Friday, April 10, 2020

Book Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams (Watership Down #1)

Watership Down : Richard Adams : 9781780746623

Today I’m reviewing Watership Down by Richard Adams, a book about rabbits in the wild that's quite famous for how dark it is. But is it actually any good? Let’s dive in!


The plot is the following: A young rabbit named Fiver gets visions that tell him that he has to leave his current warren. His older brother Hazel decides to join him, as do quite a few other rabbits. They travel across the fields and hills, and come across some perils along their way. Finally, they manage to settle on a place called Watership Down.
However, they are faced with a problem: all of the rabbits of their new warren are male, which means that they can’t reproduce a next generation. So some of them set out on a journey to find does, only for them to end up in a war between their own warren, and the tyrannical, dangerous rabbit group of Efrafa.

I thought the plot was interesting. It kept me engaged well enough, though I felt that some parts were definitely not as intriguing as others. The first two thirds of the book weren’t the most interesting to me, but it really got going in the third part, once we got to Efrafa. So yeah, it takes a bit of time to get the plot going, but it’s definitely worth it in the end.

The worldbuilding was what was most interesting to me. While this just takes place in our world, the United Kingdom, in fact, these rabbits still feel unique. They have their own leader, deity, culture, police, legends and society, and it’s all very fleshed out. Even individual warrens have their own individual cultures, which is neat.

The characters were... somewhat lackluster for me, unfortunately.
Our main character is Hazel, the rabbit who later becomes the Chief of the titular warren. He’s clever and daring, but I just didn’t find him interesting enough to care a lot about him.
There were some characters I did like, however. Fiver was nice, as the reluctant rabbit that gets visions from the rabbit deity. My absolute favourites were Blackavar, a tortured rabbit from Efrafa, and Bigwig, who I felt had the most character development out of everyone in this story. Bigwig is a big, fierce rabbit who doesn’t back down from a fight, and I thought he was very enjoyable to read.

The main villain in this story comes in the form of General Woundwort, a fearless rabbit who rules Efrafa with iron paw. I want to say that as a villain, he did his job well. He’s huge and incredibly strong for rabbit standards, and has a threatening presence. However, as a interesting character, I felt that he was slightly lacking. Not bad, but he just could’ve been more developed. We get his backstory delivered through some quick exposition, and I feel like it would've been stronger if maybe instead we got a prologue from Woundwort’s point of view that showed us this.

Overall, I think this is an enjoyable xenofiction about rabbits. If that’s your thing, I’d say: Go check it out. Just beware of the big amount of animal death in it. It’s not the most interesting animal POV-book I’ve read this far, though, but it does its job well and is intriguing enough.

Rating: 3/5


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