It could hap­pen tomorrow… 

A cat­a­clysmic event. An army of “The Changed.” 
Can one teen really sur­vive on her own? 

An elec­tro­mag­netic pulse sweeps through the sky, destroy­ing every elec­tronic device and killing bil­lions. For those spared, it’s a ques­tion of who can be trusted and who is no longer human… 

Des­per­ate to find out what hap­pened and to avoid the Changed, Alex meets up with Tom—a young army veteran—and Ellie, a young girl whose grand­fa­ther was killed by the elec­tro­mag­netic pulse. 

This impro­vised fam­ily will have to use every ounce of courage they have just to survive.

Ashes is one of the most grue­some books I have ever read. I should pref­ace this review by say­ing that I am not a hor­ror fan. Zom­bies are not my thing. And I wavered for quite a while on whether I was actu­ally enjoy­ing this book. I’m sure my face was a pic­ture on the train while read­ing this. I kept squeak­ing and cring­ing — par­tic­u­larly in the first few chap­ters *shudder*. 

There are quite a few reviews out there say­ing the first half of Ashes is fan­tas­tic, and then it all goes to pot in the sec­ond half, it’s like read­ing a totally dif­fer­ent book. Well I agree, the first half is fan­tas­tic. Ilsa Bick’s writ­ing is excel­lent but bru­tal and she holds noth­ing back. For those who love gore, Ashes won’t dis­ap­point. The action starts almost imme­di­ately and I was quickly drawn in and intrigued to know just what the hell was going on!?

I could appre­ci­ate as I read Ashes, that it was an extremely well-written story with strongly devel­oped char­ac­ters, a great plot and a nar­ra­tion that flows well, which is why I have given it a high rat­ing. But I did take a week or so to read it, and that is unusual for me. In the end, I can say I really quite liked it and I’m anx­ious to find out what hap­pens next, but it didn’t com­pletely cap­ture me. Per­haps that is sim­ply down to the genre.

I couldn’t tell you why, but I didn’t really con­nect with any of the char­ac­ters. Which is prob­a­bly why I didn’t dis­like the sec­ond half of the book as oth­ers did. Two of the main char­ac­ters dis­ap­pear from the pages, and while I can see this would be frus­trat­ing for a lot of read­ers, I was con­tent to sim­ply see where Bick took the story and found the cult-like envi­ron­ment Alex find her­self in to be just as well-written and fas­ci­nat­ing as the first half of the story. It’s an intrigu­ing glimpse into human nature and the choices peo­ple make in order to sur­vive, and it cer­tainly led to one of the best cliffhang­ers I’ve read.

If I had two issues with the sec­ond part of Ashes it would be the change in Alex. Pre­vi­ously she was a fighter, intel­li­gent and capa­ble alone in the wild with a dif­fi­cult moody child to look out for and crazed mur­der­ing zom­bies on her trail. Alex, put sim­ply, is bloody stub­born and I liked that about her. She doesn’t give up, not when doc­tors tell her the tumour in her head will kill her, not when the whole world falls apart around her. To watch her become so pas­sive, to just give up on Ellie and Tom, to do exactly what these con­trol­ling, reli­gious peo­ple (with ques­tion­able motives) want her to do, regard­less of what she really wants, is mad­den­ing! It’s per­fectly obvi­ous why all the young girls are kept ‘safe’, unable to leave the town if they want to, stuck doing mun­dane tasks out the way of any pos­si­ble dan­ger and why it took Alex so long to fig­ure it out was beyond me. Why it didn’t make her angry, like Lena, and push her to leave I don’t understand.

I also wasn’t enam­ored with Chris and what­ever was going on between him and Alex. It felt forced to me and was slightly con­fus­ing, and most of all, it was clear that it was exactly what cer­tain peo­ple in the town were try­ing to influ­ence and that alone made me dig my heels in and hope she wouldn’t feel a damn thing for him. But I can (grudg­ingly) see why Bick has cho­sen to go down this direc­tion and I’m sure it will make for a far more inter­est­ing story. It’s not exactly the dreaded love-triangle, but I fore­see angst people.

Rest assured that romance only forms a small part of Ashes. Bick focuses instead on action and world-building. I loved how the expla­na­tions came from a sci­en­tific angle. I also liked that we aren’t actu­ally deal­ing with the walk­ing dead, but a dif­fer­ent, far more dis­turb­ing, and unique, take on zom­bies. I’m cer­tain Bick will throw a few more loops our way before this series is up, and though I still have so many ques­tions, such as who is respon­si­ble? Why now? Why are only cer­tain peo­ple devel­op­ing new abil­i­ties? Can the ‘Changed’ be reversed? Can Alex save lit­tle Ellie? And many more besides, but I wasn’t left irri­tated by a lack of infor­ma­tion. We learn a lot through the course of the story as more and more things (seem­ingly) start to slot into place.

Ulti­mately, Ashes is a book I started off being unsure on, pro­gressed to being freaked out by (and left feel­ing vaguely sick by after read­ing cer­tainly pas­sages), that even­tu­ally won me over. Even though Ashes is prob­a­bly just about the only book of this par­tic­u­lar genre I have read (like I said — zom­bies, gore, so not my thing) I think I will be back for more. I’m more than eager to find out what hap­pens next.

*Many thanks to Egmont USA and Net­Gal­ley for mak­ing Ashes avail­able for review*