Monsters by Ilsa J. Bick (review)

Weighing in at more than 800 pages, this conclusion to the Ashes trilogy is pretty monstrous itself. Readers who have followed the fates of Alex, Tom, and Ellie since the first book will know to expect gore, but this finale amps up the horrific violence and bodily degradation, with plot almost falling by the wayside in favor of yet another desperate chase followed by a fight scene that ends in dismemberments, puncture wounds (Bick seems especially fond of the sound eyeballs make when they rupture), and pain explosions. Chapters usually end with a character in a situation that seems impossible to survive, only to turn up several chapters later with a time lapse that finds them ready to fight again. The cast of characters has, by this point, become extremely complex, and readers will need to call up memories from the prior two books to refresh the web of relationships that form the complicated motivations of the characters. Tom, Ellie, and Alex have each found a pocket of survivors who are trying to stay one step ahead of death and mayhem, but the sinister designs of Finn, such as his development of chemically induced telepathy that controls an army of people-eaters, have far-reaching effects that Tom unwittingly plays a part in. Old hostilities collide as the groups converge in Rule, where Tom, Ellie, and Alex finally find one another only to play out one final climax that almost claims Alex as she unleashes the monster within. This is a somewhat disappointing conclusion, especially since the motives of the characters, as well as the mechanics of their telepathic connections, remain muddy; given the extreme changes wrought by the electromagnetic pulse, they seem almost petty in their continuance of unresolved grudges in the face of so much devastation and loss. Nonetheless, the world-building remains intriguing, the adventure level is stratospheric, and even when engagement lags, the sheer desire for completion may drive readers of the first two books through the volume.