Shardik A Novel (original 1974; edition 1974)

As a child, I loved Watership Down, and so read Shardik when I was probably much too young for it. I was interested in reading it again as an adult, having loved Watership Down so much earlier in the year.

The concept is that God has come to earth as a giant bear / sent a giant bear as his messenger, to a simple tribe of island dwellers in the imaginary Beklan Empire. The book toys with the ambiguity of whether the bear is genuinely of God, or whether the naive and simple islanders are over-reacting to coincidence, but by the end of the 500 pages coincidence has piled on coincidence to the point where I would find it hard to write any plausible thesis where the bear is not controlled by a divine power, or at least an omnipotent author.

It falls into a lot of the cliches one would imagine a book written by a white Englishman in the 70s about a fantasy empire would. There are beautiful dusky priestesses, slavery, mystic rituals, etc etc.

It is also unbearably slow, after the sort of page turning YA fiction I've been whizzing through recently.

The only bit I remembered clearly from reading it as a child is the section where the hero is captured by the slave trader. It was one of the first and most striking books I'd read where the hero is completely subjected to someone Evil, and it's still powerful (if, with more critical eyes, slightly cliched slave-misery-lit)

But it is, in the end, a mostly-engaging fairy tale / allegory. The morals are a little heavy handed - people mess up when they pretend that their own desires for power are what God really wants, there is always forgiveness and a chance of redemption for those that seek it, what goes around comes around and what you inflict on others you will suffer yourself, and 'there isn't to be a deserted or unhappy child in the world. In the end, that's the world's only security: children are the future, you see. If there were no unhappy children then the future would be secure.' But they are good morals. ( )

Since Watership Down has been one of my all time favourite books since I first read it years ago, it was in a sense inevitable that I would at some point read Shardik, also by Richard Adams. Shardik is a mythical tale of a great bear who comes to symbolise hope, and potential for a new golden age for the Ortelgans. This story follows the path of Shardik, but also of Kelderek whose life becomes intrinsically linked with that of the bear.

I loved this book for its detail, which helps the reader become absorbed in the histories and coming fates of the nations involved. The characterisation is for the most part well handled, but I felt that like Tolkien, there was a certain amount of descriptive work which could have been done without, and was merely reiterating character development which had already been covered. There were genuinely poignant moments, which I will not spoil for the reader, but overall I found the book a bit of a slog. More suited to the Lord of the Rings fan than a die-hard lover of Watership Down. ( )

[H]is face suggested … experience both of danger and—if words must be found—of grief; of suffering, perhaps. …[H]e was almost certainly not a nobleman. …[H]is roughened hands, his sweat and streaks of grime suggested the craftsman, not the oaf. But there was something else about him—a kind of grave ardor, an air suggesting that the world was not yet altogether as he wished it to be and meant to see it become—that was less aristocratic than any amount of dirt.


This is Kelderek, the protagonist, being sized up by the Marco-Polo-like newcomer whose point of view furnishes the epilogue to this epic story. So well does this epilogue (Chapter 58, “Siristrou”) recapitulate the themes of the story that I am tempted to advise the prospective reader to read it first. Then you can turn to the front and read the description of the great forest fire sweeping by without any human witnesses, and follow the struggles of the enormous bear, without supposing that the author of Watership Down and The Plague Dogs is launching another story about animals.


Like a certain much better-known work,
• this is a large-scale story of war and peace, set in imaginary countries.
• A map is provided.
• Despite the lack of congruence between this map and any page in your atlas, the author insists that the story took place in the remote past on this earth of ours.
• People sing songs. Some of these are legends of a still more remote past.
• Proper names hint at a variety of source languages.
• Snippets of original languages are transcribed.
• The protagonist, unlike most of his people, is a bachelor.
• He is thus at liberty to respond to the call of destiny by leaving his home behind and walking all over the map.
• Having so much imaginary country to cover, the characters notice land forms, vegetation, the weather, and the progress of the seasons.


But Adams, unlike Tolkien, also:
• employs the Homeric simile (whereas Tolkien's models are exclusively Germanic);
• notices that an honorable request to some father for his daughter's hand in marriage is not the only expedient to which a man may be prompted by sexual desire;
• gives his aristocrats more detailed motives for fighting than mere hereditary duty;
• includes religion in his story, and shows it inspiring its adherents to acts of fanaticism and cruelty as well as compassion. ( )

Shardik is fantasy novel about a simple hunter who one day encounters a giant bear. After that first chance meeting, Kelderek’s fate becomes inextricably entwined with that of Shardik the Bear, the physical embodiment of the Power of God as worshipped by an Ortelgan cult. Adams never explicitly reveals whether or not Shardik is the actual embodiment of divinity. The characters themselves have differing opinions on whether Shardik is a divine creature or merely a savage animal. And there is no lack of savagery. Shardik kills many during the course of the story, if not indiscriminately then at least whimsically on more than one occasion, and being his worshipper in no way guarantees safety.


Although the story is basically about a man hunting a big bear, it’s also about worship, slavery, pride, humility, savagery, betrayal, forgiveness and contentment. It’s meandering and at times overflowing with flowery passages, particularly ones describing emotions, but it works. Although I prefer Maia the two novels complement one another, and I really enjoyed seeing the Beklan Empire from another point of view. ( )

My all-time favorite book. ( )