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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