Review: Ashen Winter by Mike Mullin

Title: Ashen Winter
Author: Mike Mullin
Series: Ashfall #2
Publisher: Tanglewood Press
Publication Date: October 16th, 2012
Source: Purchased
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

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.

I loved Ashfall, so I nearly tripped over myself to dive into Ashen Winter. I liked it, but it didn’t live up to book one. I have this problem sometimes with books like this. The disaster happens, and the excitement dies down, you’re left with the aftermath. That’s not always as fun to read about. Ashen Winter starts off about 10 months prior to the eruption. The opening lines are perfect…

“Ten months had passed since I’d last seen the sun. The rich blue of that final August sky was fading from my memory. Colors are slippery: If you cover your eyes and try to remember blue, you see black”

From here on, if you haven’t read Ashfall yet and you don’t want to be spoiled, leave now… *cue evil music*

So in Ashfall, Alex’s main goal is to make it to his uncles farm so he can be with his family. Along the way he meets Darla, and together they go through all kinds of crazy stuff, but they make it. Only to find out that Alex’s parents already left. They left so that they could go back and find him.

When his parents don’t come back after 6 months of searching, he packs up some supplies and heads out with Darla to find them. It seems almost like a needle in a hay stack honestly. What are the chances they are even alive.

All kinds of stuff goes down, and I won’t spoil, but the world has not changed for the better in these horrible times. The worst part of the whole disaster is watching human nature take over. People get crazy!! Like really freaking crazy, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and wonder… would it really be like that? Could it really get that bad?

I suppose it could, but I sure hope not. I feel like Alex is the Luckiest guy and also the least lucky guy. My goodness these poor kids go through hell, but everything does eventually seem to work out for them.

The main focus of Ashen Winter I would say, is the corrupted world they live in now. That made it drag a little for me but all the action kept me turning the page. I’m interested to see how the trilogy will wrap up.

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.

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