A review by nessa_arandur
Taronga by Victor Kelleher

3.0

I read this in school and got Mad Max dystopian future vibes from it. Since I was into Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn series (which is also dystopian fantasy where mind powers feature heavily), I remember being disappointed at the subtlety and back-seat role of the telepathy in this book. The protagonist forms a telepathic bond with a tiger in the zoo and becomes sort of a handler for it. They battle wills each time he tries to control the tiger, and a major theme of this book is freedom. The human interactions were all pretty depressing, but the book kind of won me over by the end. While not my preferred reading, I liked it. The fact I remember it after decades it remarkable. Maybe it’s time for a reread. I’m curious what I would take away from this as an adult.