Duncton Wood

Product Information

By destroying all semblance of the religion means that everybody (or everymole as it is written) forgets the tenants of the religion, which means that in the end Mandrake is the one that they all look up to – he is the biggest and the strongest. Horwood is an excellent author, with the ability to balance exposition and active storytelling almost perfectly, and to create amazingly believable mythology. The descriptions of the ever-changing woodland, the plants and the animals are superb - Horwood clearly has a great deal of sympathy and appreciation for the English countryside which comes out in his work. It's the story of two Moles, Bracken and Rebecca, and the adventures they have as they try to protect Duncton Wood from Mandrake an outsider and oddly enough, Rebecca's father.

Fittingly for the author of several splendid sequels to 'Wind in the Willows', this book - like them - is tinged throughout by a form of mystical, pagan religion as well as being a love story, an action adventure novel and treatise on the common mole. After reading these they will never leave you and you will often find yourself strangely drawn to them on your bookshelf and be tempted to read them all again. For example, he frequently switches in a future omniscient voice to emphasize the importance of some even he is about to describe or just has described. Like an excellent Sci-fi or fantasy novel, it created a world all of its own, rich in history and custom and with a nod towards what it means to even be English in some way. Guys, this is honestly just one of the best, most underrated and under-read fantasy novels ever written.It was at this point my wife dropped the book like a hot turd and I honestly can’t say as I blame her. Following the characters was a rollercoaster of emotions, at times frustration, at others horror or joy. Don’t be put off by the fact that this is a book about moles, because it a great story of love, hate, violence, forgiveness and courage. I've never read another book like this one -- one that I enjoyed enough that I kept coming back to it, but that I felt no urgency to hurry through at all. The characters are lovable, you will really care what happens to them and the world they inhabit underground is well developed to the point of fascinating.

The first book follows them from life to death, as well as the highs and lows that the Duncton System go through in the meantime. Instead, Horwood falls back on explaining how you're supposed to feel about events and how we're supposed to think about characters.This series has a great depth of detail and grandness like that found in such epics as Sword of Truth and Recluse . There are the aggressive Westsiders, the secretive and sickly Marchenders and the independent Eastsiders. Opinion on this book varies between those people who consider it a towering work of genius and those who find the adventures of human-like moles to be of sorely limited interest. Action Girl: Rebecca, who right from start is described as being "too big for a female", and is as capable of bringing bad guys down as she is of having emotional dilemmas.

If you read it from the wrong mindset or point of view, I can see how it might not work as well, but for anyone who still holds out hope for a whimsical, powerful, unquenchable love, this book connects to your inner-most longings and brings them powerfully to life. However, to me, a memory is much stronger, and more valuable, than a photograph ever will be because there are just things that a photograph simply cannot catch.And there were parts of it that were beautiful: Cairn and Rebecca's story; the loving descriptions of Duncton Wood, which is near where the author lives; the first journey through the Chamber of Roots. I remember first reading Watership Down, Shardik, and Maia, books I also got at the base library, during the times my husband was doing assignments in Sardinia and I was back in our little house with our cat. It is unfortunate that this work must be compared to Watership Down but that is the only book with which I can really compare it to in terms of story-line and excellence. Duncton Wood - the first novel in the Duncton series - ranges among the all-time best phantasy novels of all time. I fell in love with those stories, and when I saw Duncton Wood on the “new releases” shelf, I grabbed it.