"Ashes, Ashes" by Jo Treggiari

"Ashes, Ashes"
by Jo Treggiari
read by Cassandra Campbell
Produced by Oasis Audio
9 hours and 48 minutes


Time once again to dive into the fiction from the young adult category, this time I listened to a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel "Ashes, Ashes" by Jo Treggiari.    As with most young adult titles this one involves a little romance but lots of action and some despair.  The world has ended but, Treggiari never fully explains why but 99% of the human population is wiped out from a smallpox like plague.  The rest of the world is getting wiped out by floods and drought and the cities are decaying.  What's left of the human population is being hunted down by hazmat suited people called sweepers, armed with tazers they invade encamped populations taking people (especially children) away in white vans to an island hospital never to be seen again.

Lucy Holloway is an anomaly.  When the book opens we find her struggling for her own survival eating only that which she catches and kills.  Relying on acorn mush is not enough and through the help of a survival book rescued from the decaying library as the book opens she is learning to clean and cook a turtle.

While out checking her snares she sees a boy of around her same age (16) who helps her to escape from the sweepers.  The boy, Aiden, stays on her mind and she often thinks of joining his encampent of refugees.  When a tsunami threatens her campsite she litereally runs for the hills and in running away decides to find the encampent.  Lucy decides that she would be better with a group rather than alone, and joins up with the group of survivors.  But the danger follows her and the sweepers raid the camp taking people away.  This time one escapes and leads a rescue party to bring back the other children.  On this rescue mission Lucy discovers the sweepers are looking specifically for her because her blood holds the mystery to surviving the plague.

Through the dangers of a dying world and a mad scientist on the hunt this book is full of adventure that will sweep you away to a world of survival.  The reader Cassandra Campbell does a nice job of presenting the story and with the constant teetering on the edge feel of the story the few mispronunciations are easily forgiven. 

The book does present an interesting end, in that it ends the story nicely but does leave it open for a sequel, which I'm hoping Jo Treggiari has planned.  If you liked the "Hunger Games" series this book will be right up your alley.

"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

"The Hunger Games"
by Suzanne Collins
Read by Carolyn McCormick
Produced by Scholastic Audio Books, 2008
11 hours and 10 min. (unabridged)

I've said it before and I'll say it again today's youth have some great literature written just for them. Here is yet another shining example. "The Hunger Games" takes several ideas and wraps them together to form an exciting bit of big-brother-dystopian-sci-fi. While listening to this audiobook I kept getting thoughts/memories of various bits from media, I would be reminded of the 70's sci-fi film "Logan's Run" at times, or maybe "Rollerball" or "Death Race 2000," then Stephen King's short story turned Schwarzanegger movie "The Running Man," then at times the book reminded me of the multiple reality shows like "Survivor" in which the contestants compete and get voted off. In fact when researching the info on this book I found that the author, Suzanne Collins, was influenced when switching her television back and forth between coverage of the war in Iraq and "Survivor." Collins threw in a bit from the Greek Myth Theseus, who was forced by Minos to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, but survived and created this exciting story.

After reading I found that this book is part one of a trilogy, and the trilogy follows this story's heroine, Katniss Everdeen, as she is chosen to be a tribute to the government to battle in the Hunger games and eventually leads a revolution. But the revolution gets ahead of our story. Let's talk about this one first.

"The Hunger Games" is set in a distant but seemingly not too distant future, after the destruction of North America, in a nation known as Panem. Panem consists of a wealthy Capitol and twelve surrounding, poorer districts. District 12, where the book begins, is located in the coal-rich region Appalachia. Coal is the regions contribution to Panem as all districts have some specialty/export to contribute. The problem is that the government keeps all the regions poor and the people of the districts further from the capitol (which is located somewhere near what is Denver, Colorado) are the poorest. District One near the capitol is the least poor and the higher the number the more the suffering. Katniss is forced to illegally hunt in the woods at an early age after her father dies in a mining accident and her mother becomes locked in grief. Katniss hunts to keep her and her sister alive.

At one point there were 13 districts but the 13th was destroyed when they tried to rebel against the capitol. As punishment for the rebellion every year one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each district are selected at random and forced to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised event where the participants, or "tributes", must fight to the death in a dangerous outdoor arena until only one remains. Katniss, in place of her younger sister, Primrose. Also participating from District 12 is Peeta Mellark, a boy whom Katniss knows from school and who once saved Katniss's life by giving her bread when her family was starving.

Katniss and Peeta are taken to the Capitol, where they meet the other tributes and are publicly displayed to the Capitol audience. During this time, Peeta reveals on-air his long-time unrequited love for Katniss. Katniss believes this to be a ploy to gain audience support for the Games, which can be crucial for survival, as audience members are permitted to send gifts to favored tributes during the Games. The Games begin with 11 of the 24 tributes dying in the first day, while Katniss relies on her well-practiced hunting and outdoors skills to survive. As the Games continue, the tribute death toll increases, but both Katniss and Peeta are able to evade death.

Katniss and Peeta are split up and the Gamemakers use dirty tricks and foul play to make the games more interesting by using some of the government's genetic animal mutations, like tracker jackers, a form of wasp that when it stings it can case vivid hallucinations and kill. Or human / wolf hybrids that hunt like wolves but can think like humans. One mutation a Jabber Jay was created to spy on the population, it has the ability to imitate human speech perfectly so they would record the coversations in the districts and report back to the capitol, when this was discovered the populus would feed the Jays false info, after this that project was abandoned, the Jabber Jays were released and later mated with Mocking Birds, creating the Mocking Jay which could sing beautifully. This Mocking Jay becomes a symbol of the people and of their freedom and has a large part in this novel.

The adventures during the battle in the Arena are very exciting and will keep you glued to this one. If you get the audiobook like I did you'll soon discover the talent that is Carolyn McCormick. Carolyn delivers the reading of this book with enthusiasm when needed and differentiates the characters by giving each their own voice.