The Book of Silence triology will always be my favorite Duncton series simply due to the fact that I read it first. This installment reviews the rest of Privet and Rooster's back story, Wilhelm's parentage is revealed (to everyone but him), friends are lost and found, and a friend from the first Duncton series makes a cameo.My editions of these books make constant comparsion to The Lord of the Rings, usually saying that the Duncton books are better. I'm not entirely sure why; the two books have similarites but LOTR is a quest book, a physical quest book. The Duncton books are quest books, but in a totally different way. It isn't a physical quest, but one of the soul. Yes, this does also appear in LOTR, but LOTR is far more of a physical quest with an undercurrent of religion. The Duncton books deal with faith. Bad things happen, but the idea of failure that is present in LOTR is strangely absent. The Duncton moles do perform a quest, for silence.While some Christians in general, and Catholics in particular, might be upset by the protrayal of the Newborn sect in the first two books of this series, Horwood does not use a simplestic approach. He shows us that there something good in the Newborn sect, in particular though the reaction of beloved characters. Horwood does not go after faith in general; he presents a treatise about how something good can be perverted for something evil.Sounds timely and apt doesn't it?
