There are some books out there that it doesn’t matter how long they are, the story is really engrossing and I really don’t want to put them down. 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. Then there are books that are basically crap. Well, this isn’t one of the last type of books, and this certainly isn’t one of the first type of books so I guess it falls into the category of being too long. Actually, one of the major flaws that I did find in this book was not so much that it was too long but rather that it contained two distinct stories and thus it could have worked much better, and been much more interesting, if Horwood has divided it into two books. Mind you, I also have books two, three, and four on my bookshelves which makes me wonder if I am ever going to get around to reading them, or whether they are going to be tossed out at the next Church Fete – we will see.

Another thing about this book is that the author seems to be using the same method that was first used in Watership Downs, though I had no idea that this was going to be the case until I started reading the book. I don’t guess that is generally a problem but it does feel like somebody is simply trying to copy an idea that was originally quite successful. Actually, it does tend to be pretty hard to be original these days, especially when there are so many influences that are going to go into your writing. However, I guess the originality comes out in how you produce your writings, and if you let your own personality and style dictate your work as opposed to simply copying something else. 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).

So, Duncton Wood is a story about moles, though it is more than just a story it is more of an epic. However, as I suggested, it is actually two stories in one. The first half of the book is about this nation (or system as the book calls it) of moles who live in Duncton Wood (which apparently is somewhere around Oxford). It sets up our two main characters – Brachen and Rebecca – and tells us that it is a love story. Then it introduces the antagonist, a mole named Mandrake, who is actually a pretty big mole that came into the system from afar and pretty much took over. However, he didn’t just take over but he also destroyed the religion of the moles as well by preventing them from worshiping at the stone and killing anybody who knew the sacred chants. Except that Brachen was taught these chants and managed to survive and escaped into ancient tunnels to prepare and eventually emerge. So, the two stories are thus: defeating Mandrake and freeing the systems; and then going on a quest to restore the religious beliefs of the moles in Duncton Wood.

Religion actually plays a central role in the book, namely because we have Mandrake coming along and dominating the system by destroying the religion and then ruling through brute force. Then we have Brachen go off on a quest to restore the religious rites that Mandrake had destroyed. Furthermore, to emphasise the religious nature of the story, we even have the protagonists let one of the antagonists go free, namely because they do not see a reason to kill him, but also because the antagonist (who isn’t Mandrake by the way but one of his lieutenants), has become such a pathetic individual that killing him will simply make them no better than him.

The whole thing about Mandrake dominating the system is an interesting one and he does it namely because he can – he has the power and because he has the power he basically uses it. However, he has a weakness and that is that he hates all religion and actually goes out of his way to basically destroy all aspects of it. Okay, since the religion is based around a standing stone that is located in the middle of the forest, and even Mandrake isn’t that powerful to destroy the stone, there is always going to be a reminder of the religion to the moles, but since Mandrake has ordered the death of all the priests then memories of the specifics start to fade. Mind you, Mandrake also forbids moles from traveling outside, which means that even the sight of the stone becomes a myth.

This is another key theme of the story – how time creates myths. 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. However, there must be some sort of issue with his self-esteem if he has to do all of this. Despite being the biggest, and the strongest, he has to destroy any rivals, and religion is a big rival to any dictator, and put himself to replace this. The other aspect of time creating myth is when Bracken goes off on his journey, and he is gone for so long that people begin to forget about him, not so much that they don’t believe he existed, but rather that he takes on some form of mythological aspect.

Mind you, we are looking at a fairly primitive society here where even the ability to write and record the past generally doesn’t exist (though we are told about scribe moles, and yes, while they are moles they are also written as if they were sentient beings). In such societies mythologies develop much more often than does one in a society like ours where pretty much everything is recorded. Even then, as time starts to intervene, the past does become more and more of a distant memory, though we are much more able to record those memories than the past. 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.

I remember seeing this book at my friend's house years ago and borrowing it for a bit of a read. Mind you my friend is a bit of a booknerd like me, though these days our tastes in books have taken a bit (or a lot) of a divergence. The thing is that while he went on to study social work I went on to study an arts degree. The other thing is that I had an English teacher that would rile against what he considered to be airport trash, and books like those by [author:Stephen King], were basically off of his list. In fact I remember writing a play about a young adult named Brian Megadethhead who was ordered by a judge to either go back to school (and a Catholic school at that) or go to gaol – he decided to go back to school. Needless to say my English teacher wasn't all that impressed and spent the rest of the year decrying Megadeth as well as having a go at Stephen King novels, or whatever the current fad was at the time.

Mind you, whenever I am in an airport I do like to have a wander through the bookshop just to see what is actually sitting on the shelf and to see if there are actually any books that my teacher would actually approve, and while it has been years since I was in his class, and am not even sure if he is still teaching English, I still wonder whether [book:Life of Pi] would actually appear on his list of banned books, considering the last time I wondered through an airport bookshop that was the only book that I thought would be acceptable to him (though I suspect that Fifty Shades of Grey would). Anyway, most long haul international flights have a television in the back of the seat with more shows than one could even watch in a twelve hour period that the need to buy rubbish at airport bookshops is probably no longer necessary.

Anyway, on to this book, even though it has been quite a while since I have read it, but the fact that I have read it (albeit a long time ago) I feel that I should probably say a few things about it. Mind you, I should try to get my hands on it to read it again because it was, to put it bluntly, nothing short of awesome. Mind you, with all the other books out there, as well as the books on my shelf, reading this again might be a little lower on my list of priorities, though I'm sure if I see it in a bookshop I would probably buy it, and then proceed to read it again – that was how much I enjoyed it. In fact, I believe I have seen other books written by Tad Williams, and the name always rang a bell, it is just it wasn't until I looked this book up on Wikipedia as a bit of an aide de memoire that I suddenly connected him with this book.

So, Tailchaser's song is about a cat in the world where cats have a civilisation and communicate with each other. In fact they have their own mythology, and while humans exist, they tend to be these creatures that live in a mysterious world, a world that sometimes crosses with that of the cats, but not by much. In fact all of the animals have their own cultures and mythologies, it is just that the cats' world is the main focus of the book. The thing is that this book is about cats and about how these cats go on a quest and end up saving the world from a particularly evil and nasty cat, and honestly who doesn't love cats.

Well, cat haters of course, but then as they say haters are gonna hate. Mind you, there are people who are allergic to cats, so I can understand why they aren't particularly fond of them, but I have to admit that you got to love the rather eccentric nature of our feline companions, even though, as they say, dogs have masters and cats have staff. Actually, that is why my friend prefers cats over dogs – dogs tend to be dependent and incredibly clingy (I'm sure dog owners have discovered what happens when you bring a new dog home and then go to sleep only to be kept awake all night from howls of loneliness) while cats tend to be independent. Well, they are independent to an extent because when they want something (usually something to eat) you generally know about it. Unfortunately 'go catch a mouse' generally doesn't work.

The main reason that this book came to mind is because I started reading Duncton Wood, which I had picked up cheap from my Church's fate (though it turned out that I picked up books two, three, and four, but fortunately I found book one at a bookshop around the corner), which is similar, but about moles. The other interesting thing is that with these books everybody seems to make comments about the similarities between this book, Watership Down, and Lord of the Rings. The thing is that any book that happens to be a fantasy book is considered to be similar to Lord of the Rings, but that is not surprising because it is probably the most well known fantasy book out there. As for Watership Downs, I have to admit that I haven't read it yet, though I should make an effort to do so someday.

Oh, before I forget, apparently they will be releasing a movie based on this book in 2018 so I'm going to have to keep an eye out for it.

This is a continuation, and the conclusion, to the story that began in Spellsinger. The party of adventurers (which is what they are) have reached the main mammal city to warn the council of the invasion of a race of insects called the Plated Folk. Apparently the Plated Folk have access to Earthlike technology (which is why Clothahump wanted an engineer) and if they invade then it is going to be a bloodbath. However the council pretty much behaves like one would expect a council full of old fuddyduddies to behave, 'we have our defences, and they should hold up just fine, so thanks for the warning, but we have more important things to do (like taking bribes)'.

Anyway, they decide to travel to other places, such as the Ironclouders and the Weavers, to enlist their help, but the catch is that the Ironclouders and the Weavers pretty much hate each other, so as well as trying to enlist their help, they must also act as diplomats between these two sides. As can be expected in most books, they manage to broker a deal between the two sides, get to the gate in time, and fight off the invasion of the Plated Folk.

I find it interesting that insects are always portrayed as bad guys in novels, whether it involves talking animals, or just some fantasy or science-fiction universe, they are always the bad guys. The strange thing is that it is not as if insects are the most annoying creatures on Earth. In fact most of them are quite passive, even useful. Okay, ants and flies are annoying, but stick insects aren't, and bees, while dangerous if handled stupidly, actually provide quite a good service to our survival (and it goes beyond producing honey to actually pollinating flowers to enable them to reproduce). The only reason insects get aggressive is the same reason everything else gets aggressive, we annoy them. It is like us bursting into our neighbour's house and then pushing him and his family around. Understandably he is going to be very annoyed and either summon help, or deal with me himself. The same goes with insects.

I guess another reason is that insects are simply so alien when compared to our physiology. He can understand mammals, reptiles (though they are also portrayed as bad guys) and birds (who are generally portrayed as good). However when we get to fish (to a lesser extent) and insects we enter a much more alien world. Take flight for example, we understand how birds fly and they tend to fly in accordance with accepted laws of nature. However insects don't. In fact, most of the flying insects out there (such as bees) really shouldn't fly. Secondly is physiology: most animals seem to have a physiology that is similar to ours, but when we get to insects (and fish) once again the laws change drastically. Some of them don't even have mouths and absorb food through their bodies.

So, in answer to my initial question, I guess the reason why insects are always portrayed as nasty, evil, invaders is because to us they are probably the most alien animal life form that we know.

I guess jumping over to a random Enid Blyton book after reading a very heavy book on the Vietnam War doesn't necessarily relax you, particularly if you find the book that you have jumped over to to be complete and utter rubbish. What I have learnt from this experience is that a book that is almost painful to read can be just as hard as a book that confronts you with the horrors of life. In fact I found this book to be so painful that I actually had to put it down for a day before I went back to finishing it. Okay, you may ask, why didn't I simply abandon it? Well, I guess because I really don't like abandoning books, even though I have done so in the past.

This book is a collection of short stories about a group of animals. We have Brer Rabbit, Brer Terrapin (a fresh water turtle), Brer Fox, Brer Wolf, and Brer Bear (I have no idea what this whole brer rubbish is, and that was one of the things that I found really painful to read, as well as the writing style). Anyway Brer Rabbit is a very mischievous and naughty creature that pretty much goes around playing tricks on people and getting away with it. In particular he loves going around and teasing Brer Fox, and most of the book is about how Brer Rabbit is always getting one up on Brer Fox.

Now, what I really and truly hated about this book was simply that Brer Rabbit is not the type of character that I would want anybody to model themselves after. He is deceitful, disrespectful, mischievous, and simply a pain in the butt. He is the type of character that really exists only to make other people's lives a misery. He gets his thrills out of playing tricks and jokes on people, making them incredibly angry, and getting away with it. Not only would I classify him as an antagonist, but he always gets away with his actions. To put it simply, not only is there no justice in the book, and you are supposed to sympathise with this horrible little rabbit.

The only redeeming feature about this book was the story about how Mr Lion went to a restaurant to have some soup, and then said he couldn't eat it. The entire story had the staff running around trying to figure out what was wrong with the soup and why Mr Lion could not eat it. In the end you find out that it was because he didn't have a spoon. A joke, but a joke that one would consider to be groan worthy at best.

It appears from looking at some of the reviews that the concept of anthropomorphic animals wearing clothes is something more for children and teenagers as opposed to adults, however I would hardly call the Spellsinger series a children's book. It is probably more suited to the young adult market, but then by the time one gets to being a young adul, the whole concept of talking animals simply seems to be a little childish, despite Foster attempting to make some of them (like Mudge) crewed and sex mad.

It seems that Foster's imagination was declining a bit in these later books, particularly since all of the book's titles have been alliterative (that is using the same letter to start each of the main words – I believe that is what alliteration is, but please correct me if I am wrong). This is not really all that surprising since most of Foster's works tends to be the novelisation of movies. I'm not a big fan of novelisations since if a movie is made from a book, the adaptation generally does not adequately bring out the best of the book, whereas I struggle to understand how novelising a movie can really produce a decent work of literature.

As for the idea of talking animals, I am sort of on a borderline with that idea. When I consider C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, which included talking animals, I find that the strength of Lewis' story telling easily outweighs the use of such animals. There is a similar idea with Alice in Wonderland (not that I have actually read the book so I cannot say whether this is the same thing). However Narnia is clearly a children's book, and both Narnia and Alice in Wonderland are allegories. This is the form that most fantasy novels would take up to Lord of the Rings (though one can also argue that Tolkien is writing allegorically as well, exploring the conflict between the idyllic and the industrial, despite the fact that he vehemently denied it).

Some have said that Foster has returned to a good novel in this one, but it is something that I can't really say too much since it has been a while since I read these books (and the fact that I am writing about them now is evidence that it is unlikely that I will read them again). Apparently an extra-dimensional being, known as the Perambulator, has appeared and is causing havoc and turning the world into a chaotic mess, so Jon-Tom, Mudge, and Clothahump go and attempt to kick it off into another dimension. The funny thing is that a perambulator is actually the proper name for a pram, the type used to push babies around.