Outside the Gates

Because he can talk to animals, Vren is exiled to the forbidding forest outside the walls of his homeland. He is certain that he will die, as have others forced to wait at the gates. Then he is adopted, first by another exile, the gruff weather-worker Rusche, and then by a family of wolves. His peaceful new life is interrupted when Rusche is kidnapped by a spellbinder who has enslaved several of the psychic outcasts to do his bidding. With only a wolf as his companion, Vren sets out to free his friend. A certain vagueness in background details may raise questions in readers' minds, but on the whole this serious fable (a first novel) will win them over, with pockets of human warmth lighting up corners of a dark, dangerous world. (11-up)