Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Review: Ashen Winter

Ashen Winter (Ashfall, #2)Book: Ashen Winter
Author(s): Mike Mullin
Length: 576 pages

Publisher: Tanglewood PressPublication Date: October 14, 2012
Why I Picked It Up: I really enjoyed the first book in this new series, Ashfall, and was lucky enough to receive a digital ARC of Ashen Winter.

I got into a discussion with a colleague recently about fads in YA fiction and more specifically about how publishers seem to be latching onto a premise and beating it to death. We saw this with vampires in the wake of the Twilight craze, which extended to other paranormal creatures and romantic relationships with humans. And while there were plenty of YA vampire and other paranormal novels and series that I really enjoyed, at a certain point I would just have to roll my eyes at some of these books because obviously a werewolf showed up.

Dystopian/apocalyptic YA fiction is starting  to feel a bit like that for me. Again, not that there aren't plenty of titles that I enjoy, I just am finding it harder to be surprised by the unraveling of the fabric of society. Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised by Mullin's first book Ashfall and this sequel Ashen Winter.  Although there were elements of the story I felt I had seen in this genre previously I never had that 'of course' feeling I previously mentioned. It's incredibly exciting with excellent pacing, with enough tension and surprises to keep the reader interested, but not so over the top that it feels ridiculous (though it does skirt the line at times).Here is the Goodreads description:



It’s been over six months since the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Alex and Darla have been staying with Alex’s relatives, trying to cope with the new reality of the primitive world so vividly portrayed in Ashfall, the first book in this series. It’s also been six months of waiting for Alex’s parents to return from Iowa. Alex and Darla decide they can wait no longer and must retrace their journey into Iowa to find and bring back Alex’s parents to the tenuous safety of Illinois. But the landscape they cross is even more perilous than before, with life-and-death battles for food and power between the remaining communities. When the unthinkable happens, Alex must find new reserves of strength and determination to survive.
As I said I really enjoyed this book for several reasons. First of all the main character, Alex, is male, making this book appealing to both boys and girls, something eminently appealing to a librarian who at times struggles with recommending books for boys. In all honesty, male characters really tend to get the shaft in dystopian YA fiction, as they all seem to be a bit weak and completely dependent on the strong female main charaner for survival. What this is a function of, I couldn't really explain, but I did appreciate that I felt Alex was a powerful individual on his own, with or without his girlfriend Darla. At the same time Alex is shown as having a much softer side than is generally expected in a teenaged boy, making him much more 3 dimensional that male teenaged characters are generally portrayed.

What I appreciated most about Ashen Winter, was the addition of a couple new characters, not that I don't love Alex and Darla, but there were times when I was a little tired of reading how in love there were, how clever mechanically Darla was, and finally how they managed to figure out a way of yet another sticky situation, but more on that in a bit. The addition of Ben, an autistic teenager with an obsession for all things military was in particular very welcome in that it seemed like a plans and knowledge actually had a source rather than being just a lucky break for Alex and Darla. I also particularly like the portrayal of Ben as an autistic person, as his character and personality came out in bits and pieces, an enforced the reminder that although someone with autism may appear to not function as expected socially, there is a very real personality and point of view there, with definite value to the workings of society.

Another thing I would like to emphasis is that Ashen Winter does not seem to fall into the trap that second books in series so often do, in that at no point did I feel the entire purpose of the second book was to get between the first and third books. That's not to say that Ashen Winter could  completely stand on its own or that it isn't very obviously part of a series, but it is an excellent book in its own right and not just a piece of a series. I attribute this to the action and plot still being very much the forefront of the novel and not slipping into the pattern of letting the main character become to heavily introspective of the changing world and his or her place in that. That sort of introspection is not absent, not should it be, as it allows the character to grow and take a firmer place in the circumstance of the novel, but I didn't feel like I spent this whole book gazing at Alex's navel.

There were a few things I didn't like. First, the fact that so many different situations seemed to arise was a little distracting. Obviously I have not lived through a volcanic winter featuring cannibals, slavers, and corrupt government contractors, but towards the end I did really just want things to stop happening and just wrap it up, because really what could possibly happen now! Also, the relationship between Darla and Alex felt a little intense at points for people who have only know each other a few months. Yes, teenaged relationships are intense and I'm sure a life or death situation would exaggerate that, but for me it's not necessarily believable that a 16 year old who is not completely emotionally developed would be willing to put himself in so much danger. In addition, may I repeat these two are only 16 and 18 respectively, another point I feel is a bit far fetched of just how mature they often behaved as well as how much knowledge they seemed to possess about really random things.  Those few things were my only complaints and in comparison to how much I enjoyed the rest of the book, thy were really minor and honestly not even really distraction to the experience of reading Ashen Winter. 

My rating: Although I'm getting a bit tired of society falling apart in YA fiction this is still a great first series and definitely worth a look



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