| Title Monsters Author Ilsa Bick Genre YA Fantasy, Horror Publisher Brilliance Corporation Publishing Date September 10, 2013 How I Got This Book NetGalley Paperback 688 pages Stand alone or Series Ashes Trilogy #3 Reading Difficulty 3 (on a scale of 1-5 5 = dictionary vernacular)  |
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| FIN! | |
The Changed are on the move. The Spared are out of time. The End...is now.
When her parents died, Alex thought things couldn't get much worse--until the doctors found the monster in her head.
She headed into the wilderness as a good-bye, to leave everything behind. But then the end of the world happened, and Alex took the first step down a treacherous road of betrayal and terror and death.
Now, with no hope of rescue--on the brink of starvation in a winter that just won't quit--she discovers a new and horrifying truth.
The Change isn't over. The Changed are still evolving. And...they've had help.
With this final volume of The Ashes Trilogy, Ilsa J. Bick delivers a riveting, blockbuster finish, returning readers to a brutal, post-apocalyptic world where no one is safe and hope is in short supply.
A world where, from these ashes, the monsters may rise.
[Shoots off fireworks] It's over. I've completed the series!
Like most finales, this one comes with over-the-top explosions, unexpected deaths and a pseudo happy ending. What it doesn't do is explain who and why the EMP --which created the zombies-- go of in book one in the first place. In this novel, we find the characters rearranged within the group of characters as they all work toward the final goal, save the children of Rule.
Woohoo!:
Bick is a master of human emotions, especially when the character's being tested. She knows exactly what should be going through your mind as you struggle to take just one more sip of air before you drown. How you feel about your captors after you've been with them so long.
With the same antagonist as book one and two, things could get a little boring, but Bick manages to reinvent the zombie. A mad scientist pokes and prods at the kids until they become something dangerously organized. How do you overcome a swarm of changed who can take direction?
As usual, the last 10% of the book was AMAZING! I felt as if I were reading another Robert Jordan book --A little slow in the middles, but the last bits really socks a wallop.
Not that there was more than a paragraph or two of it, but the romance between Tom and Alex was my favorite part of this book. My heart did cartwheels. The scene was tastefully written, with just enough information to let the reader know Tom sealed the deal.
Meeh:
MONSTERS picks up at the immediate end of SHADOWS, book two. I was a little lost in the beginning, trying to remember what happened in the last novel. I remember the character list was growing and it was beginning to become hard to keep up with who was who, and who was doing what. It got that same feeling as soon as I started reading MONSTERS. The one good thing, I remember what was happening to Alex, the main character, at the end of the last novel, and MONSTERS picks up with Alex's side. Maybe it's a hope to boost your memory.
Lots of flashbacks. Every character seems to be infected with the dreaded flashback in the beginning of the novel. Remembering what was, instead of what is.
Unfortunately, what I love most about this author becomes her demise in this novel. She is an artist with words and description, but here it just slows the reader down. There's too much description during a (supposed-to-be) fast-passed action scene. Overwhelming images that don't do anything for the movement of the plot.
Rating: B
Author
Ilsa Bick
Read my interview
From her website:
Helloooo, I’m right here … So let’s just say that I’m a child psychiatrist (yeah, you read that right) and an award-winning, best-selling author of short stories, ebooks and novels.
Believe me, no one is more shocked about this than I … unless you talk to my mother.
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