Shardik

One thing I've tried to do over the past year or so to improve discipline and focus is to write a short review of a work of fiction I've read. I try to keep it brief (around 500-750 words), and I try to summarize the main storyline and the theme. Ideally, I write this within a day or so of finishing a book, before I start another. So far, I have about a 50% success rate, with twenty or so reviews. Here's my first:


SHARDIK by Richard Adams

Shardik is set in a neo-primitive, pre-Middle Age fantasy world. Adams does an exceptional job detailing the Beklan Empire (that map on the first page comes in quite handy!) and the cultures of the peoples who inhabit it. From the northern outpost of Ortelga, where the protagonist, Kelderek the hunter, originates, to the mystical island of the female priestess the Tuginda, to the Roman-reminiscent Bekla to its outlying regions such as the lawless Zeray and the vaguely Arabesque southern and eastern kingdoms – the author excels in breathing life into this setting. As any decent fantasy writer must, Adams makes his world real.

Most authors would stop here, though, and populate their world with warriors and sorcerers, kings and queens, war and intrigue – but Adams goes further. The last section of the novel is entitled "The Power of God." That is the whole theme of the work. How does God work in the world? Is it direct, or is it through its creatures? What is our role in this work, assuming we can even see it as such?

Most of the characters are broken, flawed, in search of something more, something sacred. Kelderek initially seems a poor choice of a hero – a bumbler, a simpleton, a man who consistently makes the wrong choices when thrust into the crosshairs of history – but he is a man desperately in search of God. And it is he who discovers Shardik, the bear-god, and convinces the world of His reality.

A whole mythology has grown up in Ortelga and Quiso, two island-nations in the north of the Beklan Empire, concerning Shardik and His herald, a great bear. Soon there’s a headlong rush to track down the fabled beast Kelderek encountered, and in the process, wars are fought, Empires overthrown, men and women are ruined, lives are shattered and, ultimately, healed.

But questions are also asked, about God and His will, and how that will is to be fulfilled in this world. How are we to know God’s will, to interpret it? How far must we go, mostly on blind faith, to accomplish this will? How much pain must we endure, how much evil need we overcome? And – what happens when we ourselves do that evil? Thrust into a position of power, Kelderek makes awful decisions he comes to bitterly regret, and, more so than any character in recent fiction I’ve read, he must slowly endure an extremely painful, exhaustive penance.

Adam’s writing is rich and detail-laden, sometimes to a fault in being a bit overlong, but never mundane. Among this world are several unforgettable characters: for me, the Tuginda, the high priestess of Shardik, vaguely supernatural and eminently practical, and Genshed the child-slave dealer, easily one of the foulest villains in all literature. Interestingly, in a foreword, Adams notes that "lest any should suppose that I set my wits to work to invent the cruelties of Genshed … all lie within my knowledge and some … within my experience." Through this vile beast comes one of the most tragic deaths I’ve ever read, though, as in similar incidents in the book, this crime is somehow balanced by a truly touching scene, one involving a bear and a little girl.

In my copy of the book, on the dedication page, is a verse in Greek from the Odyssey. Translated, it says: Chopp'd it in fragments with my sword, and wrought / With strong hand every piece, till all were soft. An appropriate metaphor for Shardik and His effect on the men and women He touches.