A review by pagewraith
Shardik by Richard Adams

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This one is for everyone who loved Aslan as “good” but not “safe” when they were younger, and who wants to explore that idea through a rich adult fantasy story. 

“To be deprived of little, common pleasures that honest people take for granted—that’s imprisonment, that’s retribution, that’s grief and loss. […] Birds sing in the trees, find their food, mate, build nests. They don’t know anything else. […] It’s a narrow life for birds. But you catch one and put it in a cage and you’ll soon find out whether it values what it’s lost.” (373)

 
I adore Watership Down, and bears are an animal that are very dear to me, so when I learned of Shardik, I knew I had to read it. I got my copy secondhand from a library sale, and at the time it really did feel like the book found me just as I was looking for it.

Much like Aslan, Shardik acts as a sort of Christ-figure: a great divine bear sent to bring truth to humanity. However, this is not the sort of fantasy where animals talk—in fact it is mostly an exploration of the corruption of humanity, and the devastation of greed, power, guilt and regret, war, and slavery; but it’s also about love and community care. There’s a lot of really wonderful foreshadowing and gradual thematic development woven into this story. Little descriptions that I at first dismissed as merely evocative grew to carry so much meaning by the end of the book! So much of the prose that is deeply meaningful and emotional is built up in the context of the story that sharing quotes out of context fails to do them justice. And the character development! I had so many complicated feelings and opinions for the characters, often alternating between love and disappointment and hatred and pity for the same person.

I was struck by how unlike other fantasy settings the Beklan Empire is—this is a barbarian land (not derogatory!), that sometimes evokes a sense of the Roman Empire. As with any other fantasy setting, though, I quickly fell in love with it’s linguistic nuances, and character and place names. Adams invents names and language unlike any other!

Shardik is a book that reads like an old, descriptive folktale, sometimes even taking on an almost biblical tenor. All around, just a really great, big fantasy tale.