Shadows (Ashes Trilogy Series #2)

by Ilsa J. Bick

Overview

The Apocalypse does not end. The Changed will grow in numbers. The Spared may not survive. Even before the EMPs brought down the world, Alex was on the run from the demons of her past and the monster living in her head. After the world was gone, she believed Rule could be a sanctuary for her and those she'd come to love. But she was wrong.

Now Alex is in the fight of her life against the adults, who would use her, the survivors, who don't trust her, and the Changed, who would eat her alive. Welcome to Shadows, the second book in the haunting apocalyptic Ashes Trilogy: where no one is safe and humans may be the worst of the monsters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781606843789
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/01/2012
Series:	Ashes Trilogy Series , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	364,664
Lexile:	HL730L (what's this?)
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, as well as a film scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major, and an award-winning, best-selling author of short stories, e-books, and novels. She has written extensively in the Star Trek, Battletech, Mechwarrior: Dark Age, and Shadowrun universes. Her original stories have been featured in numerous anthologies, magazines and online venues.  Ilsa's YA paranormal, Draw the Dark, was also a semifinalist for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (as Stalag Winter).  Ilsa currently lives with her family and other furry creatures in rural Wisconsin and across the street from the local Hebrew cemetery. One thing she loves about the neighbors: They're very quiet and come around for sugar only once in a blue moon.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 10 Up—Shadows picks up where Ashes (Egmont, 2011) left off, with no recap of the multiple characters, their relationships, or their complicated circumstances. This novel is divided into four distinct story lines: Alex has been captured by a group of sadistic, cannibalistic Changed, and she doesn't know whether they are saving her for lunch… or for something worse. Tom was rescued by an elderly couple and is now searching for Alex. He faces the threats of bounty hunters and other humans driven to desperation in evil times. Chris has become an enemy of Rule, and Peter is in trouble at the hands of a man with diabolical plans for the Changed. At the center of all these stories is the suspicion that the Change is far from over and the fear of what will happen to the young people who didn't immediately become flesh-eating monsters when the EMP swept through the sky. There's not a whole lot of room-or need-for character development here because of the constant peril. What the book lacks in nuanced characters it makes up for in plot and description. Ashes was violent, but this book takes the bloodshed to a whole new level with unsparingly gory descriptions of eyeball-eating teenagers, brutal injuries, and bloody battles. The author also seems to be trying to say something about what might happen to communication when typical means of staying informed are shut down: throughout the different story lines, rumor and miscommunication abound to the extent that readers are unsure of what is true. And, as with the first volume, a cliff-hanger ending means that most of these questions won't be answered.—Heather M. Campbell, formerly at Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, CO

School Library Journal

"Bick amps up both the gore and the suspense in an already hair-raising, edgy thriller series, and her prose style has grown even richer, offering imagery that is disturbingly vivid and horrifically, perversely beautiful at times....Readers should be warned to clear their calendars before they pick this up, because they won't be doing much of anything else until they turn the last, cliff-hanging page. " —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

From the Publisher

Earth's few remaining normal teenagers struggle to survive in this gruesome, bloody post-apocalyptic sequel. The world's gone completely to hell: All nonelderly adults are dead, and most teenagers are Changed into zombielike feral children who eat humans alive. Survivors huddle into protective enclaves and protect themselves with deadly force. The cliffhanger ending of Ashes (2011)--Alex flees from the strangely religious community of Rule only to stumble into the bone-strewn larder of a pack of Changed--takes 100 pages to resolve, mostly due to the shifts in perspective to other un-Changed teenagers driving these action-packed short chapters. Alex is a prisoner of the Changed, and as they drive her through the snowy wilderness, she sees that their behavior is, disturbingly, growing less feral: They use guns, make uniforms and practice profitless cruelties. The remaining adults seem nearly as cruel, practicing Josef Mengele–style experiments and killing children to cover ancient political feuds. Sometimes it seems like the only difference is that the Changed eat their prey, devouring them in sensuously described murder and torture scenes packed with fountaining blood and festooned guts. Nearly every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, keeping the horror appropriately unending: "And then Spider squeezed the trigger." "The knife hacked down with a whir." "And then, it moved." Plenty of mysteries and betrayals set up the trilogy's forthcoming conclusion, which fans will eagerly await. (Horror. 14-17)

Kirkus Reviews