Blog Tour Review: Ashen Winter by Mike Mullin

This book is amazing!!!

Title: Ashen Winter
Author: Mike Mullin
Hardcover: 594 pages
Publisher: Tanglewood Press
Release Date: October 16, 2012
ISBN-10: 1933718757
ISBN-13: 978-1933718750
Source: Publisher/NetGalley

It’s been over six months since the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Alex and Darla have been staying with Alex’s relatives, trying to cope with the new reality of the primitive world so vividly portrayed in Ashfall, the first book in this series. It’s also been six months of waiting for Alex’s parents to return from Iowa. Alex and Darla decide they can wait no longer and must retrace their journey into Iowa to find and bring back Alex’s parents to the tenuous safety of Illinois. But the landscape they cross is even more perilous than before, with life-and-death battles for food and power between the remaining communities. When the unthinkable happens, Alex must find new reserves of strength and determination to survive.

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Review

I went into Ashen Winter scared to death. Not because I thought that I wouldn’t enjoy the read…No, I was scared because of Mike Mullin’s mad writing skills. Ashfall, the first book in the series, showed me that Mike Mullin was not afraid to see just how far people would go to survive life in the midst of the world falling apart. I think that is why I find these books so scary, while I was reading them I could see everything that I was reading could easily become a reality. The heroic actions, the sadness of death, and the horror of those around you loosing their humanity.

Warning

Carve out enough time to read all of Ashen Winter before you start it!!!

You'll kick yourself if you don’t.

From the very start of Ashen Winter I was thrown… More like slammed back into the Ashfall world. I was back into the danger, and well ugliness of our world covered in ash. It will never cease to amaze me how some authors can make the setting of a book to almost be a character in and of itself. It is completely evident that Mike Mullen has done tremendous research while writing this series.

My favorite characters are back in Ashen Winter! Alex and Darla are such great characters. Darla is such a strong girl. I don’t want to say girl, I know she is a teen but she has been through so much. Darla has become an amazingly strong woman! She was strong to start with, but circumstances and love change a person. And Alex, what can I say about him??? I could not ask for a better main character in this series. It is through Alex’s faults and screw ups that you remember… Oh yeah, these are teenagers trying to figure out how to survive in this new hell of a world that just busted out of a volcano around them. Alex for me makes the story more real.

I know I ‘m not giving much away in this review, but you just have to trust me on this one. GO READ THIS SERIES!!! I can honestly say this is one of those reads where when it is over I think, "Would I make it if this did happen?" And I continue to think about that long after I finished. I am now impatiently waiting to see what happens next.

Happy reading,

  

Loved it! I want to know about everything this author writes.

Recommended For

Older teen and up: For strong violence, gory scenes, language, and sexual content.

About The Author & Ashfall

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.

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Mike Mullin’s first job was scraping the gum off the undersides of desks at his high school. From there, things went steadily downhill. He almost got fired by the owner of a bookstore due to his poor taste in earrings. He worked at a place that showed slides of poopy diapers during lunch (it did cut down on the cafeteria budget). The hazing process at the next company included eating live termites raised by the resident entomologist (they taste like a cross between walnuts and carrots), so that didn’t last long either. For a while Mike juggled bottles at a wine shop, sometimes to disastrous effect. Oh, and then there was the job where swarms of wasps occasionally tried to chase him off ladders. So he’s really hoping this writing thing works out.

 

Mike holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and her three cats. Ashfall is his first novel.

 

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