Shardik
First edition cover
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| Author | Richard Adams |
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| Illustrator | Rafael Palacios (map) |
| Cover artist | Martin White |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Series | Beklan Empire |
| Genre | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Allen Lane |
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Publication date
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1974 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 526 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC | 1130141 |
| Followed by | Maia |
Shardik is a 1974 fantasy novel by Richard Adams.
Adams's second novel Shardik concerns a lonely hunter, Kelderek, who pursues Shardik, a giant bear he believes to embody the Power of God. Both Kelderek and Shardik become unwillingly drawn into the politics of an imaginary region called the Beklan Empire. This setting stands in sharp contrast to the rural England of Adams's first book, Watership Down.
Adams, famous for writing stories from animals' point of view (Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, and Traveller), here creates a story in which the animal, Shardik the Great Bear, is an antagonistic force that generates the entire plot and yet whose status remains ambiguous. The bear's point of view is narrated to the reader in the first chapter only, as a confused action sequence in which he flees a forest fire. This flight brings him to the channel island of Ortelga, whose natives are members of a cult that has waited for an unspecified, uncountable number of years for the return of a gigantic bear that embodies God's divine might. Kelderek and the others immediately determine this bear to be that embodiment. Shardik is never confirmed to be divine, remaining an enigma for the characters and readers to impose their views upon.
Adams' preface states, "Lest any should suppose that I set my wits to work to invent the cruelties of Genshed [the slave trader], I say here that all lie within my knowledge and some – would they did not – within my experience", which may refer to certain anecdotes recounted in his autobiography, The Day Gone By.
Kelderek is a young hunter nicknamed "Play-with-the-Children" because of his simple nature and love of small children. In the forest near his home on the river island of Ortelga, he sees an enormous bear. When a tremendous fire ravaged the forest, the bear managed to flee, to be found almost dead by Kelderek. The Ortelgans worship the bear-god Shardik and once ruled the entire territory now known as the Beklan Empire, but their territory and religion are now limited to a small barony of river-islands on the empire's outskirts.
Convinced that this bear is an incarnation of Shardik, Kelderek communicates this belief to the local priests and barons, eventually resulting in a military campaign to retake Bekla. The bear is sedated and caged by the priestesses to be carried forward with the Ortelgans but awakens from his slumber during a battle they are losing; as if in divine intervention, he breaks free, crushing the opposing army.
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