Book Review: War of the Wind by Victoria Williamson

On a remote Scottish island, fourteen-year-old Max’s life changes forever when he loses his hearing in a boating accident. Struggling to make sense of his new life and finding it hard to adapt in school, he begins to notice other — even stranger — changes taking place when a new wind farm appears off the island’s coast.

With the help of three school friends with additional support needs, Max discovers that a sinister scientist, Doctor Ashwood, is using wind turbines to experiment on the islanders. They must find a way to shut down the government’s secret test before it spins out of control.

GENRE: Young Adult Eco-Thriller

PURCHASE LINK: Amazon | Neem Tree Press

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Victoria Williamson is an award-winning author who grew up in Scotland surrounded by hills, books, and an historical farm estate which inspired many of her early adventure stories and spooky tales. After studying Physics at the University of Glasgow, she set out on her own real-life adventures, which included teaching maths and science in Cameroon, training teachers in Malawi, teaching English in China and working with children with additional support needs in the UK. Victoria currently works part time writing KS2 books for the education company Twinkl and spends the rest of her time writing novels, and visiting schools, libraries and literary festivals to give author talks and run creative writing workshops.

Victoria’s previous novels include The Fox Girl and the White Gazelle, The Boy with the Butterfly Mind, Hag Storm, and War of the Wind. She has won the Bolton Children’s Fiction Award 2020/2021, The YA-aldi Glasgow Secondary School Libraries Book Award 2023, and has been shortlisted for the Week Junior Book Awards 2023, The Leeds Book Awards 2023, the Red Book Award 2023, the James Reckitt Hull Book Awards 2021, The Trinity School Book Awards 2021, and longlisted for the ABA South Coast Book Awards 2023, the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2020, and the Branford Boase Award 2019.

You can find out more about Victoria’s books, school visits and free resources for schools on her website: www.strangelymagical.com

Review

If you're new here, I'd like to preface this review by saying that I'm a big Victoria Williamson fan. You can check out my reviews of some of her other works: Norah's Ark, The Whistlers in the Dark, The Haunting Scent of Poppies, and Feast of Ashes. TL;DR I enjoyed them all.

This one's no exception.

I'm continuously amazed by how versatile Victoria is, and how often she spoils her readers with a new release! With War of the Wind she's back on the YA front, but this time we have an eco-thriller that follows a deaf protagonist and his friends with additional support needs. I might not be her target audience, but this book helped me understand young people — and young disabled people — better. That's largely why I read her works. They go beyond enjoyable writing with their underlying messages about societal issues and challenges. They make me contemplate. I like that as a reader, and that resonates with me as a writer.

I really enjoyed the book, but more importantly, the insight into the deaf characters' struggles made me want to learn BSL or British Sign Language. It came at the right time, too; I was looking for a new language to study after I quit using Duolingo as they got more involved with AI and started laying off workers.

(Here is a resource list I've found for BSL. I'm currently going through the family sign language videos, and I'm looking to take a BSL online course. If you're in North America, you can learn ASL instead.)

My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️️⭐️️

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Hi! I'm Marie, a Filipino fantasy author and book reviewer currently based in the UK. I’m the co-author of The Prophecies of Ragnarok, a Norse myth new adult urban fantasy trilogy, and I also have several short stories published in anthologies and literary journals.

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