The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Torday, Piers. The Last Wild (Book One). New York: Viking, 2018.

The Last Wild is the first book in the eponymous series. The novel is narrated in first-person present by the main character, Kester Jaynes. Kester lost his ability to speak after his mother’s passing. Worse, he was sent away to the Spectrum Hall Academy for Challenging Children without even getting to say goodbye to his father.

The government had shut down the countryside and rounded everyone up in quarantine in the big cities so they could stay away from the Red Eye Plague which has killed every animal on the planet besides the varmints, who were immune. Without any “useful” animals left, The Factorium begins producing food-replacement formula to feed the people. Soon, they not only control the food but also the government and the educational system.

Kester is bullied by the other children at Spectrum Hall, and Doctor Fredericks locks him in his room most of the time. At lunch, Kester usually takes his formula into a deserted corner so he can hang out with a lonely cockroach who sometimes crawled out of a drainpipe. That day, when Kester allows the bug to crawl onto his finger, the cockroach seems to ask him for help. Before Kester could investigate, though, Doctor Fredericks sees Kester talking to the bug and calls him to his office for a lecture.

Doctor Fredericks reminds Kester he must go into quarantine because, even though the varmints are immune to the virus, humans are not, and the scientists of The Factorium are worried that the virus might eventually mutate to the varmints. Kester is sent to his room for total isolation for a week.

At night, Kester dreams that 100 pigeons have broken into his window and are telling him that he has special powers that can save them all. He talks to them and is shocked because he has not spoken since his mother’s passing. When he wakes up from the dream, he finds a hoard of cockroaches on his floor, including their leader, The General. The General tells Kester that he must follow them to save the world. They lead Kester out of his room and escape through an underground tunnel that lets out on the edge of the island near the cliffs overlooking the polluted ocean.

Doctor Fredericks and the guards try to stop Kester, but The General convinces Kester to jump over the cliff. A group of pigeons swoop down and carry Kester away. They fly north for days and land in an empty countryside. Kester says he wants to go home to the city Premium so that he can reunite with his father, but the pigeons and The General tell him they must save the world.

Suddenly, a deer bursts out of the forest and drinks from the lake. Dozens of animals join the deer. Kester is shocked because he has always been taught that all animals had gone extinct. The king of the animals, the stag, explains to Kester that he ordered the pigeons and cockroaches to bring Kester to the Ring of Trees because he has the power of the voice, which enables him to talk to animals. The stag wants Kester to use his powers to find a cure. Kester takes a few pictures of the animals with the high-tech watch his father had given him, and then he suggests that they ought to go find his father, who is a famous veterinarian, so that he could make a cure for the animals.

The stag agrees, but then a wolf appears and attacks Kester for being a human. The stag pushes one of the wolves over a cliff and tells Kester to get on his back. Together they escape from the Ring of Trees. The wolf-pup of the wolf the stag had pushed over the cliff follows them and joins their party.

Kester begins to feel sick as they headed south. He spots a mansion with smoke coming out of its chimney and wants to go inside to rest. He leaves the stag and the wolf-pup and takes The General with him. Inside the mansion, they find a girl named Polly and a cat, Sidney. Polly explains that she and her parents had refused the quarantine orders and had been living off the land for years. However, The Factorium had destroyed all the crops and her parents had left to find formula. Additionally, Polly reveals that Sidney contracted the plague weeks ago and it had not transferred to her or her parents, so she theorizes that humans are also immune to the plague despite The Factorium’s claims.

A creepy Factorium man, Captain Skuldiss, arrives with the cullers who are tasked with killing any and all animals. They try to take Sidney, but the Stag causes a car accident and Kester and Polly run away with the animals as the cullers chase them to a river. They jump in and Sidney drowns in a waterfall, but the rest of them escape.

The group runs into a woman who calls herself Ma. She takes them to Old Burn Farm and locks Polly and Kester in a shed. When they escape the shed, they find Ma and all her friends around a bonfire with the stag tied up and ready to eat. Ma gives Kester her knife and tells him to cut the stag so they can feast. Kester releases the stag and they escape the farm.

The group heads into Premium and Kester leads them to his father’s house. When they arrive, though, Captain Skuldiss answers the door. The other cullers arrive and start shooting animals, but the stag attacks them and kills them. Kester finds his father locked inside his lab. His father explains that he had invented a cure for the plague years ago but The Factorium had locked him away because they wanted the plague to destroy the world so they could take over. Together, they remake the cure for the plague and distribute it to the animals. At the last moment, Kester learns that his father can speak with animals too, and a Factorium helicopter arrives.