Outside the Gates

I almost gave up on Outside the Gates. Having liked Gloss's Wild Life quite a bit, I decided to read her first novel (also recently republished by Saga Press) but at first thought its allegorical style (a boy, for unknown reasons, is banished from his community to a forest outside the "Gates" known as the UnderReach) wasn't for me. At some point, though, I forgot about the allegory and fell into the story, thanks to the detail with which Gloss makes her forest come alive and, especially, the wary tenderness of the alliances the boy makes with humans and animals. By the end of this short novel I was in love with the book, and ready to read my next Gloss.