Shardik   by Richard Adams

March, 2007.     A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.

This work of fantasy-fiction was written in the seventies. It's noticeable in the cover design, as well as in the paper it's self. I might just be imagining this, but it also seems that the story its self is dated, or flavoured (if you will,) by that era. But how so?

It is a tale of a primitive society of hunters, and small towns with their local feudal lords. They are able to work iron, stone and wood, but it's mostly just small agricultural towns here and there within the jungle, forest, and arid plains. Then the long lost, but never forgotten Bear God comes among the old believers, (or a Great Bear, which they all take to be the "Power of God." Then this town, on the edge of the empire, sets out to reclaim the whole kingdom, knowing that they're blessed by the will of God. -And this happens, and that happens, and there's wars, and politics, and intrigues, and disaster, and more disaster, and more disaster, and then a happy end, with a stable empire, (or, at the end, Two empires,) and hope for the down trodden, and inner peace and deeper understanding for the protagonist.

My point is that it's as story that could have been written at any time; the plot it's self is not "dated." I can not think of any particular instances in the text either that made me think "this book was clearly written decades ago." (It's often interesting when that DOES happen though. Usually it's while reading sci-fi.)

Could it have been the principals which it suggested then? Or very small nuances in the way it was written? I'm not sure. But I still have the impression that it could not have been written in the last ten years.

Despite the back-cover blurbs "First-Rate Adventure" and "Brilliant, Deeply Moving" I was left rather empty by it. I rarely, if at all, felt a connection with the protagonist. Some of the scenes had a certain vividness of landscape, but... it never held; One the paragraphs describing the air, the leaves, the afternoon and the feeling of tension in the townsfolk... were finished, the entire atmosphere was forgotten, and the text focussed only on the thoughts and dialogue.

At times, the author would use comparative descriptions: Like an inexperienced cook putting in lots of tabasco, for lack of knowledge of how to make a Tastey salsa. Like a foreigner who tries to describe one idea in six different ways, for fear of being misunderstood. Like someone at a restaurant, who keeps smiling at the wait-staff, but uncertain if they realize that he's ready for the bill now. Like the painter who makes a series of seven nearly identical paintings, and displays them all, because he can't decide which one expresses his idea the best. So, does this author at times find comparison after comparison for some idea or feeling that he wants to express.

He does it much more creatively, and poeticly than I just did, but in exactly the same way. For me, it became an annoying bit of filler to get through before I got back to the plot. Perhaps if I had been in the mood for slow, long, meandering poetic descriptions, I would have enjoyed them. -But then, I wouldn't have liked much of the rest of the book.

I guess that they felt like a break in his style.

All those criticisms now being made though... I found it otherwise all right. It had a nice moral in it, and the world it was set in was conscientiously constructed. It wasn't fantastical, or unbelievable. (Well, there was ONE part, where the enchanted island makes all those who approach it fall into unconsciousness, until released from their sleep by the priestesses. But the REST was realistic.) The plot was comparatively engaging, and had some interesting twists to it.

Competently written, and also mostly smoothly narrated. But it just didn't draw me in.