Victoria Williamson is an award-winning children’s author and primary school teacher from Scotland. After studying Physics at the University of Glasgow, she set out on her own real-life adventures and taught children and trained teachers in Malawi, Cameroon, and China and worked with children with additional support needs in the UK. She previously volunteered as a reading tutor with The Book Bus charity in Zambia and is now a Patron of Reading with CharChar Literacy to promote early years phonics teaching in Malawi. Victoria is passionate about creating inclusive worlds in her novels where all children can see themselves reflected. Her books have won the Bolton Children’s Fiction Award in 2020 and 2021 and have also been longlisted for the Branford Boase Prize and Waterstones Children's Prize. Her latest book, Feast of Ashes, will be published by Neem Tree Press in October 2023.
'Feast of Ashes' by Victoria Williamson
It's the year 2123, and sixteen-year-old Adina has just killed nearly every person she knows. All fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-six of them.
Brought up in the East African eco-bubble of Eden Five, as far as she knows the whole world was destroyed by ecological disasters caused by human greed for profit. When Adina's careless mistake leads to Eden Five being incinerated in an explosion, 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 starts to mutate in the toxic air.
They soon find the wilds are not as empty as they've been told, and terrible secrets are uncovered on the dangerous trek. As their time runs out, Adina must wrestle with her guilt and her feelings for her two friends, keeping her head together long enough to get her young sisters to the Sanctuary. Will she make it, or will the Nomalies get to her first?
With a strong environmental theme, and warnings on the dangers of corporate takeover, Feast of Ashes is action-packed and takes a deep look at family, friendship, romance and sacrifice.