Book #89 of 2024: Ashfall
Ashfall by Mike Mullin.
Quick synopsis: When the super volcano in Yellowstone explodes, a teen boy is left on his own and has to travel many miles to try to reunite with his family. Every single bad thing from post apocalyptic stories happens to him, and a few good things happen as well.
Brief opinion: I really, really did not think I was ready for a dark book, but my finger hit this book on my Kindle by mistake, so I figured worse comes to worst I could just DNF it. Instead it sucked me right in and I loved it, even though it was dark, violent, and depressing.
Plot: Alex is a typical teenage boy. Indifferent about school, likes video games, would really like to sleep with a girl. He fights with his mother a lot (his father is distant), so one day when the family goes to the next state over to visit their uncle, his mother gives in and lets Alex stay home alone.
Without warning, the super volcano in Yellowstone erupts and it's like the end of the world. The noise, the darkness, the horror. The first few days were awful, and it gets a lot worse fast.
At first Alex is staying with a gay couple who live next door to him (his house collapsed onto him, it took him hours to get out), until some men with weapons break in to try to steal food. When one of the couple shoots the invaders, Alex gets scared and runs off.
He decides to travel across state lines to try to reach his uncle's farm and his family, but so much bad stuff happens on the way. Natural things (24/7 darkness because of the ash in the atmosphere, storms, wind) and manmade (humans just doing the worst possible things: rape, murder, cannibalism, forced prostitution/more rape, prison camps, starvation...).
While traveling, Alex meets Darla, who might be one of the strongest female characters I've read in a long time. She's 18 (to his 16), but she's been basically running a farm on her own for years. She's strong, she knows how to fix things, and she has a lot of survival skills (like butchering animals).
The two travel hundreds of miles, the final miles through blizzards as the world chills into a decades-long winter, to try to reach Alex's uncle's farm and (hopefully) safety.
Writing/editing: The writing was great and the editing was nearly perfect. There was one place where two different characters' dialogue was in the same paragraph, but that's the only issue I saw.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: At first I was mildly grumpy that Alex and Darla fell in love, but the relationship was believable and everything physical was off-screen. It's very rare for me to believe two characters are actually in love, but in this case I did.
At first I wasn't sure that I believe everyone would starve so fast, but the book was set in Iowa, so maybe outside of big cities there are just that few big stores? And during the early days of Covid we sure did strip supermarkets fast (I remember aisle after aisle of completely empty shelves), so in the end I believed it.
Even though so much bad stuff was happening, it never felt like too much (even with my post-election stress). The story moved so fast and just pulled me along.
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved. On to book 2!