I just want to get this out of the way from the beginning – Read. This. Book. The writing is so very good and for a plot that seems oh so familiar andI just want to get this out of the way from the beginning – Read. This. Book. The writing is so very good and for a plot that seems oh so familiar and tired there is newness here, a freshness that just sucks you in making you forget all the other times you read about the end-of-the-world and zombies. Bick has a lot of original ideas to add to that YA zombie canon growing seemingly out of control; zombies are hot right now, there’s no doubt about that. So how do you distinguish yourself from the pack?
Bick’s success starts with her characters and when that’s your foundation you’ve already won half the battle. Alex, Tom and Ellie all in short shrift and with seemingly little effort become characters I worried about. Their safety and well-being wrapped me in perpetual anxiety. When a book can make you care for characters so much that you’re just sick to your stomach to read ahead because you just know things are only going to get so much worse, that’s good writing.
Like any zombie fare worth talking about, Ashes shows us we have much more to fear from ourselves than from the flesh-eating creatures now walking the Earth. There are some nasty humans in this book and I’m confident we haven’t seen the worst of it yet. This book will also make you pull your hair out. You can’t guess where the story is going and you start to get the feeling pretty early on that no character is truly safe.
There are a lot of original details I could gush over right now – like the dogs, the nature of “the Change” itself and the impact it’s having on one particular enclave of survivors – but I won’t. These details are best left discovered as you read. Since this is Book 1 of a projected trilogy, you have to know that things are just getting started and I love that I’m DYING to get my hands on Book 2.
Mucho thanks again to my friend May who snagged an autographed ARC for me at ALA! The only downside is now I have that much longer to wait for the sequel ... D'oh! ...more
4.5 stars. This totally KICKS ASS. Love the story, love the characters, love the graphic representations of the vampires and zombies. Gruesome and gor4.5 stars. This totally KICKS ASS. Love the story, love the characters, love the graphic representations of the vampires and zombies. Gruesome and gory yet it all looked so gorgeous cast in deep reds, oranges, blacks and blues. I also thought the story carried well - not highly original mind you - but the delivery is filled with genuine moments of tension and terror. I was especially pleased and surprised by some of the more emotional aspects of the story.
These vampires are vicious and merciless yet with a style and intelligence that's intimidating. They can think and plan and execute. These are not brooding, pouting, "conflicted" emo vampires, yet I appreciated that some of the newly turned are haunted by their human memories and the memory of feelings they can no longer feel. Not so grandiosely tormented as Rice's never-ending "whining" Louis from Interview With the Vampire, but still, enough to make these vampires a little more complicated, a bit more rich, than your average blood-sucking creature of the night. There are clans, and rivals, and rogues, and plenty of innocents caught in the cross-fire. Drama!
The zombies are sad and heart-breaking (I always seem to find them so - except for Danny Boyle's zombies). The FVZA zombies are very similar to the ones I've seen in The Walking Dead series (I haven't read the graphic novels, so I'm only basing that on Darabont's interpretation). The zombies are shambling and starving, haunted and lost. They ramble and feed, yet there is a hint, always just a hint, of some long lost memory of what they used to be. Romero's zombies treat the mall like Mecca; these zombies hold onto music. It's a nice touch and plays very effective in the story.
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