ASHES OF THE CITY

After an earthquake destroys a major city, a group of schoolchildren make their way through the desolate rubble trying to survive in Taylor-Garcia’s speculative YA novel.

In a large, unnamed urban area, a group of high-school students embark on an unspecified field-trip “project” in which popular student Mayaseems to have a leadership role. Sudden, panicked flights of pigeons and eerie noises prefigure a massive earthquake, which effectively level the city. As aftershocks rumble throughout the area, the young people are alive but shaken, but there are no adults around to help them. Indeed, with few exceptions, no other city residents seem to be in view in a smoky landscape of tottering ruins and distant fires. Maya rallies the students and attempts to protect them in a plan to seek shelter, stay in one place, and await rescue. However, almost immediately, Jace, her charismatic classmate, starts questioning her decisions. He seems to be a natural-born rebel and troublemaker, and soon he has the kids listening to his exhortations that they start procuring food and weapons by any means they can, including theft, and to prepare to fight even their peers, if necessary. He even implies that the group should leave the weak and unproductive behind. An inevitable schism develops among the students, whom Maya tries to hold together with appeals to their better natures. Restless Jace, however, favors brash action over prudence and cooperation; he and his breakaway faction ultimately make a warehouse their home base, while Maya and her supporters face mounting hunger and desperation.

Readers may find echoes of Willam Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) or William Butler’s The Butterfly Revolution (1961) in this narrative, which begins as a disaster drama but very quickly transforms into lengthy and often repetitious arguments between clashing moral philosophies about what to do and why. The phrase “weight of leadership” recurs, refrainlike, as Maya and, far less often, Jace agonize about their choices: “In the end, that was what leadership was all about. Not just making the decisions, but living with the consequences.” As students tag Maya’s coolheaded entreaties and cautions as weakness and the crisis inevitably escalates towards violence, readers never learn important information, including the identity of the region or the size of the bands of kids who cluster around Maya and Jace as their rivalry grows—it could be in the dozens, or it could be in the hundreds. The scale of the catastrophe may have destroyed just one city, or a state, or perhaps the known world, as far as the reader knows. Also, anything that could throw the focus off the core conflict is ignored, and the result feels somewhat like a Hermann Hesse-like novel of ideas. At more than 400 pages in length, it is a hefty journey through allegory. That said, the prose will be accessible to a YA readership and the story proceeds swiftly enough, for all its minimal complications. To its credit, the material does not transform into post-apocalyptic “prepper” fiction, which is a distinct plus.  

A starkly focused yet overlong tale of a clash between moderation versus despotism during an emergency.