The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf

The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (2012) is the debut young adult science fiction/fantasy novel by Australian writer Ambelin Kwaymullina. It is also the first in The Tribe series. The story is about a girl named Ashala. She is an Illegal, or someone with extraordinary or unusual power. She is called a Sleepwalker, and like other Illegals, she is hunted by the government. When one of her friends betrays her, she is captured by the enemy and must resist a machine designed to reveal all her secrets—including the location of the rest of the Illegal Tribe hiding in a disturbingly sentient forest.

The setting of the novel is in a distant future, dystopic world. Humanity polluted and destroyed the earth and paid a high price for it when the earth turned on them during an event that they call the Reckoning. There are no longer separate continents; there is but one big Pangaea supercontinent and only seven cities. At the end of the Reckoning, when a natural Balance was restored to the world, people began to develop strange abilities tied to the natural world and elements. At the beginning of the novel, such people are feared: non-threatening abilities like Menders (healers) are given Exempt status, meaning that they are not Citizens, but they are not actively hunted or detained by the government, either. Other people with more dangerous abilities, like Firestarters, are called Illegals and are sent to detention facilities for the rest of their lives. Ashala is the leader of the Tribe, a group of young Illegals who have taken refuge in a sentient forest, the Firstwood, which protects them.

The story begins in media res: Ashala has already been captured by the government and sent to a detainment center run by a madman called Neville Rose. Her guard is a young man named Justin Connor, an Enforcer working for Rose; he betrayed her to Rose. She has confused feelings for him because she both hates and inexplicably loves him. Rose first tries to flatter Ashala into betraying the Tribe, using her tragic backstory of the only surviving member of her family (her younger sister was a Firestarter and died in an assessment, which resulted in a fatal conflagration). Ashala is unmoved, so he turns her over to an equally mad scientist, Miriam Grey, who invented the machine to read memories.



Resisting the machine, Ashala finds herself in a dreamworld pursued by the machine. A computer, the machine manifests in the form of a vicious dog. In the dreamworld, she meets her friend Ember, who can manipulate memories. Ember gives the dog a memory—painful, but harmless enough that it would not reveal anything to the enemy. The memory is of Jaz, one of the Tribe members who died. She wakes up back in her cell; Connor checks on her to give her something to drink and a protein bar. She still hates him, but grudgingly accepts the food and goes with him to the yard for exercise. She finds another Tribe member, Briony, has also been captured. She has traded everything she knows to Rose in exchange for a promise of an Exemption so she can go home. Ashala refuses to play along. She tells Briony that she will never be granted an Exemption, and she will never get to go home. Enraged, Briony attacks her, stabbing Ashala almost to death with a poisoned knife. Briony’s guard was a childhood friend who had been helping her, and gave her back her contraband knife; in the ensuing chaos, Briony is killed and the guard is arrested.

While she is injured, she dreams of another friend, Georgie, a girl who can see the future, and a great serpent who calls her Granddaughter. When she wakes in the hospital, she is once again taken to the machine. When she returns to the dreamscape, Ember tells her to get the dog’s collar and then she will be able to give it orders. Instead, she grabs the collar and takes it off the dog, allowing the machine to have freedom over itself. She inadvertently gives the machine a memory anyway, of a shadowy freedom fighter called the Serpent, and Rose is delighted. Back in her room, Connor tells her that everything was part of her plan, including capture. He gives her a stone Ember used to trap Ashala’s true memories.

Ashala learns that her friend Jaz is not dead at all; he was adopted by the saurs (a herd of large, sentient lizards that live on the plains) and is captured like her. She also remembers how she had come to the Firstwood, and her first Tribe members, Ember and Georgie. Finally, she remembers Connor’s identity: he is also an Illegal with the ability to manipulate the air and fly, but he hides it so well that no one knows. When he first appeared in the Firstwood four months ago, Georgie said he looked like an angel, and that he is an important friend to have. He came to warn Ashala about Neville Rose, because he recognizes many commonalities between himself and her—they both lost their families because of assessors. Ashala also remembers that she loves him. In short, everything about Ashala’s capture was planned: it was a rescue mission to retrieve Jaz.



While government inspectors are touring the facility, Connor starts a fire using the files on the Tribe, and Jaz (a Firestarter) helps it grow out of control. While everyone is distracted, Connor takes the inspectors to a warehouse where he shows them contraband material that Rose has been stockpiling. The Inspectors are horrified at what Rose is doing. They realize that Rose is an extremist; he wants to detain all Illegals and give them collars of rhondarite which negates their abilities. While the detainees are evacuated for the fire, they escape. The saurs help stage the deaths of the sixteen children by pretending to eat them. Connor and Ashala steal away into the night during the distraction and are free. Unfortunately, Briony’s guard also escapes and shoots Connor dead. Ashala Sleepwalks, asking her Grandfather the Serpent for help and brings Connor back to life. Jaz persuades the saurs to adopt the other detainees, his own Tribe, and the novel ends happily.

The novel garnered critical acclaim and was nominated for the Aurealis Award for Science Fiction & Young Adult Novel, and the Inky Awards for Gold Inky. Kwaymullina uses stories and influences from her own Aboriginal Australian heritage in her worldbuilding. She also utilizes non-linear storytelling techniques as the narrative jumps back and forth from the present-day of Ashala’s captivity to her memories.