Another book that isn't very popular with the fanbase (indeed, an entire trilogy that got rather roasted upon release), I thought that A Silence in the Heavens was pretty good at the time. While my opinion has mellowed slightly, it's still a pretty good book.

A Silence in the Heavens picks up where A Call to Arms left off, with Tassa Kay—Anastasia Kerensky—in the hands of the Steel Wolves. Being the ambitious female dog… err, wolf—that she is, she wastes no time getting down to business and taking the Steel Wolves under her wing.

While the book does a great job of setting up Kerensky's command of the Wolves, and the impending conflict with Northwind, it then tries to bring the two into active conflict on Northwind. Unfortunately, this battle is rather hastily carried out, without the Wolves' full forces; they're sent running when it seems like they didn't really try. It seems like there wasn't enough room for the authors to play with this battle; it was meant to set up the next book, Truth and Shadows, but it only succeeded in undermining said setup.

As a standalone book, the ending is weak—but there's two more books coming after it, which build on the much stronger basis of the book's beginning. It doesn't work as a standalone, but as a part of the trilogy or the series it's an enjoyable evolution of the Wolves. ( )