Here’s the book description from the back of the 2001 Overlook edition: Fantasy fans expected another animal fantasy, but perhaps weren’t expecting the depth of world-building and political intrigue in Adams’ Beklan Empire, or his powerful antagonist, the giant god-bear Shardik. Shardik struck a chord with readers after it appeared. Lee’s favorite horse the massive Maia, the story of a sex slave in a fantasy empire and his short story collection Tales from Watership Down.Īnd in 1974, only two years after Watership Down, he produced perhaps his most ambitious novel, the epic fantasy Shardik, which The Wall Street Journal said “Grips with suspense, haunts with mystery… not to be read once but to be reread as loved books are.” He also wrote The Plague Dogs, the tale of two dogs on the run from a secretive testing facility in Britain Traveller, a retelling of the American Civil War through the eyes of Robert E. Watership Down is a brilliant book - wholly original, uniquely English in both setting and viewpoint, and possessed of the most exciting and satisfying climax I’ve ever read ( go Bigwig, you magnificent Owsla, you.) But it’s far from Adam’s only fantasy novel - or even his only worldwide fantasy bestseller. If I can get away with it, I sometime say Lord of Light, although that’s secretly science fiction (shhh).īut as the years go by, more and frequently I find myself saying Watership Down, by Richard Adams. I don’t have a standard answer - some days it’s The Lord of the Rings, some days Bridge of Birds. Shardik is the.I’m frequently asked what my favorite fantasy novel is. From the opening description of a forest fire, destruction is the constant occurrence of the novel. When Shardik perishes in the act of saving some children from a slaver, Kelderek believes that this is God's revelation: children must be cared for if society is to flourish.įundamentally Shardik is a novel about human misery. Following him into the countryside, Kelderek discovers that Ortelgans have allowed the slave trade to flourish. While Kelderek ministers to the captive bear, the Ortelgans consolidate power throughout the empire and begin to rule harshly. They are led by Kelderek, who first discovered Shardik. Confident that this bear is Shardik, the promised incarnation of divine power, the Ortelgans capture the capital of Bekla. Shardik tells how the presence of a monstrous bear inspires a subject island people to overthrow the ruling empire.
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