are plenty of twists and turns.

There is a love triangle going on - not to my taste at all. Although many readers will find it an enhancement, I don't want the curse of teen romance to infect my favourite genre as it did the bitey and lycanthrope books! But this is a personal nit pick and ''Ashes'' is not a romance novel, so don't worry too much.

All in all, ''Ashes'' has a great deal to offer the fan of catastrophe novels. I really enjoyed it.

I think you might also like [[D4rk Inside by Jeyn Roberts]], an unusual entrant into the dystopian market. It doesn't bother with any worldbuilding, it just goes for the violence and frenzy of a disintegrating society. Its villains are also ''changed'' - and not for the better.

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[[Category:Dystopian Fiction]]

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