Ashes Review by Claire Riley

For the PARCC, I've been reading this book called Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick. So here's a brief summary:

A girl named Alex leaves her grandmother and travels to Michigan wilderness, determined to leave her life that's been contaminated by a terminal brain tumor. She soon meets a young girl named Ellie and her grandfather, when suddenly something crazy happens. Tons of electromagnetic pulses, or EMP's as the characters call them, are sent out all around the globe. Most kids and adults ranging from 13-60 drop dead. Except a few...Some people are left unchanged, and unharmed. Others, however, become the Changed. AKA, this books version of zombies. Smart, agile zombies that is.

Okay, so I didn't really know what I was getting myself into when I took this book from a friend. I honestly just forgot to bring a book on Monday so I asked a friend who was still home to bring me something quick. She handed me this, and I ran off to homeroom to begin reading. The little blurb on the back doesn't give me much of a hint as to what the book is about. The first chapter was a bit cliche. Actually, the entire BOOK is cliche. It started off with this poor girl with not only dead parents, but with a brain tumor. She has lost her sense of smell, and is kinda all grumpy about it. Now, just a reminder, this is a girl who literally carries her dead parent's ASHES in her bag with her. As if that's not already a weird protagonist, she also survives this brain-zap moment and gains back her sense of smell. So now, she she this super power where she can smell feelings. I feel like this was just a plot for the author to be able to add more description in his book while keeping the reader interested. It seemed a little too fake too me but I kept reading. 

So she is trying to survive these zombie dogs with this OBNOXIOUS little girl Ellie. She not only hates Alex, but simply refuses to cooperate. Right before this zombie guy pops out of nowhere and almost eat her for dinner, this hunk of a man comes out of no where and shoots the dude! The second this god-like guy showed up and was described, "He was much younger, closer to her age..." I already KNEW there was gonna be a love interest right there. Super cliche. So this Tom guy saves her and cleans her up, and they eventually adventure out of the woods and into civilization. They fight some Changed, and meet some other people. Eventually, Alex gets split from Tom and Ellie, and then finds her way to this town called Rule.

Rule is like this cult like town who doesn't trust younger kids her age because it means they will probably change at some point soon. Although the town "president" guy finds out about her power after she sniffs out his: he can sense feelings and unnatural things through touch. So at this point I sorta figure that there must only be like 5 "special" people with different sense powers, right? 

I haven't quite finished to book yet, but It's interesting to read a book and think about what tactics are used so often in dystopian novels that I can already predict the future. I suppose in the end it isn't necessarily a BAD book, it's just utterly predictable.