Torday, Piers

Entry updated 13 January 2025. Tagged: Author.

(1974-    ) UK author whose very Young Adult Near Future Dystopian Last Wild sequence comprising The Last Wild (2013), The Dark Wild (2014) and The Wild Beyond (2015) focuses on the attempts of a mute Telepathic boy and his companions to save the last animals at a time when Homo sapiens has come very close to exterminating all other species. There May Be a Castle (2016), a fantasy for younger children, explores similar territory. The Lost Magician (2019) riffs productively on C S Lewis's Narnia; and Christmas Carol: A Fairy Tale (2019) features a female Scrooge whose about-to-be-redeemed sins are largely laid down to her onerous years making her way in a "man's world" (see Feminism). [JC]

Piers Torday

born Northumberland: 1974

works (selected)

series

Last Wild

• The Last Wild (London: Quercus, 2013) [Last Wild: hb/Thomas Flintham]
• The Dark Wild (London: Quercus, 2014) [Last Wild: hb/Thomas Flintham]
• The Wild Beyond (London: Quercus, 2015) [Last Wild: hb/Thomas Flintham]
• The Wild Before (London: Quercus, 2021) [Last Wild: hb/Thomas Flintham]

individual titles

• There May Be a Castle (London: Quercus, 2016) [hb/]
• The Lost Magician (London: Quercus, 2019) [hb/]
• The Frozen Sea (London: Quercus, 2019) [hb/]
• Christmas Carol: A Fairy Tale (London: Nick Hern Books, 2019) [play: first performed 29 November 2019 Wilton's Music Hall, London: pb/Donovan Graphics and Nobby Clark]
• Midnight Treasure (London: Quercus, 2024) [hb/]

links

• Piers Torday
• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Picture Gallery

previous versions of this entry

• Internet Archive