Ashfall by Mike Mullin
Series: Ashfall #1
Published by Tanglewood Press on October 11, 2011
Genres: Natural Disaster, Post Apocalyptic, Young Adult
Pages: 466
Source: Purchased
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Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park don’t realize that the boiling hot springs and spraying geysers are caused by an underlying supervolcano, so large that the caldera can only be seen by plane or satellite. And by some scientific measurements, it could be overdue for an eruption.

For Alex, being left alone for the weekend means having the freedom to play computer games and hang out with his friends without hassle from his mother. Then the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, plunging his hometown into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence. Alex begins a harrowing trek to seach for his family and finds help in Darla, a travel partner he meets along the way. Together they must find the strength and skills to survive and outlast an epic disaster.

What I Thought…

• You may or may not know this already, but I have a slight obsession with natural disasters. Ashfall was right up my alley.
• I was a little worried at first because I was about 100 pages in and not really into it, but when I had time to pick it up again it was much better.
• Another series with redesigned covers. I dislike when they do this, but this is especially irritating because what’s pictured on the cover actually happened in the book!
• Ashfall is not a fast read. At 300 pages (ebook) it took me longer to read than a typical YA book, but it’s not a bad thing. It’s also not a happy read. It’s not full on depressing, but there aren’t any rainbows either. After all there was a huge volcanic eruption.
• There are a lot of details in Ashfall, most of which I liked. The ones I could of used less of were the ones revolving around certain ways of handling food. It made perfect sense and fit with the book but I don’t really have the stomach for those kinds of things. I’m a wuss like that.
• I think Mullin did an excellent job creating the post apocalyptic environment.  It was dirty and miserable and scary and freaky. I loved it. It was everything I imagine a post apocalyptic event would be.
• Obviously a major event like this makes some people go crazy and/or they freak out because they don’t have food/shelter/whatever and do things they wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. There were some seriously messed up incidents. Even when I expected certain events I wasn’t prepared for quite how messed up some of them were.
• Alex was a fairly good narrator. There were a quite a few funny thoughts running through his head in addition to his worries about his family and society. He also grew a lot as the book progressed, from a fairly whiny teenager to a stronger one.
• Darla was awesome! She was the strength in their relationship (not to say Alex was weak or whiny). She had her falling apart moment (completely justified) and then pretty much kicked ass the rest of the way through the book.

Overall Ashfall is a really great read!

Notable Quotes

“A librarian can’t live by books alone, and I wouldn’t eat them if I could. Feel too much like cannibalism.”

“Hunger of choice is a painful luxury; hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.”

“But unlike thunder, this didn’t stop. It went on and on, machine-gun style, as if Zeus had loaded his bolts into an M60 with an inexhaustible ammo crate.”

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