Ashfall Review: Final Exam

                Ashfall by Mike Mullin is his first published novel. Most would have low expectations for a rookie’s book, but Mullin has either really good beginner’s luck, or he’s a good writer. It’s the latter for a number of reasons.

            The story is set in the rather dull state of Iowa, and starts off with a 16 year old boy named Alex. His parents and sister are gone for the weekend, visiting his aunt and uncle in Warren, Illinois. Within the first few pages, Mullin moves the story right along with a rock crashing through Alex’s roof and eventually burning his house down. He gets out in time but is met with an intense ashfall. He coughs and hacks and makes his way into his neighbor’s house. There they sleep for a few days uncomfortably in the bathroom. Then, robbers break into the house to scavenge resources. Alex uses his kung-fu skills (more on that later) to get one of them, but then one of the people he’s living with grabs a gun and blows the robbers’ brains out. Then Alex gets out of there and looks for some other place to live.

            He marches through the ash and makes his way to his school, where lots of kids are being housed. He meets his friends and one tells him they are leaving on a bus. He gets to her church only to find that they are sitting there waiting for God to take them. So Alex leaves that bad situation and goes to his dojo where he trains and steals the master’s quarter staff. He then goes back to his house, gets his dad’s skis, packs some food, and heads off to Warren, Illinois.

            On the way there he experiences many challenges. A crazy man named Target (due to the target tattoo on his bald head, a government camp that attempts to save people but doesn’t, and what apocalypse could be complete without a few cannibals? Alex must also deal with something he hasn’t had much experience in, and that’s a girl that he meets on his travels.

            Mullin does a superior job in developing all the major characters in the novel, but what he excels in is giving his characters a unique background and also bizarre quirks that normally would not be found in most dystopian fiction. For example, Alex trains at a dojo for tai-kwon-do. He also is an avid WoW player. He has a rather shy personality as well. Mullin also does a good job of incorporating these quirks into later events in the story. He does this throughout the book and brings each of his characters to life.

            The writing in this book is not high strung and snobby, but it is detailed. Mullin leaves nothing to the imagination when it comes to stabbing a guy in the eye with a staff. This particular scene is quite gruesome, but very descriptive and paints a vivid image. He also uses figurative language throughout, such as, “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.”  There are scenes like this one throughout the book that are equally detailed, but all the actions in the book advance the plot in some way. Mullin doesn’t leave us waiting around, because if he did, we might get stuck in the ash.

            The piece is obviously genre and not literary, but there is no doubt that the characters cannot be connected with. Mullin thinks a lot like Steinbeck in the sense that although things get really bad, good can come out of it. This is the book’s theme, and can be proven by one crucial event: Since Alex must go on a journey to find his family, he meets Darla, a girl who becomes his girlfriend and possibly more if the story continued. In this sense the book is cliché, the hero gets the girl. But if he didn’t get her at the end, I would’ve been mad.

            The piece is strong and makes you think because it is based on true science. There really is a supervolcano underneath Yellowstone, and although it’s unlikely, this could really happen. And that alone makes this a supervolcano of a book, and it deserves an A.