However, there are just way too many characters, and the overuse of certain adjectives (“ashen,” “shadowy,” and “coppery,” to name a few) made for some tedious reading at times. Shadows is an improvement over Ashes in terms of pacing, and it definitely is an exciting dystopian novel. Because The Girl was so attached to the characters and wanted to know what happened after the cliffhanger ending of Ashes - and because it was our book club’s February pick - we read this one together, me reading it aloud and paraphrasing the more graphic parts. The Girl (age 12) really enjoyed Ashes, which was far tamer in terms of sex and violence, so I was glad that Jill informed me of the more adult scenes in this book. With lots of blood and gore, and even some nauseating sex scenes, Shadows is a YA novel definitely meant for older teens. At the same time, the various characters also must contend with bounty hunters and a militia led by a sadist.

While Alex fights to keep from becoming the next meal for a group of Changed, there is a struggle for power in Rule, the cult-like town that took Alex in during the latter half of the first book. Whereas Ashes focuses on Alex, a 17-year-old girl with a brain tumor whose sense of smell is returned and magnified by the EMP, and how she and the people she meets along the way struggle to survive and adapt to the post-EMP world, Shadows follows so many people and so many subplots that it is hard to keep everything straight. Please note that this review may contain spoilers from the first novel, but not from this one. Shadows picks up right where Ashes left off, and it’s definitely not a standalone novel. Bick, centered on the survivors of an electromagnetic pulse that killed all the middle aged, revived the elderly, and changed most children and teens into crazed, animalistic, zombie-like creatures. Shadows is the second book in The Ashes Trilogy by Ilsa J. But every second I’m alive is one more moment I still have a chance to do something.

Ilsa bick books