Ashen Winter by Mike Mullin

Ashen Winter

Ashfall #2
Book 1: Ashfall

author : mike mullin

pages : [hardcover] 576

favorite characters : alex & darla

summary:

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.

review:

I love this series so very much! I became addicted to it from the very first page of Ashfall and was so excited to get my hands on the sequel! Every single chapter is action packed and filled with everything you could ever want. The fight for survival, for love, for a better life . . The fight to stop the evil that has arisen with this catastrophic incident. I don’t think that I could ever survive times like this, but Alex and Darla are definitely a team to be reckoned with.

I love how they’re such equals, always saving each other and doing things for one another. It isn’t always the girl falling into trouble or the guy chasing after the girl. They trust each other and have found something really special, even after everything that has happened to both of them. I loved seeing how that progressed in the time that passed between these two books and throughout Ashen Winter.

So much happens in here, and I can’t talk about it for fear of spoiling something, but you really need to read it. Be prepared for a wild adventure you won’t want to tear yourself away from! It seems like it’d be a really long book that would take a while to read but I breezed through it in a couple of days because I wanted so badly to find out what would happen next!

There are a few new characters introduced in this book and I loved how they were all interesting and unique-even if I didn’t necessarily like all of them. Now I need more! This is one of my favorite books now.

5/5 stars

Ashfall by Mike Mullin

Ashfall

Author: Mike Mullin

Pages [hardcover]: 466

Ashfall Book 1

Memorable Quote: Maybe we were ghosts of a sort, spirits from the world that had died when the volcano erupted.

Favorite Characters: Alex & Darla

Summary:

Under the bubbling hot springs and geysers of Yellowstone National Park is a supervolcano. Most people don’t know it’s there. The caldera is so large that it can only be seen from a plane or satellite. It just could be overdue for an eruption, which would change the landscape and climate of our planet.

Ashfall is the story of Alex, a teenage boy left alone for the weekend while his parents visit relatives. When the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts unexpectedly, Alex is determined to reach his parents. He must travel over a hundred miles in a landscape transformed by a foot of ash and the destruction of every modern convenience that he has ever known, and through a new world in which disaster has brought out both the best and worst in people desperate for food, water, and warmth. With a combination of nonstop action, a little romance, and very real science, this is a story that is difficult to stop reading and even more difficult to forget.

Review:

I’ve heard a lot about this book, and so I was definitely excited to read it. I’ve also read that it’s a great book for boys-and while, that didn’t turn me away from it, I can definitely see why some who are struggling to find ‘guy’ young adult books would recommend this one. Filled with action, suspense, and a bit of romance, this day by day account of survival in the apocalyptic world left about the explosion of the volcano at Yellowstone is a book you’ll never want to put down.

It can get tiresome, reading a book with so many plot twists you barely have time to catch a breath. But I also love books like this for that very same reason; so addictive they keep me reading late into the night . . . And choosing to read over studying. Not knowing what was going to happen next, just like Alex didn’t know, really put me into the moment, and it was easy to relate to his reactions.

With his karate (okay . . . taekwondo) moves and survival skills, Alex was definitely a force to reckon with. Add in Darla-who can fend for herself and has no problem letting Alex know this-and there’s a pair of awesome main characters. Even if things are told from Alex’s  point of view, Darla’s character-as well as that of the various minor characters scattered throughout the book-easily shines through. I really think the author, Mike Mullin, has talent with this, and I can’t read to read more by him.

Including the sequel. Ashen Winter is set to release in 2012, and I’ll definitely be reading it to continue Alex’s story.

A CAPTIVATING STORY OF SURVIVAL. 5/5 stars