Ashes of the Earth: A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America (edition 2011)

This was a really good book, a real page turner. The characters are well written, and the plot is set up extremely well. Set in a location near the American/Canadian border it follows a murder investigation through all the difficulties that could be experienced while trying to bring back communities after the Apocalypse.

You take a huge step back to a world that existed before all the technology that makes life so much easier. Having to learn to live off the land and all the struggles of right versus wrong that takes place when law and order is corrupt. ( )

Well-written, but extremely depressing! Multiple children commit suicide; dogs are brutalized, killed, eaten; and even in a society which has had the ultimate example of why greed and conflict are not the right keystones for a civilization, humans continue to look out for themselves first.

Ugh, I need to go read something hopeful now! ( )

Eliot Pattison's ninth mystery is his first set in a post-apocalyptic community along one of the Great Lakes. It presents a number of his characteristic themes. The setting is a shattered culture, like Tibet after the Chinese invasion in the Shan novels, or the post-Colombian contact setting of the Bone Rattler-Eye of the Raven series. The main character is emotionally damaged but bound by honor to solve the truth of a murder, even if it kills him -- and he pays for each new nugget of information by suffering physical violence and injury. Characters from the old world carry a sense of survivor's guilt; characters from the new, damaged world are struggling against long odds to find their footing.

Somehow these themes seemed very convincing when applied to Tibet -- perhaps because I don't know much about Tibet or Tibetan Buddhism, and the themes reinforced a narrative I was open to believing. It's been interesting to see how much less compelling these ideas have felt in his other settings, perhaps because they are so saturated with loss that they don't feel real when not anchored in a real historical moment. Ashes of the Earth includes some nods at peace, love, and human decency, but they don't really come into their own until late in the book, too late to define the world of the story. I think, in this setting, the tale I'd rather have read is the one that starts as this book ends. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

It may sound at first to be the height of cheesy cross-genre gimmickry -- a modern-style crime drama set within a James Howard Kunstleresque post-apocalyptic, neo-Luddite America -- but in Ashes of the Earth, mystery veteran Eliot Pattison takes what could've been an extremely eye-rolling experience and actually makes it taut and fascinating, a thriller that I admit I found more engaging than most other crime novels set within much more workaday surroundings. And that's because Pattison chooses to take a sober, toned-down approach to his world-building here, concocting a crime that fits in very naturally with the quasi-Victorian, surrounded-by-ruins milieu of these kinds of novels, making the story much less about radioactive mutants and hidden caches of Barbie dolls (although both these things are there as well), and much more about how the human capacity for both compassion and greed will long survive whatever circumstances we humans find ourselves in, not a utopia or a wasteland like so many post-apocalyptic thrillers are but simply a new way of life and new ways for people to act both honorably and horribly. The twist-filled plot is best left a surprise, which is why I won't mention anything about what actually "happens" here; but let's just say that fans of both Scott Turow and dystopian sci-fi are likely to be highly satisfied with this quickly paced, always fascinating book, a story that manages to be not only inventive in its plot but even introduces lots of original elements to its details, something becoming harder and harder to do in our post-Road times, when an ever-expanding glut of post-apocalyptic novels seems sometimes to be in danger of cannibalizing itself to death. A pleasant surprise and a much better novel than I was expecting, it comes strongly recommended.

Out of 10: 9.3 ( )

I am fascinated with near time apocalyptic novels. It's a little bit sick, I know. The first one I recall reading was when I was in high school. I am Legend by Richard Matheson told the story of a man who was alone in a world of zombies (or werewolves, the book didn't make that part clear). Some worldwide disaster (again not specified) had destroyed society. It was a gripping story, and probably had a lot to do with my continuing fascination with this type of story. The movie that was recently made from it did not even come close to portraying the tension that Matheson evoked in his writing.
Ashes of the Earth has some of the tension of I am Legend. The author Pattison does not try to explain in detail what happened to create the setting of the story. He dribbles out details as he unfolds this tale of crime and corruption in the post-disaster settlement of survivors on the north shore of Lake Superior, perhaps near Thunder Bay, Ontario. The 'detective' of this 'mystery' , Hadrian Boone (who reminds me of Kurt Wallender), stumbles around making mistake after mistake, but in the end gets it all figured out.
Many interesting characters are introduced in the story. Each one is presented as faillable, with their mistakes in full display. And the whole story has not been told. If the book is successful, then expect a sequel. I'll read it. ( )