Book Review #58: The Feral Girl by Nick Alimonos

Hello Dear Reader!

This week, I’ve got a book that I received during the Sunshine State Book Festival I participated in last month! I did a book swap with the amazing Nick Alimonos, and I’m really happy I did, because this book drew me in!

Nick Alimonos’s book, The Feral Girl follows the story of young Thelana as she is sent away from home to fend for herself among the wondrous and dangerous creatures of the Wildwood under the guise of finding other civilizations. Filled with action, adventure, and diverse cultures, this book features a wonderfully painted fantasy world and a carefully crafted emotional and mental journey. But before I get into that, here is the back-cover summary (from Goodreads):

Lost and alone, a young girl braves the jungles of Aenya armed only with her bow, becoming both predator and prey.

When food in her homeland becomes scarce, Thelana is sent away to find civilization. The days that follow become a fight to stay alive as she makes her way through the Wildwood, an unforgiving, two-hundred-day trek through wilderness and ruin, where she discovers a world far stranger and more terrifying than she ever imagined. The Feral Girl is a harrowing tale of survival, hope, and the limits of the human heart.

The Feral Girl is the third book in the Aenya series.

Time for the review!

Main character Thelana is an incredibly strong girl, both mentally and physically. She’s someone who puts her family at the heart of her life, but she’s also adventurous and kind with a lot of respect for nature, which is a big part of her home culture. Resourceful and smart, she’s also a very quick thinker and uses past experiences to tackle present problems. I absolutely fell in love with her character.

Many of the minor characters were mentioned in back stories, such as her family, the Face People, the Outsiders, and those of the ancient technological past. All these people come from very different cultures, and each and every character introduced were really well-fleshed out and realistic. It was a joy reading about everyone mentioned throughout the book.

The world of the Aenya series is very vast, and its history is and lore is rich. In this single book alone, at least four very different and distinct cultures were introduced and well-established. Alimonos was absolutely masterful in descriptions of the various settings and civilizations Thelana journeyed through in this book. From the great monsters and forests of the Wildwood to the great dry plains home of the beastly halfmen to the humble village of Makria, Alimonos did a wonderful job characterizing each setting and the culture of its people.

This book was absolutely refreshing, because encountering a steady stream of dialogue was rare despite it being 350 pages long. It was as if it was written how a storyteller would tell a story verbally. Though it was written in the third-person, it closely followed not only Thelana’s physical journey, but her emotional and mental journey as well. It’s very easy to forget that she’s only a teenager in this book, a young adolescent girl on her own surviving in the wild because of her overall maturity. There are layers to Thelana, and getting to know her and grow with her throughout the book was nothing short of enjoyable.

My only slight criticism is that the ending was a bit abrupt for my taste, but I also found it to be satisfying. To keep this review spoiler-free, it gave Thelana the closure she deserved and also set up the next book.

Just to add this in, I will say this book does have its fair share of topics that could be triggering for some people. These include attempted SA and trauma and also depictions of what can be considered slavery. Alimonos does a good job of depicting these rather non-graphically, but I wanted to include these as a warning for those who are uncomfortable reading this type of content.

So, The Feral Girl rating:

5/5 and highly recommend, especially if you love fantastic world-building and a strong, well-developed main character. This book had me in since the first sentence, and I’ll definitely be reading more of Nick Alimonos’s work in the future.

Thanks for reading!