Ali reviews: Ashes Trilogy by Ilsa J. Bick

The three books in this trilogy are Ashes, Shadows and Monsters. I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll be mainly talking about Ashes, but I do want to mention Monsters because it does somewhat effect how I felt about the series.

So to start of, Ashes introduces us to Alex, a teenager dying from a brain tumour who’s out on a hike when an electromagnetic pulse occurs, killing elderly people while teenagers get turned into Zombie-like creatures. Alex teams up with a young girl named Ellie and a twenty-something war veteran named Tom in a fight for survival. Ashes is an interesting read, mainly in part to an interesting heroine. Her brain tumour immediately sets her apart, in both her attitude and her actions, and Tom is not the usual love interest either. The zombies aren’t particular anything new in the beginning but given time they’ll start to surprise you as well.

The one thing I dislike about them is the excessive use of gore. Don't get me wrong, I get that gore is a part of a zombie concept and I’m usually okay with gore in a book format (movies, not so much). But Ashes tends to repeat the same gross imagery; the first time a couple of the particularly nasty ones cropped up I skipped them and then it reached a point where it was a little ‘ho hum, the zombie is eating someone’s eyeball again’. I don’t know, that one may just be me; as I said, I’m not a fan of gore so perhaps if I was it would be a little more ‘heck yeah, dismemberment!’ If you’ve read the series, let me know which side of the fence you sit on with this – and if you haven’t read the series, let me know generally!

Beyond that, the further you get into the Ashes trilogy, the weirder it starts to become. I did continue to enjoy it, but I feel like it would probably start to alienate some readers, particularly by the time you get to the third book with Monsters. I don’t want to talk about it too much in case I spoil it, but as a bit of a preview, in Ashes Alex develops super smell (that happens fairly early so I feel it's okay to mention) but more things develop (particularly in a bad guy) that are bit… interesting. They don’t go super-powered or anything, I just feel like it starts to stretch into a different concept then what the rest of the series was (aka just a zombie book). Which is good in some ways and as I said, I still liked it. But I don't think it would be something everyone enjoys.

The last thing I want to do is have a bit of a rant about the ending of Monsters. I won’t spoil it, don’t worry, but unfortunately Bick does the one thing I really can’t stand in an author; she gets lazy. Regardless of whether or not that was her ‘vision’, it’s a bit of a band-aid. It has an ending, don’t get me wrong, but I did put the book down with disappointment. I do understand the difficulty endings can be; everyone has their own vision and their own way of doing things. But I would’ve liked to have seen more to finish up a decent, although strange in the end, series.

New series: WTF did I just watch?

I watch a lot of movies. Really, a lot. And naturally, while the majority of these movies are just the general, popular ones, I do end up getting dragged down the rabbit hole with a couple of them. Some are just plain ol' rubbish for various reasons, but some of them end up surprising me. As a result, I'm planning on sharing some of these oddballs with you guys. They will either fall into two categories - 'WTF did I just watch' means it's just too awful, weird or mind bending (and not in a good way!) to recommend. 'WTF, I actually kind of liked that' means that while it's still not a typical movie its actually got some redeeming feature (humour, awesome character, good plot etc) that made it watchable.

So to start us off, this is one I watched a while ago but it stuck with me... not necessarily for the right reasons. 

Mega Piranha

The run down:

Usual stuff. Science experiment goes wrong, piranha's grow big. Really big. And then they turn suicidal and hilarity in all the best of the worst ways ensure.

So the movie:

Genetically engineered piranhas who grow larger every couple of hours escape from an isolated part of the river and swim downstream towards Florida, which is in the middle of the tourist season.

Special Agent Fitch and a scientist named Sarah Monroe are trying to keep the piranhas contained despite trouble with the local police, namely Colonel Diaz. They run around doing high-speed chases through the jungle and 'fancy' tricks to keep a stolen helicopter in the air after it runs out of fuel. Meanwhile the piranhas have turned mega, cuing what could almost be the best of the movie. Some of the piranhas turn suicidal and decide to jump out of the water to eat people, attack buildings (or get skewered on buildings) and just randomly explode (no joke, they blow up two hotels. Magic). Torpedoes, depth charges and even a nuclear missile are useless against these huge fish so the heroes decide the best course of action is to get in the water with guns, in order to make the fish bleed and start a feeding frenzy. Colonel Diaz shows up in a helicopter, drops a rope in the water which Fitch then climbs up. He realises it the bad guys and shoots the pilot in the mouth with a flare gun. Cue bad graphics as the pilots head explodes in a shower of goop. Fitch uses some sort of beacon to attract a mega piranha and jumps out of the helicopter moments before its eaten by the giant fish. He then shoots the helicopter in the piranhas mouth, helicopter and piranhas explode and trigger a feeding frenzy which wipes out all of the piranhas while Fitch escapes.

Which is really, really familiar for some reason.

And that would be because at the beginning of the movie, when Fitch first meets the piranhas, he stabs one of the them in the eye and escapes while a feeding frenzy happens. 

So why exactly did this movie run for an hour and a half?

Highlights:

Pretty much... everything the piranhas do. It's just hilarious watching them crashing into buildings.

Lowlights:

Every time Fitch says something hero-ish. Or dramatic. Anytime Fitch speaks, really.

Verdict:

Its hilarious in all the wrong ways but then again, so is the 1:29 minute trailer.

WTF did I just watch.

A writes: Elementary vs Sherlock.

I am a huge, huge fan of the BBC's Sherlock and while I wasn't too keen on Elementary at the start, it actually surprised me. That said, I feel a little bad comparing these two. While both revolve around the same concept, the way that they’re approached makes them worlds apart. To start off, Sherlock.

Wow. Trying to describe Sherlock is pretty much impossible for me; it has everything. It is damn clever, it gives me sooooo many feels (Particularly with Sherlock and John’s relationship), it keeps me on the edge of my seat and is pretty much impossible to predict. The only bad thing about it is how long they leave it between series but given that Benedict Cumberbatch is in an awful lot now days (Which is amazing, because he is amazing!) that’s not really surprising. And honestly, I think it’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular; it comes along every few years, hits you with a couple of episodes that are so jammed-packed and leave you wanting more. It’s the type of thing I can see going on for years and years without becoming stale like most good TV shows do.

Elementary is  completely different. It’s the light, feel good, mainstream TV version of Sherlock. The reason I’m a bit hesitant about doing a comparison is because there is none. Sherlock in Elementary is smart, clever and observant, yes, but the important distinction is that I believe 100% that he could exist. There’s no… magic. No real ‘wow’ factor. There’s just a man, who’s really good at what he does, but is flawed. His flaws, however, are a part that I grew to like an awful lot; it gives dimension to an otherwise run-of-the-mill cop show. I think a big part of my lack-lustre response to it initially was their decision to make Watson a female. The Sherlock-Watson relationship is fantastic (The Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. & Jude Law movies highlight it, too) and a female Watson completely rips that relationship apart. Particularly seeing as its entire purpose is sex appeal. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against good-looking actors/actresses, but when the only purpose of a character is sex appeal it annoys me. In my opinion, my reservations unfortunately proved to hold true; Watson does not work as a girl. All of their adventures, all of their banter, is now just prelude to a hook up which seems inevitable. Which to me just seems like a huge letdown for a great character and what should have been a great relationship. Negatives aside, though, it does have some good moments.

BBC Sherlock, particularly season 3, does begin to add more depth to Sherlock’s pitfalls but Elementary really paints the picture of broken genius which does draw me. After watching the first season of Elementary, it does hold its own but only when you look at it on its own – die-hard Sherlock fans might not want to worry about it at all. A comparison leaves it extremely lacking and if I had to pick my favourite of the two there’s no doubt whatsoever which one I would pick. But if I was comparing Elementary to some of the other mainstream cop shows, it’s a lot more likely to make the list.