Seventeen-year-old Alex thought the postapocalyptic town of Rule was safe, but its most prominent citizens are involved in a deadly deception that forces her back out on the road, where she battles zombielike "Changed" and citizen militias. Bick's vivid descriptions of zombie meals and fight scenes are her strength and will continue to please horror fans interested in action over characterization; this is no story for the queasy. But readers will need the background from the first book, Ashes (2011), to contextualize the various characters and story lines in this second book of the trilogy.

Alex (Ashes), still on the edge of sanity and survival, fights the zombies created by a cataclysmic electromagnetic pulse; avoids the creepy powers that sent her into the wilderness; and searches for her missing love. Dystopian and apocalypse buffs, as well as fans of the earlier novel, will enjoy this well-developed look at how the end of the world could play out.

Earth's few remaining normal teenagers struggle to survive in this gruesome, bloody post-apocalyptic sequel. The world's gone completely to hell: All nonelderly adults are dead, and most teenagers are Changed into zombielike feral children who eat humans alive. Survivors huddle into protective enclaves and protect themselves with deadly force. The cliffhanger ending of Ashes (2011)--Alex flees from the strangely religious community of Rule only to stumble into the bone-strewn larder of a pack of Changed--takes 100 pages to resolve, mostly due to the shifts in perspective to other un-Changed teenagers driving these action-packed short chapters. Alex is a prisoner of the Changed, and as they drive her through the snowy wilderness, she sees that their behavior is, disturbingly, growing less feral: They use guns, make uniforms and practice profitless cruelties. The remaining adults seem nearly as cruel, practicing Josef Mengele–style experiments and killing children to cover ancient political feuds. Sometimes it seems like the only difference is that the Changed eat their prey, devouring them in sensuously described murder and torture scenes packed with fountaining blood and festooned guts. Nearly every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, keeping the horror appropriately unending: "And then Spider squeezed the trigger." "The knife hacked down with a whir." "And then, it moved." Plenty of mysteries and betrayals set up the trilogy's forthcoming conclusion, which fans will eagerly await. (Horror. 14-17)

Gr 10 Up- Shadows picks up where Ashes (Egmont, 2011) left off, with no recap of the multiple characters, their relationships, or their complicated circumstances. This novel is divided into four distinct story lines: Alex has been captured by a group of sadistic, cannibalistic Changed, and she doesn't know whether they are saving her for lunch&30; or for something worse. Tom was rescued by an elderly couple and is now searching for Alex. He faces the threats of bounty hunters and other humans driven to desperation in evil times. Chris has become an enemy of Rule, and Peter is in trouble at the hands of a man with diabolical plans for the Changed. At the center of all these stories is the suspicion that the Change is far from over and the fear of what will happen to the young people who didn't immediately become flesh-eating monsters when the EMP swept through the sky. There's not a whole lot of room-or need-for character development here because of the constant peril. What the book lacks in nuanced characters it makes up for in plot and description. Ashes was violent, but this book takes the bloodshed to a whole new level with unsparingly gory descriptions of eyeball-eating teenagers, brutal injuries, and bloody battles. The author also seems to be trying to say something about what might happen to communication when typical means of staying informed are shut down: throughout the different story lines, rumor and miscommunication abound to the extent that readers are unsure of what is true. And, as with the first volume, a cliff-hanger ending means that most of these questions won't be answered. Heather M. Campbell, formerly at Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, CO