Rating: 
Summary: The best fantasy book ever
Review: "The Book of the Dun Cow" is easily the best fantasy book ever written, beating out even such great classics as "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia." Walter Wangerin Jr., a minister, uses animals to tell a tale of good versus evil. Unlike Animal Farm it does not carry a political message; rather, this is a spiritual one. It is well worth it to read and discover the essence of the greatest and most dangerous war there ever was--the war between Chaunticleer the rooster and Wyrm the serpent, which symbolizes the real war humans wage every day in the battle of good versus evil. If you read just one book this year, this should be the one.
Rating:
Summary: The best fantasy book ever
Review: "The Book of the Dun Cow" is easily the best fantasy book ever written, beating out even such great classics as "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia." Walter Wangerin Jr., a minister, uses animals to tell a tale of good versus evil. Unlike Animal Farm it does not carry a political message; rather, this is a spiritual one. It is well worth it to read and discover the essence of the greatest and most dangerous war there ever was--the war between Chaunticleer the rooster and Wyrm the serpent, which symbolizes the real war humans wage every day in the battle of good versus evil. If you read just one book this year, this should be the one.
Rating:
Summary: A glorious tale of triumph bathed in the sins of battle
Review: A book I loathed to begin and then seemed to grow longer as I read caught ahold of a feeling which I connected with. I think it was the insults of a jaunty rooster to a cursed dog with an extremly large nose. The dog was seen as a nusance, a pest, but if not for the intiguing portrale of Mundo Cani Dog who complains he is 'marooned' to the master of the universe, the story would collapse into shambles. He is hero who is spat on. The bittersweet blessing God has betowed upon him enables the dog to save the world. And the speech of John Wesley Weasle and his tenacity in battle, along with his hatred for his brethren, the mad house of otters spins on a dousing of comedy. But with this sorrow comes, for the roosters wife, and their children in danger. Tick Tock and his army of ants resemble a miniature military, guarding over the chicks. And may I add, my favorite characters are the turkeys, who so comically say, "Galoot, galoot, Rutabega Rooster!" This book which I hated to start became the book I also hated to stop. It's a fantasticaly momentous twist on Good and Evil won me over and it became the best book I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: The Book of the Dun Cow
Review: A wonderful book! Wangerin has a talent for great writing and belivable charactures. I haven't read The Book of Sorrows, but it looks good too.
Rating:
Summary: Great story
Review: An excellent book, The Book of the Dun Cow has good morals and excellent character development. It is as least as good as other classic fantasy books like The Lord of The Rings.
Rating:
Summary: A Truly Great Work & roosters best friend
Review: Before my review of the rest of the book I would like to spend a paragraph in praise of my favorite character from the book. Mundo Cani, if you are a dog person, will evoke such emotion from you that you will fall in love with him within bare lines. If you are not a dog person, and, in fact, hate all dogs, it might take as much as a few pages for you to fully enjoy and care for this humble and self-sacrificing character. Mundo Cani is worth the price of the book all by himself, and the depth of the other characters that play their parts in this beautiful story will simply spoil you for the flat and tasteless fare that many of us sometimes find we have accidentally become accustomed to.
As a reader, I regretfully admit, I am fairly easy to please. However, I am happy to amend that quality with a very critical nature when it comes to comparing newer or lesser-known writings with my established favorites among classics. Very few works, in my opinion, can stand rank file with the best of, to name a few, Lewis, Tolkien, and Peake. If anyone had told me before I read this Book of the Dun Cow, that it should surpass Watership Down, that I should stand in awe of a cow the way I stood for Galadriel, that I should fear maggots and a simple cockatrice more than any foul thing born in the darks of Mordor, that my mind should be as stirred by prose concerning a chicken coop as it was by the darkly beautiful language that told of the Castle Gormenghast, and that this same story should be imbued with meaning so as to rival or even surpass the great works of C.S. Lewis, I would have spit on their forehead, laughed in their face, and made a crude reference concerning a deficiency in their genetic background. As it is, I must swallow all of my pride and humbly apply to any readers of this review, that Wangerin has taken a barnyard where others have taken castles and great forests, and created characters of cows where others used tall elves and mysterious wizards, and, with these common instruments, has created an epic work of fantastic literature that can stand fairly beside any of these others' greatest works.
Rating: 
Summary: An Eloquent and Powerful Fable
Review: Despite its sometimes overtly Christian timbre, The Book of the Dun Cow is an elegantly moving and satisfying animal fable. Chauntecleer, the Rooster, is a complex protagonist who undertakes to rid his land of a heinous evil. Most of the characters are richly drawn, and the story is nicely paced. The most striking feature of the novel, however, is the language. From the sinister to the sublime, Wangerin paints a world and populates it with characters that are uniquely his own. While the novel fails to have the sharp bite of Animal Farm, the beauty and depth of Watership Down, or the power and staggering brilliance of Lord of the Rings (all comparisons from a quote on the jacket), it is nevertheless a fine novel in its own right.
Rating:
Summary: Great reading for children AND adults
Review: Do you know the old opera joke? Q: What's your favorite opera? A: The one I'm listening to now. That's what reading Walter Wangerin is like, and this week I'm reading Book of the Dun Cow and its sequel Book of Sorrows. Wangerin has a flawless musical ear in his choice of animal names. Hard to say which one of the barnyard crew is my favorite character.
Rating:
Summary: ANIMAL FANTASY "DUN" RIGHT
Review: Go back to cat-hell Fritti Tailchaser. Run back to Redwall little mice. I really didn't think I'd find something that would even come close to rivaling Richard Adam's Watership Down, but here it is. For one, Wangerin Jr. has excellent character development. Chauntecleer, the Wee Widow Mouse, Pertelote, Mundo Cani Dog, John Wesley Weasel--you'll come to readily recognize and love all of these characters. But what I liked most about this book was the fact that it had more fantasy in it than similar books like Tailchaser's Song, Redwall, and even Watership Down. There's the evil Wyrm within the earth. When I read about Wyrm, I instantly thought about Uroboros, the World Serpent. I read about Cockatrice, an evil amalgamation of rooster and serpent--and thought about the twisted animals described in the book of Revelation. When I read good fantasy novels I feel like I'm watching a movie. As is usually the case, certain scenes I read become especially vivid. One such scene that I remember dealt with Cockatrice sitting atop his Terebinth Oak, while beneath him were several thousand eggs, waiting to hatch forth serpents. It made me think of the movie Aliens for a second. Another interesting scene in the book was where Chauntecleer and Pertelote are walking through a battlefield--at night--and they stumble across a dead deer. Unlike some fantasy novels I've read, the last battle in this book is very satisfying. Let's just say that Wyrm makes the Sandworms of Dune small in comparison. Another thing that I like about this book is that good guys do die and DON'T come back. I'm sorry, but I hate books where the good guys come out unscathed. This book is very original and refreshing, full of stuff to spark your imagination.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant and Exciting
Review: I'm a pretty big fantasy fan. My favorites are usually the classics like Watership Down, Lord of the Rings, and The Neverending Story. The Book of the Dun Cow certainly stands with these masterpieces. In fact, The Book of the Dun Cow, in my opinion, probably surpasses them. The fantasy is set in an animal kingdom around a chicken coop. Chauntecleer is the rooster of the coop, in charge of all of the animals in the surrounding forest. Chauntecleer is a strong and noble, though flawed, leader who guides the peaceful creatures who depend on him. The peace is broken when the Ultimate Evil tries to break through into dominion over this world. Chauntecleer's kingdom has to find the courage and strength the fight the evil forces of the part rooster, part snake Cockatrice. This is one exciting book. There are such strong characters (such as Chauntecleer and Mundo Cani Dog) that you fall in love with. There are the exciting epic battles to be fought. The real greatness of this novel is its spiritual depth. In this battle between good and evil, Chauntecleer and Mundo Cani Dog and the others are only able to fight because of their faith and the spiritual exercises they practice. They are only able to fight back and do the right thing because of the strength offered them by the Dun Cow. This is an extraordinary novel that almost anybody would love.
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