Review: Out of the Woods by Syd McGinley

It was the blurb that caught my eye with Out of the Woods. I get the email that comes from TQ highlighting the new releases and when I read the blurb, I just knew I had to read this one. The story is set in the future where society is divided and men and women live separately. Men live together in communities and separate even from that are the boys who live a wild existence in the woods, from about age 11, for eight years. After that they are captured by the men, civilised and taken as submissive lovers by the men who expect them to serve them in every way. If that makes you feel uncomfortable, or if you get squicked out about the fact that these young men are very child-like in the way that they think and act, then this book will not be for you. As for me, I have very much enjoyed Syd McGinley's Dr Fell books which portrays the submissive men in a very similar fashion, so I settled well into the world-view and it didn't bother me at all.

At the heart of the story is the third person narrator, Tarin. When we first meet him he's a boy into his eighth summer. He knows that when the men come to hunt he will be caught this time, and no matter how much he wants to stay in the wood he knows that the right thing to do would be to sacrifice himself to save the younger boys in the wood. Before the hunt takes place, Tarin meets a man, Garrick, just outside the wood who tries to capture him, Tarin fights and manages to escape but it's only a temporary reprieve and the story then follows Tarin as he struggles to cope in the world of men. He's an engaging narrator being at turns fierce to the point of savageness but he has a good heart. It's not a harsh world that Tarin is brought into but one that has a solid set of rules and it is this that frustrates Tarin who longs for his free, uncomplicated life in the woods. I found him to be a delight and it was his experiences, his observations and his confused emotions which drove the narrative and made this book almost unputdownable for me.

The rest of the characters are all filtered through Tarin's sometimes simplistic world view. Thus at first people are stripped down to merely good or bad, handsome or ugly, friends or enemies. One of the parts that worked for me was seeing Tarin begin to change, to learn to see the shades of grey, especially in relation to Garrick who is essentially a good man. The author managed to give a sense of a very busy environment, full of men, without overwhelming me with too many characters to keep track of. This made it easy to follow what was going on as well as giving me enough space to assimilate all the information about the futuristic world building.

In terms of setting, the story was certainly very unusual. This is only the first part of what looks to either be a series or at least a duology, and so some aspects of the world-building are only hinted at. I also had to bear in mind that everything is filtered through Tarin's mind and he has a strange mix of superstition and scepticism - going from screaming in fear of ghosts when seeing his own reflection, to claiming outright that the 'mothers' don't exist. Although he often questions much in his own mind, he doesn't seek out answers and so I was kept in the dark as to some of the history of the world and also the societal structure outside the community of men. I'm hoping more will be revealed in the next book.

My one complaint about the book is that it suffered a little from a 'saggy middle'. The beginning of the book is attention grabbing and fast paced and I was propelled through the first 80-100 pages very quickly. After that the pace slowed down and there are a number of scenes which seemed to be included for scene setting or some character work rather than furthering the plot. Scenes such as Tarin's various work posts with the chickens, or baking bread, or in the library, all fleshed out the world building but there seemed little point to them - except maybe in the library scene where we are given a teasing piece of information about a very minor character which may be useful in the next book - or at least I hope it will, otherwise why include it? I've learned that this book was first published as a serialised novel in the TQ Turn of the Screw monthly publication. These scenes which provide little slices of life for Tarin in the community, would have worked better serialised, but when placed so close together in a novel they altered the pacing to the detriment of the story, I think. However, the pace of the book sped up again towards the end and finishes with a HFN and a promise of more to come which was a little frustrating, but I least I have the promise of more!

Overall, I really enjoyed Out of the Woods. I enjoyed it so much that I could hardly bear to stop reading and I only put it down when I was so tired that the words were swimming in front of me! Those who like Syd McGinley and are comfortable with her types of characters are going to love this story. For me, it combined great characterisation with a compelling futuristic story. If only the middle could have been a little tighter. As it is I'm giving this a grade of 'Very Good' and I'm really looking forward to the next book in the series which is due out towards the end of this year.

Buy this book HERE.