Birch and Jay

by Allister Thompson

Decades after the world was levelled by the effects of human-made climate change, the scattered remnants of humanity have begun to pull themselves together. Birch and Jay are a young couple living in a small, idyllic community away from the ruins of one of Canada’s great cities.

As a newly graduated Knowledge Seeker, Jay must leave Birch and their community to collect remnants of old wisdom from the dead world. Along the way, he comes across a mysterious elderly woman who offers to travel with him. He will receive more than a travel companion ― she offers revelations about their town’s founding as well as knowledge of how to survive in a lawless world.

Birch, seeking adventure, pursues Jay but finds more danger than she ever imagined. Will they find each other in the chaos and brutality of the city and get safely back home to tell the tale?

Birch and Jay will reunite in a place where they confront a terrible reminder of humanity’s perennial repeating the tragic mistakes of the past.

Genres: Dystopia, Science Fiction

230 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2025

About the author

Allister Thompson is a musician and professional book editor based in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. He has released dozens of albums in the genres of psychedelic rock, progressive rock, folk, and ambient. He has also edited countless novels in all genres in his 20+ years in the publishing industry.

Outside of literature and music, he really likes trees and rocks, which are abundant where he lives.

Reviews

[Philippa Dowding · Rating 5 out of 5]

We're 150+ years in the future and humans have destroyed everything, including the climate and social infrastructure. The remnants of humanity are living in enclaves in small towns, tiny hamlets, or have become solo nomads hiding in the woods. Then, the resilient Knowledge Seekers, a peaceful yet informed sect among the residents of Norbay, hear that the once-great city to the south is rising again.

Is this a threat or a beacon of hope? The main characters, Birch and Jay, set out separately on a quest to the city (on bikes!) to seek the truth.

I really enjoyed this first book in The Knowledge Seekers series. Full disclosure, I've known Allister for several years and worked with him as an editor and as a musician. Also, I have an acknowledgment at the back of BIRCH AND JAY, which is pretty nice and my first!

The book is an interesting addition to the dystopian and cli-fi/post-apocalyptic genres. It's well written, imaginative, often intense, and certainly feels completely possible and realistic. That is, it's not a stretch from what we're living now and where we could be going. There are big themes here: how to survive without easy access to clean water or electricity; how to weather the climate disaster of terrifying storms, fires, derechos, and drought; and most important for the Knowledge Seekers of Norbay, how to rebuild without making the mistakes of the past.

Readers will enjoy following Birch and Jay as they ride the highway corridors past the crumbling famous landmarks and small towns on the way to Toronto. Chilling speculation: refugee camps were set up near the Holland Marsh, as people flooded the border to the south, seeking stability and food in Canada. My favourite part? As someone who lives nearby, I was enthralled by the use of Bathurst and Bloor (in downtown Toronto) as a penal colony for prisoners of the state, forced to live exhausting lives dismantling (by hand), the crumbling towers of a bygone era.

If you like speculative, cli-fi, or dystopian fiction, and want to read what could happen here in Canada (more specifically in southern and central Ontario), this is an interesting take. This is the first in a planned trilogy.

[Gabrielo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thompson, Allister. Jay and Birch.(Latitude 46 Publishing, 2025).

Full disclosure, I received an Advance Review Copy of this book from the publisher, via River Street Writing.

I want to start by saying that if you’re the kind of person for whom the word “woke” is a pejorative, or who thinks human-caused climate change is a hoax perpetrated by whoever it is that perpetrates global hoaxes, don’t read this book. Don’t even read this review. Go watch conspiracy videos on YouTube or whatever. Secondly, I want to say up front that despite its potential, this book was a disappointment. Yes, I gave it two stars—partly because I thought it had a lot of potential, but mostly because Goodreads only goes as low as one star, and there are books out there far worse than this.

Now that we have that out of the way, the review itself, which past a certain point is pretty much all spoilers.

It is 2123. In the year 2045, human-caused global warming finally reached the tipping point, transforming from something that might happen if we didn’t smarten up into a real, live, global cataclysm. Vast areas of the world were rendered uninhabitable. Democracy collapsed, replaced by totalitarianism as people sought strong leadership to cope with the crisis. Countries like Canada, where the effects were somewhat less disastrous, were quickly overwhelmed by the immense tide of climate refugees. Worldwide, billions died.

But there are enclaves of humanity struggling to survive and rebuild. One such is the community of Norbay (the real-life city of North Bay) in northern Ontario. Determined not to repeat the errors of the past, the people of Norbay are trying not to rebuild civilization, but to remake it, taking the best of the past and leaving behind those things that got us here in the first place. They are vegans and pacificists, embracing a life free of the sins that wreaked such havoc on the world. They’ve even discarded their given names, choosing names from the natural world to symbolize their determination to live in harmony with nature rather than trying to dominate it.

Jay and Birch are a young couple in Norbay. Jay is a Knowledge Seeker, a newly-graduated member of an elite group whose job it is to leave the safety of Norbay and comb the ruins of civilization, collecting and preserving past knowledge. He’s been training for this for years, and now it’s time for him and the other graduates to make their first journeys.

Birch, on the other hand, still doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. She has an itch to explore—to find out for herself what the world is like rather than simply take the words of her elders for it.So when Jay sets off on his first mission, to Queen’s University in Kingston, she hits the road herself soon after, hoping to catch up with him so they can do it together.

The road is a dangerous place. Fortunately, both of them meet allies along the way who help guide them through its perils and in the process teach them about how their world came to be and, ultimately, their places in it.

Now for the spoilers:

The future that Thompson describes is horrifying, and rightly so. Despite being at the extreme end of current climate change predictions, the things he describes are entirely possible. So this is a cautionary tale. This could happen to us if we don’t smarten up. It’s a message that people need to hear.

Unfortunately, it’s a message pounded in with the relentlessness of carnival workers hammering in stakes for the big circus tent. I kept waiting for the info-drops to end and the story to begin.It isn’t just Jay and Birch and their endless, stream-of-consciousness ruminations that are at fault. Everyone they meet adds to the pile, each of them explaining again and again how wrong the old ways were, how the world got to be in the sorry state it’s in, and why we need to learn from those mistakes so that we never, ever, repeat them.

Even the tense moments are weirdly non-tense. In one scene, Birch is captured by raiders. She’s young, she’s attractive, and so their intentions toward her are pretty clear. But we barely get a chance to digest all this before she’s rescued by a fellow wanderer, who then proceeds to give us her version of how the world got to be in the sorry state it’s in, blah blah blah, etc, ad nauseum. Even the rescue itself—and it includes someone literally getting their head blown off—is underwhelming.

Jay’s travels, meanwhile, take him to the city of Toronto. Elm, an older woman he meets on the road, has told him terrible things about it. He agrees to accompany her there to scout it out and determine what kind of threat it poses to Norbay. Upon arrival, however, he is captured, while Elm escapes.

This is where we’ve been heading from page one. Philosophically, this is where the roads to the future diverge: Norbay on the one hand and Toronto on the other. At first glance, Toronto seems to have a lot going for it. It’s clean. It’s busy. Children are playing. It has electric streetlights and vehicles, and even good medical care. Was everything Jay and Birch were taught wrong? Faced with the realities of Toronto, both Jay and the reader should have been forced to take a hard look at the things we’ve been taught to believe. As readers, this is what we’ve been waiting for.

And it fails.

Instead of seducing us, or even tempting us a little, Toronto is immediately revealed to be just as awful as we’d been led to believe. Immediately. There’s no tension. There’s no, “Oh my god – has the whole set up been a lie?” (and the consequent relief when we realize it wasn’t.) Ruled by a tiny clique of ruthless dictators, Toronto is a giant prison camp, where dissenters are worked to death as slave labour. Worse, Toronto intends to export its vision of the future, and Norbay is square in its headlights.

Hauled before the ruling council, Jay is given a choice: embrace their vision of the future or die. His choice is drearily obvious. Luckily, Birch and Elm swoop in just in time, eluding the guards and spiriting him away to home and safety, and to warn Norbay of the threat posed by Toronto.

The story is told as a series of flashbacks, narrated 50 years later by Jay and Birch as they deliver their final lecture to another new crop of Knowledge Seekers. The whole Student-Becomes-Teacher thing is a perfectly good plot device. But all it does here is tell us that no matter what happens along the way, we’re going to get a happy ending. I guess as readers we mostly assume a happy ending. But what we don’t know is the price we’re going to pay to get it. In this case, almost no price at all, something we basically learn on the first page.Worst of all, Toronto, which just a single page earlier was held up as this huge, existential threat to Norbay, is dispensed with in one line in the postscript, when Birch says: “You all know what happened to Great Toronto and its leaders, so we don’t need to recap that now.” This caused me an actual WTF moment before I realized that this is the first book of a series. But again…. this is not how foreshadowing is supposed to work.

I suppose you could argue that “Jay and Birch” is a deliberately different take on the post-apocalyptic genre, and that as a Young Adult work, it should pull some of its punches. But I’ve read lots of YA (both as a YA and now as a much older A), and this story totally failed to work for me.I found it preachy and ponderous, the characters poorly-drawn, the execution awkward and ham-handed, the plot seeming to exist solely for the purpose of hanging yet another repetition of the message on.

And why is it that after years of training as a Seeker, Jay knows almost nothing about the world outside Norbay? What were they teaching him all those years? Not much, apparently. Indeed, he himself says to his own graduating class fifty years later: “Some of you have very curious and penetrating minds and have plied me with questions about my own long career out on the roads; what dangers I faced, who I met, what I achieved, how I failed. And I admit I’ve been a little tight-lipped about it.”

THIS MAKES NO SENSE. Sharing what you know is literally the definition of teaching. These things are precisely what the new Seekers needed to know to actually stay alive.

Finally, enough with the endless location references. Yes, we get it: the story takes place in northern Ontario and Toronto. We really don’t need to know the names of every town and city the characters travel through, or the exact route they take into Toronto, or where the Tim Horton’s is in Barrie (just past the hospital on the left, right where Google Maps says it is…)This got old really quickly.

I was excited to read this book, and it let me down. I also hate to be this critical about something someone has put this much work into. But in the end, “Jay and Birch” should perhaps have been subtitled, “217 Pages In Search Of An Editor.”

[Whatithinkaboutthisbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birch and Jay: The Knowledge Seekers Book 1 by Allister Thompson
Young Adult

In this disturbingly realistic dystopian novel the world has collapsed under the weight of climate change catastrophes. Rather than unite, humanity’s worst instincts - clinging to power, protecting the few - have only made things worse. Amid the wreckage, new communities begin to rise. Norbay is a community committed to learning from the past, living in harmony with nature and training Knowledge Seekers to collect information from the old world to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Jay, a young Knowledge Seeker, embarks on his first mission and meets Elm, a former knowledge seeker. Elm fills in the gaps of Jay’s training bringing wisdom, resilience and historical insight. Together they journey towards Toronto to determine if the rumors of a new authoritarian leadership group are accurate.

This novel offers a thought provoking mirror to our current global trajectory: our refusal to heed environmental warnings, our obsession with progress at any cost, our decision making and our failures to respond humanely to crisis such as immigration. The book explores a stark contrast between two worldviews; one that values harmony, equality and sustainability and another that glorifies domination, hierarchy and technological supremacy.

While the novel’s message is powerful it can feel a bit heavy handed and repetitive at times. Yet perhaps it bears repeating given our continued disregard for such warnings.

The storytelling and the characters quickly draw you in immersing you in this new world. The alternating perspectives of Jay and Birch offer a rich, multilayered view of their journeys and the world. Elm is a standout character, carrying the weight of history with wisdom and integrity.

The only real complaint is waiting for Book 2 to find out what happens next.

[Sara Hailstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allister Thompson’s contemporary climate fiction, “Birch and Jay,” drops the reader into a dystopian future set in Ontario during the 2100s. The world has become decimated as the climate spiralled out of control, human life forever altered. Canada is a war-torn landscape with violence between climate refugees who fled north from a collapsed United States and flooded the border. Armed conflict has resulted in severely depleted populations and stragglers remain, hunting and fighting to survive.

Political, social and financial institutions have been wiped out and what persists are pockets of humans hoping to continue on. We meet Birch and Jay, they belong to an isolated and idealistic community called Norbay. Community members seek out and preserve knowledge of the past human civilization. Jay, a Knowledge Seeker, sets out on his first ‘seeking’ mission. These missions include Jay exploring abandoned domestic spaces and the residue of material culture that once was. Birch, a young woman from the community, who loves Jay, follows him. Both characters must navigate an unforgiving and violent world beyond the confines of their desolate community. Along the way, they meet unforgettable personalities and are forced to contemplate the projection of the state of the world and what will become of it.

Allister Thompson is a professional book editor based in North Bay. Thompson is also a musician and he has released music in the genres of psychedelic rock, progressive rock, folk and ambient. Thompson has edited novels in all genres in his 20 plus years in the publishing industry.

Latitude 46 Publishing is an independent Canadian literary press based in Sudbury, Ontario, named for the 46th parallel that runs through Northern Ontario. Founded in 2015, the press is dedicated to publishing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by writers who live in, or are connected to Northern Ontario and its landscapes, histories, and communities. Latitude 46 is committed to regional storytelling which helps correct the long-standing Toronto-centric imbalance in Canadian publishing by creating space for northern voices, rural and resource-based narratives, and culturally specific perspectives that might otherwise struggle to find national platforms. By championing both emerging and established writers from the North and situating place as a central literary force, Latitude 46 strengthens Canada’s literary diversity and ensures that Northern Ontario is recognized not as a margin, but as a vital centre of Canadian literary production.

I have read and reviewed several works by Latitude 46. “The Donoghue Girl,” by Kim Fahner, “Joe Pete,” by Ian McCulloch, “The Stones of Burren Bay,” by Emily de Angelis, and “A Thousand Tiny Awakenings,” an anthology edited by Connor Lafortune & Lindsay Mayhew. Lastly, “The Art of Floating,” by Melanie Marttila. “Birch and Jay” joins these texts in the unique storytelling and larger questions that the nature of these publications propel readers to face.

For YA, some elements of the plot were shocking, despite being authentic to the nature of the world beyond the isolated community. Further, the plot was dialogue driven with a crafting of multiple timelines and character point-of-views challenging the reader to face the world that could become if climate issues are left unchecked. A heavy hand of carrying the story forward was an adult Jay, now an instructor for the next generation of Knowledge Seekers, speaking from 2173 relaying the story of his first mission half a century ago. Other reviewers have noted that this future timeline reduces the sense of drama and suspense with the plot as we know Birch and Jay will make it out alive. I wonder, as this is the first book of a trilogy series, if this dual-timeline will fit in with the two future books and is functioning to build deeper suspense and mystery later?

Toronto was a benchmark landscape point that culled my intrigue of this post-apocalyptic and dystopian scenario. Toronto is overrun with a group called, “The Six,” violent warlords ravaging the ruins of lost domestic spaces and enslaving anyone in their path. Birch and Jay encounter Toronto, the almost myth of a once great metropolis, Toronto has more than their desolate Norbay community. Toronto seems clean, at first, the population thriving within its fortress walls, children are even playing out in the open. There are electric streetlights and vehicles. There is also medical care. But, beyond these luxuries of life, there are the warlords. And they force our protagonists to question their upbringing, above all else, they exist to force the protagonists to choose between a life they’ve always known, and the potential of a future, a violent future.

It was not fully apparent to me if Thompson played on the title of the text with dialogue or characterization, but the combination of the symbolism of ‘birch’ and ‘jay’ adds a depth and richness to the novel. On their own, ‘birch’ and ‘jay,’ are powerful symbols, but combined, meaning deepens.

The birch tree holds memory, a pioneer species, it is often the first tree to grow after fire or clearing. Birch stands for starting again, especially after loss. As thresholds and liminality, the birch’s pale bark and early leafing renders the tree as one in between, between season, winter and spring, and between grief, to healing, silence and then speech. In many traditions, Celtic, Nordic and Indigenous, the birch is linked to purification, shelter and a gentler strength, not dominance. Lastly, birch bark has historically been used for canoes, containers and writing. Birch, a recording, carrying and preserving of story. Birch is quiet resilience, life that returns without spectacle.

The Blue Jay can exist in contrast to birch. The piercing cry, impossible to ignore. The Blue Jay speaks up, especially when danger or injustice is present. Jays will imitate other birds and their sounds, linking them to language and storytelling, deception and revelation. Jays, the guardians of the forest, call out the boundaries. Jay has been known to break silence so something can change.

Together, birch and jay symbolize a land that heals and the voice that warns. They are combined gentle renewal and sharp speech. In places of recovery, there is witness and testimony of what will not be forgotten. Together, they are a living landscape that both remembers and speaks.

Thompson presents a cli-fi novel for a young adult readership of hope. There is potential for a better future. The intended audience is given a space to contemplate and dream of something better, that they can go out into the world and explore solutions, rather than caving under the weight of climate anxiety. “Birch and Jay” would be a beneficial text for conversation in a mature classroom.

Thank you to Allister Thompson, Latitude 46and River Street Writing for a complimentary copy in request for an honest review.

https://www.sarahailstone.com/book-re...

[J.C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read Birch and Jay as an advanced reader copy, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for sharing.

Birch and Jay is set in a dystopian future after a climate apocalypse befell our world. It relates the adventure of two descendants of survivors, Jay, a Knowledge Seeker and his promised, Birch. Knowledge Seekers roam the world in search of lost artefacts, aiming to explain what led to the fall of society as we know it. It is told in a narrative past, by Birch and Jay in an alternating point of view.

I enjoyed the writing style, as I could feel I was right in the head of the main characters. The descriptions of the settings were vivid, and I felt I was going on their adventures myself. The dialogue flowed easily, but could be repetitive at times. There are many long speeches at the start, which could have been cut down in order to get to the action faster. The pacing of the story was adequate despite this. Also I would have preferred if the relationship between Birch and Jay had been more established in the beginning of the story.

The sudden violence in the second half of the novel was unexpected. To be fair I do not enjoy graphic violence and nothing up to that point led me to believe the story would take this grim turn.

Overall, Birch and Jay will satisfy the post-apocalyptic fan, especially those sensitive to the cause of climate change. I did enjoy the Canadian nods throughout the story. I would have liked a clearer conclusion to the first quest of Jay and how useful were his findings, but I will have to wait for the second novel.

[Kristina Kamaeva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Climate change catastrophes have destroyed the world, and the scattered survivors build new communities.
This is not the book you’d read for entertainment. With all the details of the characters travelling through Ontario’s ruined towns, the book reads like a documentary. It offers many messages worth reflecting on.
The novel’s gloomy post-apocalyptic setting prompts readers to contemplate how consumerism, intolerance, the pursuit of power and profit, and disregard for nature led to irreversible disaster.
What kind of communities would form in a harsh new reality? How would people survive? Will they remain human? Can they create a civilization that thrives on cooperation with nature, instead of dominance?
The community of Norbay reminded me of Auroville, a universal town built in 1968, near Pondicherry, India, where people of all countries lived in peace, above all creeds, politics, and nationalities. Auroville’s founders also believed that it was essential for humanity to evolve to a higher state of consciousness to create a more harmonious world.
I would like to believe that the peaceful and democratic community of Norbay wouldn’t be suppressed by authoritarian societies.
Above all, I want people to prevent the world from ending as it did in the novel Birch and Jay. It would be tragic to lose our beautiful world. That’s why it’s important to read and discuss such books.

[Jonesy.Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this dystopian novel set in early 2100s Ontario. Decades after the world was destroyed by the effects of human-driven climate change, the remnants of humanity are slowly coming back together. Birch and Jay are a young couple living in a quaint little community away from the ruins of one Toronto.

Jay has just graduated as a Knowledge Seeker and Jay must leave Birch and their community to go on his first mission. He is headed out alone with his bike towards the former city of Kingston to gather pieces of old wisdom from the remains of the educational buildings that were once there. Along the way, meets a mysterious elderly woman who offers to travel with him. She will pass on knowledge to him and reveal things about his town’s founding. She fills in gaps in his education to help him survive in their lawless world.

Birch is restless craving adventure, but also to be by Jay's side. She decides to go after him. It's way more dangerous than she ever imagined though. Will they find each other in the chaos and brutality of the new community developing over what was once Toronto, and hopefully survive to tell the tale.

[Jayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dystopian novel in the guise of a memoir, retrospectively following Jay and his girlfriend Birch through the parts of post-collapse Ontario between Toronto and North Bay. On Jay’s first mission as a Seeker (of lost knowledge, not the Golden Snitch), he begins to hear rumours that there’s a booming civilization in formerly abandoned Great Toronto. Adventures ensue and wise elders are encountered along the way.

The collapse of civilization is never pretty, and when it’s happening worldwide, there are very dark spaces filled with memory too – at least for the first generations. This novel doesn’t sensationalize them by showing a lot of firsthand violence and gore, but the spare prose of elders’ memories is its own kind of horrifying.

Reminiscent in some senses of The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Demaine and in other senses like The Grey Sisters by Joe Treggiari, this is a suitable read for those who like their dystopia more literary than literal.

#BirchAndJay #fiction #Canadian #literature #Ontario #dystopian #postapocalyptic

[Lori Knutson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Birch and Jay, the first book in The Knowledge Seekers series by Allister Thompson, looks ahead to the future of humankind to show us the consequences of how we live today. I appreciated the skillfully portrayed Canadian settings and familiar references. In the story, these places and relics of the past crumble and disappear tragically in an apocryphal future. The author makes this outcome believable, but he also gives the reader enough hope that our demise is not inevitable, that perhaps our course can be altered. Members of future civilizations in the story face the same dilemma as we do: the choice to love one another and the planet or to destroy everyone and everything that we deem a threat. Birch and Jay, while conveying a warning, artfully demonstrates how choosing a better path is possible. I enjoyed this young adult novel.

[Amanda Hazlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like to sincerely thank NetGalley and Literary Press Group of Canada for the ARC of Birch and Jay. An eye opening story of what life in Ontario, Canada could look like if our nations don’t work together to be mindful of our planet. A coming of age journey for both Birch and Jay, takes them to new places and brings them into full awareness of what happens outside of their community. The thought provoking themes of the book have so much bearing on the past, present and future for the characters but also the reader to be conscious of. A great book for those of open minds who are willing to see life through a different lens.
“What we do affects all life on Earth.” - from Birch and Jay - Allister Thompson

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birch and Jay is a dystopian tale set in a future where climate change has had devastating affects, not only on the planet but on the people too.
Jay is a Seeker, he has been sent out on his first mission to look for information that can be of use to Norbay, his home. Norbay is a town with people who are trying a different path from what caused the catastrophic destruction in the past.
Birch is Jay's promised. She has not decided what she wants to do or be, but she knows that she has to follow Jay.
What follows are the adventures that they both have before they join up to return home to give a warning to their friends.
A cautionary tale of what could happen.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this interesting adventure.

[Peter Fenton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Birch and Jay is wonderfully poetic, filled with adventure and has beautifully developed characters; characters that you can’t help but root for as they face great challenges on their quests to uncover the truth behind their world.



This is a book for our troubled times. Although the tale goes dark places, it also shines with hope for the future of the world. In the words of the author, “No matter what we do to it, it eventually recovers and gets on with things.”



I can’t wait for the next book in the series.

[Vitamin THC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an advanced copy of this book and read it with my children. We loved it. It was fast, paced entertaining, and the characters were compelling. Highly recommend!