Feast of Ashes by Victoria Williamson – Blog Tour

Another Write Reads blog tour from me, and it’s another Victoria Williamson book. Hooray!

Feast of Ashes is Williamson’s first novel for young adults, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t initially thrown by the change in age range,

Williamson has such a distinctive way of making her characters easy to empathise with, so I think that having recently come from Norah’s Ark and Whistlers in The Dark , I expected a similar tone to this story.

I was very, very wrong.

…which I guess makes ‘now’ the perfect time to drop this book’s blurb:

The Earth’s ecosystems have collapsed and only ashes remain. Is one girl’s courage enough to keep hope alive in the wastelands?
It’s the year 2123, and sixteen-year-old Adina has just accidentally killed fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-six people. Raised in the eco-bubble of Eden Five, Adina has always believed that the Amonston Corporation’s giant greenhouse would keep her safe forever. But when her own careless mistake leads to an explosion that incinerates Eden Five, she and a small group of survivors must brave the barren wastelands outside the ruined Dome to reach the Sanctuary before their biofilters give out and their DNA threatens to mutate in the toxic air.
They soon discover that the outside isn’t as deserted as they were made to believe, and the truth is unearthed on their dangerous expedition. As time runs out, Adina must tackle her guilty conscience and find the courage to get everyone to safety. Will she make it alive, or will the Nomalies get to her first?

Feast of Ashes, Victoria Williamson

As with Whistlers in the Dark, Williamson’s world-building is natural and integrated within the prose. Though this is speculative fiction, there are no heavy descriptive sections which, as someone with A Lot going on right now, meant that the book didn’t feel inaccessible or ‘too hard’.

And to be honest, I think that’s a big issue with YA genre fiction – a lot of examples that I’ve read feel needlessly heavy. But when you take into account that the target demographic for these books are sitting exams and navigating often-complicated new relationships, ease-of-reading is a massive selling point. Especially in this case, where the readability didn’t detract at all from the plot or characterisation.

As I touched on above, the themes of this story are somewhat darker than Williamson’s other works. There’s a description quite early in the novel, for example, of the main character cutting another character’s hair, which I found to be quite difficult reading, even as an adult. I don’t think this detracted from the work – rather it served to really separate this book from Williamson’s others. And generally speaking, I really loved this departure from Middle Grade – genre fiction was always my favourite growing up, and I can absolutely imagine teenage me gobbling this novel up with gusto.

Some points of note: the book was set in ‘Africa’, though I don’t recall seeing where specifically. Africa is not a country, it’s a continent. As someone who lives between Scotland and Denmark, I can tell you how acutely different these countries-which-share-a-continent are. Morocco is vastly different for Egypt, or from Kenya, or from South Africa, for example, and I think it would have helped with the setting to know where The Dome was in slightly more specific terms. This isn’t a complaint of mine unique to this book, though.

As someone who also blogs about the ‘fluff’ of environmentalism (remember your reusable water bottles, kids), I liked the underlying message of this work, but I am starting to wonder if an approach more similar to Becky Chambers’ ‘The Monk and The Robot’ books isn’t what we need now. Again, that’s not to detract from this novel – there is so much to like here and this is more of a general musing while we’re here – but I feel as though as a society, we need a future to aim for, rather than away from. Even prior to the explosion that Adina causes, life in Eden Five isn’t something I want. I want to see futures to aspire to and hope for, and though this book is beautifully crafted, it’s very much a future to steer clear of.

But like I said, in my younger, slightly-less-in-need-of-coddling days, I think the challenge of a setting like this would have really worked for me. And as with Scareground, I’m not the target demographic.

Reading back over my thoughts so far, I sound ambivalent, but I’m really not – I think these wider thoughts are just evidence of how much this book has got me thinking and that’s an absolute gift. I can definitely see this book sparking discussions in classrooms and amongst peers.

Or amongst internetters? I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this, or any of the other books I’ve reviewed. Leave your comments below or come and find me on Twitter or Blue Sky.

— Fran ❤