Ashfall

Alex, a fifteen-year-old living in Cedar Falls, Iowa, is alone for the weekend, having browbeat his parents into letting him stay home while they take his little sister to visit relatives in Warren, Illinois. He’s looking forward to doing his own thing (mostly geek stuff) for a few days but, after several hours of online questing on World of Warcraft,  Alex’s life changes forever.

Nine hundred miles away in Yellowstone Park, the supervolcano has exploded and Alex’s house is shattered by what feels and sounds like incoming artillery. Digging himself out, he struggles to escape the blaze and finds shelter with neighbors. The noise, the continuous explosions, the fear of the unknown are nearly overwhelming. All telephone communication is out so Alex has no way to reach his family.

Then the ash begins to fall. And the darkness comes with it, along with a sulfurous stench. Two days later, water flow is gone. Finally, the first looters come and the resulting terror and devastation give Alex the resolve to find his family no matter what it takes. The journey ahead will be long and fearsome, a nightmare Alex will face alone until he meets 17-year-old Darla who has a maturity far beyond her years. Will these two survive the journey or will this nightmare prove to be too much?

I have a particular fondness for post-apocalyptic and disaster-related fiction and have, I think, developed a discerning taste over many years of reading such novels. Ashfall is one of the very best I’ve read and is more remarkable because it’s Mullin‘s first book. His descriptions of the conditions, environmental and human, that will most certainly follow such a cataclysmic event have the ring of truth and he maintains a level of intensity and despair, as well as strength and hope, that are difficult for many writers to convey without being “over the top”. It’s a compelling tale with dystopian elements and what could be an overpoweringly dark story is alleviated by flashes of humor and a bit of romance. In fact, the way Mullin handles the developing relationship between Alex and Darla was especially appealing to me as it is realistic and tasteful. Parents should not be concerned when their teens pick up this book—it was written with them in mind.

Ashfall is the first of a trilogy and I’m looking forward to Ashen Winter in October 2012. In the meantime, I’m waiting till Ashfall is released so I can buy a copy for my bookcase and I’ll be including it in my list of Top Five favorite books for 2011. I strongly recommend it to adults and teens alike.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, August 2011.

Thirty years ago, at 4:30 PM all over the world everything changed. Technology stopped working and magic began. Creatures like unicorns, centaurs, and werewolves walked the world.

And the old cities fell apart as looters ‘libbed’ what they needed to survive from business establishments and homes.

Fred is an apprentice ‘caster’, the son of a man who lived through the Change and doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s impatient with his master Paypay’s instructions and takes on a pupil of his own, Yan, the son of a local doctor. When Paypay learns that Fred is learning elsewhere, he turns Fred away.

Fred and Yan go rogue and begin applying the concepts of computer programming to magic, creating a programmed system with delays and other facets. When Fred realizes Yan’s burned down Paypay’s shop in retaliation, he kicks his lifelong friend out.

The wizard’s battle is thus joined. Yan is not going to slink away. Instead, he uses his rebel magic to enlist the centaurs to help him get a unicorn horn–the deepest of the realm’s magic. When Fred’s approached by Ariel, the unicorn’s angry mate, he realizes he has to go face Yan. His father and Yan’s join him in this quest.

I don’t generally read post-apocalyptic dystopics, but Boyett’s “Elegy Beach” drew me in with the title and the first chapter. The characters are engaging and the storyline kept me reading save for some slow portions in the middle. In some places, the story was predictable, but definitely more than just a ‘beach’ read for me.

Reviewed by Rebecca Kyle, January 2010.

All is well in the small community of Black Mountain, NC, and retired army colonel John Matherson, now a history professor at the local college, is raising his two daughters alone after the death of his wife several years earlier.   Living in this town is just what one would expect–peaceful, calm, generally somewhat like Mayberry–and John is content if not completely happy.  One second, all is as it should be and the next, nothing electrical or electronic is working.  Within hours, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong and, eventually, the probability that at least this part of the US has suffered an electromagnetic pulse attack is clear.

One Second After

It’s not so easy to imagine the consequences of such an attack when we’re accustomed to the idea of a full nuclear or biochemical event but John and his family and friends find out soon enough how dependent they are on things that no longer work–all but the oldest cars, landline and cell phones, radios, refrigeration, pacemakers, water filtration, sewage treatment, etc.–and how soon a town can run out of necessities such as food and drugs.  Along with the horrors, though, the town has flashes of honor and even humor and the reader struggles with them through the first year after the attack.

Is this a beautifully written book?  No, and while I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic themes, One Second After is not one of the best and there certainly are numerous flaws.  For one thing, the author certainly has an agenda but that is true of nearly every post-apocalyptic novel I can think of, whether it be anti-nuclear, anti-big government, etc.   However, it’s a gripping, chilling story that I will listen to again, primarily because of the possibility of such an event really happening and the fact that we have done nothing to prevent it.  The author does a good job of showing how quickly society can lose its way when faced with long-term disaster–imagine a nationwide Katrina–and, while some characters are not fleshed out enough, I did care about the primary players and about the town.  Other reviewers who have panned the book have pointed out some grammatical issues in the text but I did not find that to be distracting, most likely because such things are not as obvious in an audio edition.  One negative review stated, “The reader doesn’t actually see it happen.”  The very nature of an EMP attack means there is nothing to see, no mushroom cloud or destroyed buildings or bodies so I can’t imagine what that reviewer expected to “see”.

Recommended.

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, December 2009.