Duncton Wood

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While the long setup and introductory section which covers at least the first 6 chapters is to be partly expected, and is interspersed with more than enough of Horwood's superb character portrayals and individual anecdotes to stop it being too much of an info dump, later parts of the novel can rather drag, mostly due to Horwoodd's often somewhat long winded passages of time skip, indeed sometimes when rereading the book now I do rather find myself waiting for the next significant incident to happen in betwene a long passage of generalized description. It's not for young kids, as there is some violence and the themes would probably go over their heads anyway. The reason it got 2 stars was that by the end of it the pointless ‘descriptions’ were so easy to skip through, if not it would have only got 1 star.

In the west side of the system lives a group of moles, the Westsiders, known for their tough, agressive nature (which is possibly due to the Pasture moles further west). 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. Cathy from Scotland I read Duncton Wood many years ago and at first thought I would find it difficult to apprehend the moles being the characters, how wrong was I. Gordon from United Kingdom Where do I start, I read this book mid 80's and found I couldn't put it down.It is like a old sweater made new by the fact that you are wearing it after changing which washing powder you use. From the point of view of Siabod, the foreign language could well be "English" as spoken by the foreign moles.

Tom from UK Guys, this is honestly just one of the best, most underrated and under-read fantasy novels ever written. However there are other books that start off good but are so long that by the time I start getting close to the end my eyes start glasing over and I quickly begin to lose interest. Moledays, moleyears, molemonths, molefeet, molemiles, molethises, molethats, whatchamamoles, and whoozitmoles.In fact, it does become pretty obvious when a work is forced, particularly where the author isn’t writing for the love of writing, but simply writing because they see it as an easy way of making lots of money (hint: it isn’t). Dan from South Africa First off, loved Duncton Wood like I will probably not love another book in my lifetime. It's just that it felt that with more confident handling and sharper editing, it could have been so much better.

In such societies mythologies develop much more often than does one in a society like ours where pretty much everything is recorded.To the east of the hill live the Eastsiders, who inhabit the drier soil near the cliff's edge and are smaller in number and much less aggressive than the Westsiders. 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. William Horwood has created a world that is filled with those events that while familiar are renewed by the point of view they are being told from.

I never once wanted to skim through any of the descriptive passages, and I really enjoyed the anthropomorphism (now that didn't touch-type quickly) - moles doing the things that moles do, but also interacting like humans in community. Secondly, for all you avid Horwood fans out there, begging for just a bit more, I have this: The Wolves of Time is another of Horwood's epic stories and definitely a must-read for anyone who enjoyed the Duncton Chronicles. His hold on her fell limp and she crossed over to where Mandrake lay, paused for a moment as she touched his head gently, looked back at Bracken and Stonecrop with a fierce and cold pity, and then went out of the clearing and into the dark. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Prior to its completion, Duncton Tales, originally conceived as a stand-alone sequel, had evolved into the first volume of a second trilogy.

His son is still a little geeky and odd and I still love them and enjoy them as one of those series that I turn to too reread now and again just like a comfy old pair of jeans (new item of clothing!