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lauraadriana78's review
5.0
Re-Read 06/2014 Still one of the most fun books I've read in this genre. Tarin is the most fantastic character. I love all the men and the boys in this series and wish it would have gone further. That dystopian world of Mothers is so intriguing!
I wish we could do some sort of voice recorded reviews here on GR, because I would TOTALLY sing an "ODE to the AWESOMENESS that is Tarin" if I could...And who is Tarin you might ask? None other than the STAR of this book, and the character that OWNED this story from the first line to the very last.
Tarin is one of the 'wild boys' who live in the woods, he is in his eighth woods year, which means his time to be hunted by the Men living outside of the woods is coming. Every fall these Men come and take the older boys to be 'civilized' in the Before Times Buildings...Despite this, Tarin being the fiery, brazen twinkie that he is, wanders too far from the safe areas and ends up getting caught by one of the Men, but he fights back and manages to escape...However, his luck doesn't last. When the Men come back to hunt, Tarin is caught a second time, and this time he doesn't get away from his captor.
And so begins 'The Civilization of Tarin', which I promise you is the most entertaining thing you will have read in a while. Tarin's character is a treasure, he is such a BRAT, irreverent, impulsive, lippy, but so dear and SO SO SO charming. His guilelessness will disarm you completely.
Tarin has been caught by a Captain, which means Tarin is now His Boy, and our Tarin does not like it one little bit. Tarin does not belong to any man, he is free. But the Man is nice, and blonde, and big and likes to kiss his smart mouth. And therein lies our Tarin's conundrum, and reading about poor Tarin's inner turmoil between wanting to bolt from his new situation and REALLY liking his Man is FANTASTIC.
But that is not all we get in this book, this world was INCREDIBLY interesting. It is a post-apocalyptic setting, where the boys kind of show up in the woods, and are then taken to live in the Men's communities. They, in theory are put there by these mythical Mothers, but we don't know very much more. I loved the ingenious way in which both the Men and the Boys created words and used the Before Times treasures, the names that they gave things and the very complex and interesting dynamics in this Community.
Every single character in this book was intriguing and easy to understand. So much of this story was reminiscent of some awesome stuff. I thought for bits about Lord of the Flies, The Blue Lagoon even The Road by Cormac McCarthy (without ANY of the depressing or awful, just the setting), hell I even kept thinking about Dobby that really cool house elf from the Harry Potter books.
This book was THE AWESOME!!! And I am SO GLAD there is a sequel in my Kindle right now. I must have more of the lovely Tarin and his flower toes, his Man, his world, and all the other Men and Boys in this book who just charmed the hell out of me.
I SOOOO RECOMMEND.
ETA: I've thinking about it and I think "Scat" is my favorite word.
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