Review: Ashes, Ashes

Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I'm surprised by the lack of love this book is getting from other reviewers. Seems like a lot of them have read other future (maybe dystopian? maybe not?) fiction but while I see this as better than so many of the other books in the genre, others disagree.

I loved that the main character was a 16 year old girl who had the wherewithal to find a knife, wool socks and a book on survivalist living and manage to live on her own for more than a year in a world with barely any humanity left. Willow and moss shelters, trapping and eating anything she can find, only bathing during the wet season. She is so completely atypical of the standard heroine. She isn't an arms expert and she gets tired and scared and injured. All in all, she was much more realistic than so many other lead characters.

I liked that society was reduced to the elderly and the young - the two groups that people would expect to die first end up being the group most likely to survive. And, because the power-hungry and angry adults are dead, there isn't the gangs and terror and fighting that so many books include. And, without technology to assist, people are managing to find one another and eke out a living.

To me, this book was actually a stand out in the field.



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