The Script: Ashes Ashes

  Hello and welcome to The Script, a blog by Ben Woodward where we do reviews in the format of a script or basically how I talk. In this edition of The Script we will be reviewing the post apocalyptic novel Ashes Ashes by Jo Treggiari. Nominated for the white pine award...

  Sorry had to do that. Anyhow, who or way (whichever you prefer) in this review we will be focusing on the book, not who rewards it. Starting from before my satire obsession took over it is not that well known to the point I couldn't find an online version, and it was published in 2011! The digital age! Well of course it was Scholastic who published it and who still hands out a 5 page flier every month and has a website that predates the dinosaurs (Ok not going to make a picture not going to make a picture...)

  Anyhow (I prefer how) this review will use the summary below so if you actually want to read the book I suggest not reading the summary and skipping to where I make carnage out of the characters and shred up the setting. If you are lazy like me then you will need to read the summary to understand what is going on.

Summary:

  The plot of Ashes Ashes has nothing to do with ashes. It is the usual generic overwritten dystopian society with female protagonist most likely made using an on-line template so I'm going to to use that same template to do this summary.

Insert name of Protagonist: Lucy Holloway

Insert name of Boy she likes: Aidan

Click here to randomly generate a story

  Lucy Holloway lives in a New York devastated by 2 waves of smallpox and global warming which has caused a wet and dry season on steroids. This has made New York look something like this.

*Refer to Map

  After a Tsunami (which are now common) devastates her camp* she goes to the settlement called the "Hell Gate" where she meets Aidan and her then girlfriend Del. (60 pages of meaningless Text.) Life is normal in the town except for the fact that every once in a while some government people (Oh this is getting good) from Roosevelt Island* kidnap some of them and inject them with Smallpox. (More meaningless text.) Then Lucy, Aidan, Del and his brother Sammy invade the government facility on Roosevelt Island. Yes that's all that happens. Yes the plot section is going to be fun but first it's time to create carnage on the characters.

Characters:

Before we do the characters let's do the setting.

Setting:


  From the map it is easy to tell the setting is what Jo put the most thought into. The world is well though out and well incorporated with the story but there is 1 problem that a published author should be able to overcome, "And over there is a tall tree" or "We went through many deep gorges." All the book's setting is all the way through was described in that same bland simple way. One may say it leaves it up to your imagination but what it leaves up to my imagination is the process in which the book was written.

  Setting is a hard one to rate because you have the extraordinary world clashing with the udder lack of description of it. I will give setting a 3 due to the fact that the world is representative of what may happen in real life.

Character (Again):

This time we are actually doing character.

Plot:

  As you may have seen from the summary the plot was probably made on an on-line template. It's post-apocalyptic/dystopia female protagonist idea is extremely overused and not much actually happens as you can tell from the summary. It may have had some potential but almost none of it was used. For this reason I am giving plot a 1

Character:

The only reason I am doing this is I hate doing both theme and voice.

  The characters in this book are fairly average as books go. I'll cut a break to this section by considering the characters as in what they are as part of the plot (ie female protagonist meets guy other generic stuff blah blah blah) and look into how Jo developed them and astonishingly she did an OK job. Each of the main characters has a semi-interesting back-story and Lucy (the protagonist's) back-story is both interesting and plays a major role in the ending. For this reason I will give character a 4.

Theme:

  The main theme of Ashes Ashes is survival and what you must do to survive in a post apocalyptic world. The first part of the book (60 pages of filler) was about Lucy's struggle to survive on her own while the second piece of filler was about her overcoming her social anxiety and contributing to a community. I don't know if this was intended or not (probably not) but hidden in here is a lesson, humans are social creatures and we can only thrive if we work together. Because of this and the theme of survival is used very well in Ashes Ashes I will give theme a 4

Voice:

  The perspective and voice of Lucy Holloway is used well in Ashes Ashes. Through her eyes and only her's the story was unveiled so you experience it exactly as she did. What I found most astonishing though was Jo's ability to convey the emotions of Lucy to the reader. When Lucy's knife broke I felt frustrated, When I first went to the Hell Gate I was nervous and when I was trapped by the government I felt hopeless. Due to how amazingly every aspect of voice was used I will give it a 5.

Conclusion:

  In conclusion the books strengths are not noticed much by the average reader making it better than it may seem on paper (get it.) Bad puns aside taking into account the 1 for plot, 3 for setting, 4 for character, 4 for theme and 5 for voice I will rate this book 3.5/5 stars and yes, I used a calculator.