Book Title: Ashfall
Author: Mike Mullin
Copyright Date: 2011
Publisher: Tanglewood Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-933718-55-2
Audio, e-book or foreign translation avail? Yes–Kindle
Suitable for children? Perhaps late teens, but very dependant on the values you want to pass on to them.
Ashfall is the first book in a trilogy of novels by Mike Mullin. This is a story of what the world could look like if Yellowstone blew up, portrayed through the eyes of a 15/16 year old boy who must quickly become a man in order to survive.
Alex Halprin is alone in his home in Cedar Falls Iowa on a Friday evening when the blast happens. His family had left earlier that day to visit an uncle’s
farm in Warren Illinois, but Alex had refused to go along with them on account of his disdain for the smelly farm. Alex much preferred the idea of staying home and playing World of Warcraft. His parents decided it wasn’t worth yet
The author makes it clear that Alex isn’t exactly a pleasure to live with. He regards his little sister as a brat and argues with his mom on everything.
It is also somewhat telling that his parents left him without any “admonition(s) against wild parties and booze. Mom knew my social life too well, I guess. A couple of geeks and a board game I might manage; a great party with hot girls and beer would have been beyond me, sadly.” (p.3)
Alex does have one well earned source of pride however: A display case of ten Taekwondo belts, from white to black. The skills those represent are the one thing going for him in the book.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
That Friday night while mining gold in World of Warcraft Alex feels a bit of a tremor, which was odd because earthquakes are not the norm in Iowa, and then the power goes out. Suddenly there is a loud crack and the floor under Alex tilts and he finds himself sliding across the floor where he ends up trapped when his desk follows him to the wall, leaving him in a little triangular cavern. It is only a minute before he smells smoke and feels the wall behind him beginning to warm up. It takes everything he has to escape this predicament, but he manages to get out and find that part of the house is fine, but the part he was in is on fire. Finding that the neighbors’ cell phones do not work he runs the six blocks to the fire station. No one’s phone or radio works there either, but Alex is able to prevail on the firefighters to come and put out the fire at his home.
Once the fire is out the situation can be assessed. Something evidently fell from the sky and hit Alex’s home. (There is room for some scientific debate
about this, but the author makes mention of the science behind this in the afterword.) The rest of the homes in his neighborhood all seem fine, but no one
has any power or phone service of any type.
Alex’s mom had evidently asked Darren and Joe, the gay couple next door, to keep an eye on Alex while the family was gone. His own home partially destroyed, Alex goes to stay with them. At this point the noise begins. It is a wave of sound that hits like a gust of wind and sounds like endless, exceptionally loud thunder. It is literally painful and makes conversation impossible. The noise keeps going all night long and is still there in the morning. Except, along with the noise, there is ash. It is not until lunchtime that the noise stops, but the ash keeps coming, along with the smell of rotten eggs. Then the noise starts again around dinner time. There are several more hours of the thunder, plus endless ash. Once the noise finally abates, then comes rain. The mix of water and ash creates a new set of problems. A crash outside the house reveals the gutters and eaves pulled off one side of the house. Within minutes the same thing happens on the other side. And trying to walk in the wet ash is all but impossible. It is like walking in wet cement.
The next morning Joe decides to excavate the barbecue grill from under the ash and set to work cooking the food which has begun thawing in the freezer. The food is a heavenly respite, but while napping that afternoon someone starts banging on the front door. When Joe opens the door in rush three thugs armed with a baseball bat, a length of chain and a tire iron. The ensuing fight ends with an enraged Darren shooting the thugs with a pistol and Alex fleeing to escape the nightmare.
The only problem is, the world into which he flees is no better than that which he left behind.
His shoes lost in the muck while fleeing, he quickly realizes he has no place to go, but he knows he doesn’t want to return to the blood soaked home of Darren and Joe. The best option he can come up with is his own ruined home. There he changes into his father’s clothes and shoes. His bicycle a failure in the wet ash, he ends up finding his father’s old cross country skis and sets off to find his way to Warren Illinois.
His first stop is the taekwondo dojang where he hopes to pick up his training weapons for the sake of self defense. He finds the studio looted and trashed,
but does manage to find his instructor’s bo staff. Conflicted as to whether or not she would mind, but deciding that circumstances are anything but normal, he sets off for what will be an extremely challenging and arduous trip.
That’s a summary of about the first seventy pages.
Hopefully it is evident that this book addresses a potential reality and survival challenge. The subject matter is relevant to the SurvivalBlog audience, however, I would be remiss if I did not also inform this audience that the novel does not uphold the same values as are promoted on SurvivalBlog.
It is not a matter of language or explicit behavior, but more a matter of modern social values.
The first thing to strike me was the gay neighbors and the mother’s choice of them for keeping an eye on her son while out of town. I can’t see how it added anything to the plot, and in spite of all the noise that is made by those of such a persuasion they still constitute a substantial minority. It is a
noticeable choice on the part of the author.
I then noticed the replacement of traditional male role models with females. It started with the taekwondo instructor and is continued with a mayor and Darla, Alex’s travel companion. Throughout the novel, anyone helpful or capable of making wise decisions is female. Most males encountered are either villains or largely helpless geeks. One or two of these situations might have been discounted as coincidence, but by the end of the novel it is a fairly consistent pattern. The only males who did not fit the pattern are the gay couple at the beginning and the uncle who we meet at the very end, and the uncle is portrayed as a fuddy-duddy.
It was also remarkable that Alex missed his mom so much, but had very little to say about his dad. If anything, his dad was nothing more than a benign
background character in Alex’s life. At the age of fifteen Alex was able to wear his dad’s pants and fill his dad’s shoes.
Religion is also cast in an unfavorable light. The first example is the Baptist church in Cedar Falls. They were all gathered together on the roof of their
building where they were waiting for Jesus to come save them. It is pretty clear the author doesn’t view these as rational folks.
Later on Alex is rescued and kept alive by a Christian woman and her daughter. Nothing bad is said about this woman, but she dies a most horrible and degrading death at the hand of the vilest of the villains.
The last contact with anyone religious is in the FEMA camp where the Baptists are feeding the children. The one lady who seems like she could be able to help just up and disappears with no real explanation as to why. In short, God comes across as useless in this novel.
The last issue with regard to values is that which seems to be the ultimate goal of the novel: The boy gets the girl. Except in this book, the symbol of
success is not a pair of rings, but rather a pair of condoms.
Given the values represented in this book I cannot recommend it to anyone in my family. For others these perspectives may not matter, but for the sake of the standards upheld on SurvivalBlog I believe they do. Be advised.