Tales from Watership Down (1996)

Heavily relies on the reader having read the novel Watership Down prior.

The first two parts focus on the bunny folk-hero, El-Alhrairah and his adventures. The last part is a story sequence cum novella about events in and around Watership Down after the close of the novel.

If you hankered for more rabbit adventures after the novel, this is the book for you. I liked the folk tales more than the new adventures of Watership Down. As I've no doubt mentioned before, language, history and legend are prime elements of convincing world building and Adams grasped this. ( )

This was an enjoyable collection of short stories about the rabbits of Watership Down. We get to read about what they were up to before the end of the first book which caused me no end of tears. I honestly have to say that reading about El-ahrairah in the first story was fine, but after that I found myself getting bored. The book didn't pick up for me until we were following Hazel, Fiver, and the others who were setting into Watership Down.

I do think it was good to see how the rabbits were tested due to a cruel winter, a female rabbit who used to be the Oswla who disagrees with Hazel and others, and a former rabbit who still feels some sway to General Woundwort.

I still have to hard pause when reading this book sometimes to figure out what the rabbits mean when referring to certain things. This book came with a dictionary in the back though which was helpful.

The setting of Watership Down still feels magical to me in this one. We have the rabbits being led by Hazel-rah and how the warren seems to work due to all of them working together at all times. The stories mentioned above though do test the rabbits at times. I really wish that Adams had included a story of Watership Down after the death of Hazel though.

The ending was a little flat to me. I just felt like the stories as a whole didn't flow very well from one to the other. I was expecting something better or a bigger picture to the plot. ( )

I liked this little follow up to Watership Down. Although clearly intended as a companion book and not another journey-epic on par with the first, it was an interesting extention. I liked reading more about the trickster rabbit's exploits, although some adventures were a little odd and confusing, compared to the more traditional ones of the first book. The Watership Down warren stories were not especially exciting, but still fun little glimpses of the future.

My feminist side did appreciate Hyzenthlay being named co-Chief though. I always liked her. ;) ( )

I don’t think any talking-animal story has ever come close to what Richard Adams accomplished with Watership Down, an epic tale of rabbits who flee their doomed warren. It had the perfect mix of myth, adventure, naturalism, and irony… irony in that world-changing or mysterious events in the rabbits’ world are actually mundane ones for human beings. An escaped dog decides the outcome of a war. A punt on a stream is alien technology, and a freight train a rampaging Godzilla. Adams’ rabbits handle these elements with a very British matter-of-factness, as if they were fighting in the trenches of Verdun.

But they are not without humor and charm, especially in their tales of El-Ahrairah, a rabbit trickster deity who supports his people with smarts and sass. This rabbit, or lapine as Adams puts it, mythology is a good part of why the book has become and remains a classic. Not only that, the world they inhabit is itself a mythology, a rural English countryside without motorways, radios, air traffic, or tourists, where cows are milked by hand and children never watch TV. Cars, trains, and electrical pylons make appearances, but that’s it. It’s a mythic twist within a twist.

I first read Watership Down at the age of 13 and enjoyed it immensely. It’s one of those books that are a perfect bridge for young teens into more adult reading. I even remember how I got it: from a bookstore in Philadelphia, on a day trip there with my widowed mother, who had pulled me out of school to enjoy the autumn weather. And like many other budding writers, I created my own language from the lapine glossary that Adams provided at the end of the book, a language that ranks as a conlang classic. (Adams utilized “soft sounds” like th, f, and hr and short verbs to create something that rabbits might speak, if they could.)

For the “talking animal” selection of this year’s Author Water Cooler challenge I chose Tales from Watership Down, billed as a sequel even though it’s more of a coda/appendix. Half was more rabbit mythology tales, and half short stories of what happened in the new Watership Down warren after the defeat of General Woundwart. I don’t think any of this could have been read on its own; one would have to have read and enjoyed the previous book. The stories are a lot like the multiple appendixes J. R. R. Tolkien provided after the “official” ending of Return of the King (“Well, I’m back,” he said.) Material that enhances what you just read, but is not really necessary.

That said, I did enjoy my re-visit with Hazel, Bigwig, Fiver, and their companions. The further history of the warren unfolded logically in a series of small events that added more to the world, teasing us almost of what might have been if the author decided to create a series. If there was a theme to it, it was the importance of even-handed, inclusive, yet decisive, leadership. Adams even managed to right some wrongs in the original story, in that the female rabbits received more of a voice, and he hints that the does are in fact responsible for cultural transmission in rabbit society. It’s an intriguing idea of a free-floating stream of ESP that acts as a collective unconscious, in the Jungian sense, for the rabbits. It nicely explains how distant warrens can have the same language and societies, though I am not sure the author intended it as such.

Thumbs-up for readers who have the original book. ( )

This collection of stories takes up where Watership Down left off. Fiver, Hazel, Bigwig, and the rest have established a new warren on the Down and spend their time hanging out with their neighbours in Efrafa and telling legendary tales of El-ahrairah. We are also treated to their further adventures as other rabbits come to stay with them and share their own experiences.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, with its mix of legends and “present-day” stories. And despite the several years it’s been since I last read Watership Down, the Lapine language came right back to me (to the point that I may start referring to cars as hrududil). You’ll definitely get more benefit out of this collection if you’ve read the previous book, but there’s nothing stopping you from reading it out of order if that’s your jam. There’s enough context here to get you up to speed, and a glossary at the back of the book to help you learn Lapine. ( )