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The Silences of Home first and foremost confirms the adage that one can never really go home again. This is a theme for virtually every character, literally or figuratively. Lanara, a young queenswoman can't go home because the great queen she thought she knew has proven to be a sham and this has led to her best friend's death. Nellyn, a member of an quasi-amphibian race is shunned Amish-like when he leaves then returns to his riverine community devoted to the status quo. Aldron a teller of the Alilan race, is banished for using his special telling powers, and dies miserably in a foreign land trying to undo his work. Leish and Mallesh, both members of a sea-side race bent on conquering the Queensrealm, return to a homeland, the latter after months of excruciating tortures, that is a burned out, sterile landscape. Baldrhon, the scribe and revolutionary leader, cannot go back to the sea-side life of his early childhood, as his obsession to expose the truth of the corrupt regime consumes him utterly. Even Alea's return to her people, while it does occur, follows a series of heartbreaks. While this is no noir novel, certainly it isn't a happy one.

Caitlin Sweet does deftly weave the many storylines, and the writing is quite literate, yet still eminently readable. One does have the chance to see the characters develop emotionally, surmount difficulties, and form attachments to one another; however, the big question is why tell us of all these people whose lives are ultimately ruined by one queen's folly. Besides the story ending on a "downer" for almost every character, one wonders exactly what the overall message or theme was (even the theme postulated above is not explicit), the novel seems in a sense more a documentary of the downfall of the Queensrealm, than a narrative. One way or another what the author wishes us to take from the novel is not made explicit. This either suggests a sequel/prequel in the works, that some of these questions were covered in Sweet's previous book A Telling of Stars, or simply that we are not in the presence of an easy Hollywood-happy-ending. Well, now that I think about it, maybe it is indeed a noir novel... Cornell Woolrich meets Ursula K. Le Guin.

Georges Dodds is a research scientist in vegetable crop physiology, who for close to 25 years has read and collected close to 2000 titles of predominantly pre-1950 science-fiction and fantasy, both in English and French. He writes columns on early imaginative literature for WARP, the newsletter/fanzine of the Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association and maintains a site reflecting his tastes in imaginative literature.