Other ducks are braver, but it is Marcel who finally takes action, often with unanticipated and tragic consequences, when civil unrest on the Bloedel reserve threatens his family and clan. He struggles on against his guilt over the death of loved ones, survives otters, hunters, cults, toxic waste, and more until finding his destiny in a near-death experience. As in Watership Down we come to care deeply about an alternate animal world at once familiar and foreign, and we call to mind the spiritual insights of Jonathon Livingston Seagull and The Alchemist. At its heart, the novel is about a...