History Literature / Ashfall

The Ashfall Trilogy, written by Mike Mullin, chronicles the story of 16 year old Alex Halprin, a survivor in the aftermath of Yellowstone's supervolcanic eruption. After a rather traumatic home invasion experience while staying with his friends, he decides to run away and look for his parents eastward under the ashcloud. He puts on a pair of skis and takes off.

[[folder: Series Wide]]

* CrapsackWorld: The entire world is plunged into a volcanic winter, and the resulting apocalypse brings out both the best and the worst in humanity. Opportunistic bandits roam the countryside, and cannibalism is not unheard of. Even when spring comes, it's going to be a very long time before things return to pre-eruption life.
** Might be subverted by the end of Sunrise, as Alex has succeeded in building a new city named Speranta, basing its law off of constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, even succeeding in building a working series of windmills and greenhouses to provide electricity and food for its people. While the world is still no place for WideEyedIdealists, the protagonists still [[EarnYourHappyEnding earn their happy ending]], while the villains fail to survive because their own brutal methods are detrimental to their survival.

** In Sunrise, Alex admits internally that he wouldn't mind if his flesh was eaten in order to prolong someone's life. However, after that, there would be nothing to distinguish his friends from the universally hated Flensers.

** In Ashfall, the first villains of the story are shot dead by a chrome pistol, and Darren doesn't even spare the last one as he tries to flee.

** In Sunrise, many flenser gangs had fallen victim to their own survival strategy: many of the flensers turned on each other when they ran out of food, and the ones still alive are suffering from debilitating illnesses related to their cannibalistic lifestyles.

** first mentioned in Ashfall when a mother of several young children screams at Alex, accusing him of being a satanic cannibal interested in eating her nearly-dead daughter. After he calms her down and gives her assistance, she reveals that she was properly paranoid: her husband had been murdered and eaten by a gang of cannibals.
** Almost the entirety of Ashen Winter deals with the conflict that the protagonists have with various gangs of depraved cannibals and slave traders.
** Cannibalism as a strategy for survival is brutally deconstructed in Sunrise, where various flenser gangs have turned on each other, sealing their own doom as organizations. Many of the survivors have also acquired prion diseases, making them relatively easy to pick off by anyone who hates the flensers.

** Conditions somewhat improve in Ashen Winter, when the Colonel convinces FEMA to feed the refugees with the grain found in an abandoned ship in the middle of the Mississippi river. He even allows the protagonists to escape the camp in exchange for vital information in taking down a prison gang. He still follows orders to prevent the refugees from migrating eastward, however.
** Played straight in Sunrise, as the complete collapse of the government leads to the complete abandonment of the camps, which allows the refugees to easily escape and flee eastward.
* WorthlessYellowRocks: Both inverted and played straight, naturally. Everything that was valuable in the pre-eruption world is worthless (gold, dollar bills, etc), but things like firearms or vitamin C rich foods like kale or fruit loops becomes extremely valuable.
** In Sunrise, this means that it's a lot easier for Alex to find Darla a wedding ring than it is to scavenge for other supplies. Everybody has already taken the food, weapons, and other tools, but they don't waste time with jewelery that does nothing but look pretty.

[[folder: Ashfall]]

[[folder: Ashen Winter]]

[[folder: Sunrise]]

[[folder: Darla's Story]]

[[/folder]]

It's not the same as the South Korean movie of the same name released in 2019.

* UncleanlinessIsNextToUngodliness: many of the flenser gangs have degenerated even further than they have in previous books. Three of the last surviving members of one particular gang are found in an abandoned [[=JC=]] Penny in a filthy den full of rotting human remains. At least one or two are afflicted with debilitating illnesses, and the one flenser still healthy enough to put up a fight is still little more than a mindless, drooling animal.

* UncleanlinessIsNextToUngodliness: many of the flenser gangs have degenerated even further than they have in previous books. Three of the last surviving members of one particular gang are found in an abandoned {{JC}} Penny in a filthy den full of rotting human remains. At least one or two are afflicted with debilitating illnesses, and the one flenser still healthy enough to put up a fight is still little more than a mindless, drooling animal.

* UncleanlinessIsNexttoUngodliness: many of the flenser gangs have degenerated even further than they have in previous books. Three of the last surviving members of one particular gang are found in an abandoned JCPenny in a filthy den full of rotting human remains. At least one or two are afflicted with debilitating illnesses, and the one flenser still healthy enough to put up a fight is still little more than a mindless, drooling animal.

* MayorPain: Robert Petty is a pompous, incompetent old fart who, while apparently well beloved by his town, is completely incapable of ruling a town in a post-apocalyptic world. He repeatedly leads unsuccessful counter attacks on Stockton in order to regain their stolen property. Even after Ben and Alex are proven right in their warnings that Petty's strategies wouldn't work, he still refuses to take their advice, even turning the rest of Warren against them, forcing them to rely on their own

* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Referenced frequently throughout the series.
** Alex becomes worried that his father might fall victim to this as he watches him sadistically torture a flenser for information, only to slit his throat once he's done.

* XanatosGambit: in order to stoke Red's ego, Alex blatantly lies to him about giving him control over Speranta if he wins a knife fight with him. He did so knowing that even if he won the knife fight, he would have absolutely no power to ensure that the promise would be delivered. Darla would never follow through on Alex's false promise, and any remaining followers of Red lacked the power to carry it out, due to being vastly outnumbered. Sure enough, just as Red is about to kill Alex with his knife, Darla rushes behind him, beats him in the back of the head with her rifle, and shoots him dead.
->'''Darla:''' I didn't promise you a goddamn thing. And I never fight fair.

XanatosGambit: in order to stoke Red's ego, Alex blatantly lies to him about giving him control over Speranta if he wins a knife fight with him. He did so knowing that even if he won the knife fight, he would have absolutely no power to ensure that the promise would be delivered. Darla would never follow through on Alex's false promise, and any remaining followers of Red lacked the power to carry it out, due to being vastly outnumbered. Sure enough, just as Red is about to kill Alex with his knife, Darla rushes behind him, beats him in the back of the head with her rifle, and shoots him dead.