Review by Chris Singer
About the author:
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, 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.
About the book:
Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park don't realize that the boiling hot springs and spraying geysers are caused by an underlying supervolcano. It has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years, and it will erupt again, changing the Earth forever.
Fifteen-year-old Alex is home alone when the supervolcano erupts. His town collapses into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence, forcing him to flee. He begins a harrowing trek in search of his parents and sister, who were visiting relatives 140 miles away.
Along the way, Alex struggles through a landscape transformed by more than a foot of ash. The disaster brings out the best and worst in people desperate for food, clean water, and shelter. When an escaped convict injures Alex, he searches for a sheltered place where he can wait--to heal or to die. Instead, he finds Darla. Together, they fight to achieve a nearly impossible goal: surviving the supervolcano.
My take on the book:
Although I don't review too many YA books here, I thoroughly enjoy the ones I have read and reviewed. It's a genre I'm not terribly familiar with and Mike Mullin's Ashfall is a first here on Book Dads, being that is the first dystopian, apocalyptic novel reviewed here.
All that being said, I must say I was enthralled and very impressed by Mike Mullin's first novel. One of the things which most impressed me was how the book's story had a factual and scientific basis. As you read above, there is a supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park which could quite possibly be due for an eruption at any time. This aspect of scientific reality made this book mesmerizing. I kept thinking while I read it that this is something which can really happen and it was frightening to think about. At the conclusion of the book, Mike has a section about the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone which is a must read and excellent companion to the book.
I was also very impressed to see Mullin portray both female and male characters in positive and unique ways. Darla is a very strong female character. She shows incredible resilience as well as both physical and mental strength. She's strong-willed and very intelligent as well. Her knowledge of farming and machinery play a huge role in the novel.
Alex knows tae kwon do and this plays a big part in helping him and Darla survive the many challenges they face. He is also a very driven and determined character. Surprisingly, he's also the soft-hearted of the two characters. I enjoyed seeing both of these unique characterizations and they also gave the novel another dimension of realism both male and female teen readers will appreciate.
Add Mike Mullin to the list of authors who have kept me up way too late reading their novels. Readers will want to keep turning Ashfall's pages to find out if Alex and Darla make it to their destination.
