Shardik by Richard Adams Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Shardik
Book Review: Amazing
Summary: 5 Stars
Richer, grander, intensely more rewarding than "Watership Down", at least for an adult. This and "The Plague Dogs" are must-read novels.
The civilation Mr. Adams has created here, the adventure and suspense, the human folly and tragedy, and once again the peculiar and astounding emotional force Mr. Adams has in writing from the point of view of an animal--in this case a bear--absolutely must be experienced.
By the way, this is a human story -- I mistakenly thought it would be another story told from the point of view from an animal.
There are dead spots, and the ending drags a bit, but this is a very powerful and gut-wrenchingly emotional tale--for adults.
This is the third book I have now read by this author after "Watership Down" and "The Plague Dogs", and I think this is my favorite, though "Plague Dogs" is amazing too. Most people probably won't explore much beyond "Watership Down", and that's a shame, and actually the reason why I am writing this -- to encourage more people to go further.
In any case, I know I need to seek out more of his novels for myself.
Book Review: An Epic Tale
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Adams knows how to create worlds of originality and complexity with ease. Shardik is another one of his tales that thrusts the reader head first into a world of savagery. Religion and how one deals with the issue of it is, in my opinion, the underlying theme of the novel. Adams impresses upon the reader through his depiction of characters and events the negative role religion can have upon the individual and society. The story is a riveting ride of emotions as the reader is swept from various cities across Adam's world. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves fantasy literature that has something to say about the human condition and how it interacts with the spirit and laws of religion. Richard Adams is a spellbinding story teller with much to impart upon society.Book Review: An astonishing book! Adams' best!
Summary: 5 Stars
I am in agreement with many others that Richard Adams' Shardik eclipses his other books, like Watership Down and The Plague Dogs.
The story grips one right away, with the tale of an ancient culture which encounters a great bear, who they say is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy.
Kelderek,the main character, finds the bear, or should I say, the bear finds him. He becomes the follower of Shardik, eventually prophet, and a priest-king by those who want to use the bear and the prophecy for their own ends.
But the bear has other plans.
Shardik has a lesson to teach which is totally unforseen by all. It is revealed in one of the most stunning twists in all of literature. I must say that the book does get a little slow in the middle, but I recommend that the reader persist. It's well worth going through, and ties up nicely in the end.
I wish I was a movie producer, as this epic deserves a spot on the big screeen. A book well worth reading.
Book Review: An unappreciated masterpiece
Summary: 4 Stars
Richard Adams's _Shardik_ is set in an imaginary world, though Adams, like Tolkien, hints that in fact it is simply the remote past of our own world. The central action of the story concerns a giant bear worshipped by a tribe living on the southern limits of the great Beklan empire. This tribe, the Ortelgans, believe that Shardik's purpose is to lead them to greatness, and so when he appears they follow him in a glorious campaign to conquer the Empire. But is Shardik really a god, or just a very big bear whose thoroughly animal-like actions are given meaning by his followers? Adams wisely never really answers this question, and this is the great fascination of the book. Adams faces head-on the charge that religion is simply a tool for oppression and exploitation. He avoids a simplistic answer largely through his complex portrayal of the central human character, Shardik's prophet Kelderek. Kelderek is a simple tribesman who sincerely believes himself to have been chosen by Shardik for great purposes. While many of his actions are evil, we are never allowed to lose sympathy with him or to suspect him of hypocrisy, while at the same time we come to sympathize more and more with the characters who oppose his fanatical regime. At the end, Kelderek sees the evil he has done in the name of God, and begins to understand what Shardik's true purpose is--or does he simply misunderstand yet again? The greatness of this novel is in the fact that while it has a strong moral message, it always conveys this message through the actions and words of its characters. Adams lets the world he has created speak for itself. In the end we can choose to believe or not to believe.For readers like myself who themselves practice a religion, the novel is a powerful portrayal of the way the divine can be distorted and misunderstood by even the sincerest believer, even while God always remains transcendent, able to pierce through our comfortable blindness with the shocking light of his grace.
Book Review: Another Excellent Adventure from Richard Adams
Summary: 5 Stars
Finally finished this the other day. The third book by Richard Adams I've read. The other two: Watership Down and Plague Dogs, and my second favorite of the three behind WD (yeah, yeah, yeah - it's hard to shake the nostalgia of this one going way back to my youth). I read somewhere that Richard Adams considers Shardik his best work, and I can see that, as it is a rousing and well-rounded adventure that covers all the bases. The third act was superb, always the sign of a great anything - the 'third act', I couldn't put it down at that point.
It's an adventure/journey type story that takes a person from humble beginnings and then throws him to the wind and powers much greater than himself and he travels across the world and experiences great highs and lows and then in the end it all comes together to make sense and the effect of which gives his life meaning, his purpose, much from the past transgressions that in turn shape his view of the future to come. In a way, the hero comes full circle through his trials and deeds. Great book, better even than Salmond Rushdie's Midnight's Children which I read before this - although it is a powerful and visionary book as well.