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Ashes
496 pages
A relentless, high-stakes fight for survival where an unlikely trio navigates a shattered, monster-filled world.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like a breathless sprint through the end of the world. It plunges the reader into a dread-soaked, apocalyptic landscape where survival is a minute-by-minute struggle. The narrative moves at a propulsive pace, driven by the sheer urgency of navigating a reality fractured by mass death and sudden, terrifying mutations. There is a gritty, visceral texture to the prose that grounds the high-stakes science fiction elements in raw human vulnerability—from the shadow of terminal illness to the echoes of war trauma. Yet, beneath the relentless tension and zombie-fueled horror, it is a story about the fragile, desperate bonds forged between broken people. It will deeply satisfy readers who crave intense, character-driven dystopian survival thrillers where every choice is a matter of life and death.
- Mood
- tense
- apocalyptic
- dread-soaked
- eerie
- Tone
- urgent
- gritty
- desperate
- resilient
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- found family in crisis · survival against all odds · living with terminal illness · aftermath of trauma · adapting to a changed world
- The writing
- Direct, action-oriented, and grounded in the visceral realities of survival and physical vulnerability.
- The arc
- Moves from isolated desperation to a tense, fragile solidarity amidst apocalyptic chaos.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave high-stakes dystopian survival stories featuring unlikely alliances and relentless apocalyptic threats.
Content notes
- terminal illness
- war trauma
- mass death
- zombie violence
- child in peril
About the book
Alex, a resourceful seventeen-year-old running from her incurable brain tumor, Tom, who has left the war in Afghanistan, and Ellie, an angry eight-year-old, join forces after an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky and kills most of the world's population, turning some of those who remain into zombies and giving the others superhuman senses.
Description from Open Library.
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