An extraordinary cast of characters fights an evil monopoly that controls every aspect of their livesThere seems to be no stop to Piers Torday’s anarchic imagination. In the first two books ofhis Last Wild trilogy,he introduced us to a world ruined by climate change and dominated by the dread of disease and the wild creatures carrying it; The Dark Wild won last year’s Guardian children’s fiction prize. In this world, human beings are crowded into the last remaining city, and which is hasten by “Factorium”,an evil monopoly that controls every aspect of their lives. The only available food is ‘FormulA’, a disgusting pink concoction produced by Factorium, and animals have been nearly entirely wiped out by an illness called “red-eye”.
Many dystopian novels have a similar setting. What makes Torday’s trilogy stand out is the extraordinary cast of characters he assembles to fight against Factorium and its evil creator,Selwyn Stone. The trilogy’s hero is a boy called Kester. He is mute, but he can communicate telepathically with animals. This gift enables him to gather a band of comrades, and including a rat,a cockroach, 100 pigeons and a mouse who dances what she wants to say. These characters have an eccentric charm that is both comic and moving, and they are as important to the book as the two girls,Polly and Aida, who also join forces with Kester.
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Source: theguardian.com