The Last Wild by Piers Torday

In a world where animals no longer exist, twelve-year-old Kester Jaynes sometimes feels like he hardly exists either. Locked away in a home for troubled children, he's told there's something wrong with him. So when he meets a flock of talking pigeons and a bossy cockroach, Kester thinks he's finally gone crazy. But the animals have something to say. And they need him. The pigeons fly Kester to a wild place where the last creatures in the land have survived. A wise stag needs Kester's help, and together they must embark on a great journey, joined along the way by an overenthusiastic wolf cub, a military-trained cockroach, a mouse with a ritual for everything, and a stubborn girl named Polly. The animals saved Kester Jaynes. But can Kester save the animals?

The Last Wild is a book that was a good read. The characters had interesting backgrounds and met each other in unusual ways. The writing style is different from what I usually read. There are misspelled words and the grammar is a little off. But, the overall plot is good.

The story takes place in a rehabilitation home for children. The author introduces Kester, a boy that can talk to animals. The author also tells you about his past and why he is mute.  After the wardens see him holding a cockroach, they take him to the headmaster of the school. They explain to you why Kester is in the rehabilitation home. Next, 99 pigeons fly into his room and tell him they are going to break him out of the rehabilitation home. This is a turning point for Kester because he realizes that he can actually talk to all types of animals. The pigeons then invite cockroaches into Kester’s room. The cockroaches break him out of the prison-like rehabilitation home by making him crawl down a sewer pipe and enter the nasty gutters to get to the ocean.

            When they come out of the sewer pipe, the birds tell Kester that they are going to take him to their home, The Last Wild, by flying him over the ocean. They hold him in the air by holding his clothing with their beaks. The pigeons finally touch down in the Last Wild and Kester meets a wise old stag called Wildness . Wildness tells Kester that he, Wildness, sent for him because Kester is the only person alive that can help them get a cure for the berry-eye. The berry-eye is a disease that kills an animal slowly, going from the inside out. Before the animal is going to die, their eyes blaze a bright red. That is why it is called the berry-eye.            

            From then on, we get introduced to lots of crazy characters and settings. At the end Kester goes back to the Premium, a city where multitudes of the rescued people live, and meets his Dad. The Premium is the place where Kester used to live.

            Overall, this book was okay and mildly interesting, although it could have been better. It also was very clean (there was no bad language/inappropriate scenes), so that is a neat bonus. 

On my “Amazingly Fabulous Book Scale” I would give this book a 5 because it was good but it could use a little improvement in storyline, setting, spelling and grammar.  

*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.  Hannah