Ferals by Jacob Grey

Spoiler Alert! Ferals, by Jacob Grey, is a book where some of the characters have the ability to talk and control a certain species of animal. The main character, Caw, can control crows. The way one gets these powers, is that the parent who had that power dies. While Caw’s mom was the crow talker/feral, the Spinning Man was at large killing all ferals who didn’t join him. The Spinning Man as you might have already guessed is the spider feral. His followers are Jawbone, Mamba and Scuttles who talk to dogs, snakes and roaches. During the Dark Summer, these bad ferals were on their killing spree. At last, the fox talker killed the Spinning Man and things settled back in. Caw is accompanied by a few crows. But only Milky, the blind white crow, stayed with him for all of his life. Caw meets a girl called Lydia. She and her dad were trying to stop the Spinning Man’s followers from jailbreaking. Lydia and Caw become very good friends but Lydia’s parents disapprove of their friendship. After a while, Caw and Lydia end up going to the library and talk to the librarian. She agrees to help them find out more about a drawing of a type of spider they found. The bad ferals kill her and when Lydia and Caw arrive at the scene, the bad ferals escape. The librarian had a paper clutched in her hand which had the name Felix Quaker. Then, Caw meets Crumb and Pip after getting away from the police who show up thinking Caw had something to do with the librarian, Miss Wallace, being dead. Crumb teaches Caw to be able to control his crows a lot better because Caw insists on trying to stop the bad ferals. They then go to Quaker’s mansion and Caw actually saves his life. In return, Quaker helps train Caw and Crumb discusses myths and facts about ferals with Quaker. Caw meets other ferals that were in hiding including the fox feral who killed the Spinning Man and is also Lydia’s mother. They all go to get the Crow’s Beak and Lydia back from the bad ferals because they kidnapped her and stole the sword and left. The bad ferals were trying to bring the Spinning Man back from the dead because the Crow’s Beak can cut the veil between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Once Caw opens the veil, Lydia takes the sword and goes through the veil so that no one can cross worlds again. Caw sets of with Milky to the land of the dead and rescues Lydia from the Spinning Man. They go back and defeat the bad ferals. This book is a must read for those who love a couple of twists and face offs. I personally loved it because it is just one of the types of thrilling reads that I always am fond of.