In fact Skuldiss, ‘like a spider with a white human face,’ is so creepy Moontrug couldn’t read him before bed (he’s as creepy as The Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) and Selwyn Stone, with his ghastly hobby, sends shivers down your spine. The whole charges thing, building up the drama…’ and of course, the white pigeon: ‘You will be completely forgotten, don’t worry.’Īnd Torday’s villains are properly frightening. The gorgeously boastful but brave wolf cub: ‘I know I am the best at scaring off giant metal birds ever,’ the brilliantly stupid Skulker: ‘I mean… what he said basically,’ the sycophantic starling: ‘I think you’ve orchestrated this really, really well. The story has an Animals of Farthing Wood / Watership Down feel, partly because the characters Torday creates are wonderfully real, each with a unique voice. Because what would our world look like without animals? What would it look like without humans? The reader is on tenterhooks at the end of each chapter: will Kestrel and his wild be enough against the dark wild, against the cullers, against Captain Skuldiss and Selwyn Stone? But what’s so brilliant about this book is that the story matters. And so Kester and his loyal wild are thrown headlong into another adventure. Right from the start, the story packs pace: Polly is hiding secrets, a helicopter is circling and there is a strange whispering in the drain.

Together with his loyal friend Polly and a brave gang of child outlaws, Kester must find a way to stop them before it’s too late. A dark wild hiding from the deadly virus that destroyed their friends a dark wild with a plan to rise up against their human enemies. Below the sparkling city of Premium, deep underground, Kester finds more survivors: a menacing white dog, a cohort of foxes, an interfering starling, and the world’s most miserable rat. Twelve-year-old Kester Jaynes thought he had rescued the last wild animals in the land. Last seen in his bestselling The Last Wild (and what an impact he made there) – I heard that the sequel, The Dark Wild, was out and there was a chance the white pigeon may be making another appearance. An animal in fact – possibly the most fumbly-brained, accidentally hilarious animal any author has created: Piers Torday’s white pigeon.

The wild beyond piers torday