Monday Book Recs--Ashfall by Mike Mullin

I was complaining recently about how few “dystopian” novels published in YA today I like. I am particularly sad about this because I *love* dystopian, at least the way in which I imagine dystopian ought to be written. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is one of the all-time great YA’s. I love it so much we’ve done a LAWKI month where we live off our food storage for a month for the past 4 years. But when pressed to name any other dystopian novels that I liked, I found it difficult.

I love Carrie Ryan’s zombie apocalypse novels. I love Janni Simner’s fairy apocalypse books. I like Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, also apocalypse dystopians. Ursual K. LeGuin’s books beginning with Gifts are great. The Giver by Lois Lowry, of course. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I love Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. And after that? I have difficulty coming up with any others. I can list some adult dystopians I love. There are books that might or might not be apocalyptic, like The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. Hunger and Gone by Grant.

I think I end up having problems with so-called dystopian novels on two ends. One is that a dystopian that is all about solving the problems and ending the dystopia is a book that needs a lot of world building. YA often tends to be short on world building. I do not mean this necessarily as a criticism. I like the fact that I don’t have to wade through pages of introduction to get to the characters. But this also sometimes means that the world building is sketchy. I sometimes feel like authors who never read sf/f in their own teens have decided it looks “easy” and so they just throw in a few futuristic tropes and call it dystopian. On the other hand, dystopians that are not about changing the world can be really depressing.

Ashfall by Mike Mullin is a book that in my opinion avoids both problems. There is a laser point fine focus on the main character Alex, whose family has gone on vacation after he refuses to go with them. He is thus alone when the supervolcano in Yellowstone erupts and begins to snow ash over thousands of miles of landscape for the next several days, and triggers a nuclear winter. Alex is determined to find his parents and younger sister, despite the hundreds of miles he must traverse to get there, and the unlikelihood of finding them alive in the first place.

I love the strength of Alex’s character, his determination and his skills. He’s taken Tae Kwon Do for years, so I believe it when he gets into battles with people who are stronger than he is, and gets out of them bruised and bloodied but alive. I love it that he meets good people along the way. I loved the feeling of up and down in the book, that there would be stopping places along the way where Alex and the reader could rest and recover for the next horror. Because it wasn’t far away.

I loved the character of Darla. She is one of the all time best female heroines in YA fiction. Alex meets her while she is on a bicycle which she has hooked up to a corn mill. She designed this contraption herself and she is not hungry. She may not have much to eat, but there’s plenty of corn for her and her mother. I loved Darla’s reaction when horror strikes close to home, and I loved that she chases after Alex, not because she loves him but because she and he connect in their strength. She wants purpose to put her skills to use.

I also love the ending. The first ending when Alex and Darla get to the FEMA camp, and they think everything will be all right—and isn’t. And the ending when they get to his uncle’s, and think that everything will be all right—and isn’t. This is the stuff great dystopians are made of. The level of research done on the fallout of a volcano like this seemed superb to me, a lay person. I loved the landscape of the escape. There’s no need to do massive worldbuilding until Alex gets out of the hot zone, but once we’re there, enough is hinted at that it feels that the author has done a lot of thinking about widespread consequences of this singular event. And to me, the more important notes of characters in an apocalypse were right on, too. I cared about this dystopia because I cared about Alex and Darla. A lot.