The real question is: Is Watership Down a fantasy novel? Well, I suppose that depends on how you are defining the genre. If fantasy means nothing more than a setting with “magical” elements that cannot actually occur, Watership Down is a fantasy novel. I mean, there are talking rabbits. But in that case, Little Bear is also a fantasy series.

Perhaps instead we ought to write a more complicated definition for fantasy as involving magical elements, with the exception of a setting where anthropomorphic animals (if they are real animals, not dragons) are the *only* fantastical element. But I digress…

Watership Down is a fun-filled adventure tale about a band of rabbits that escapes disaster and overcome trials and obstacles until they have a safe new home.

I particularly enjoyed how Adams related the rabbits’ trials to human struggles by including a relevant quote at the beginning of the chapter. Perhaps the most poignant was the one of the lotus eaters. (I loved that chapter.)

As I read, I noticed how in many ways, Adam’s rabbits were similar to the way a sci-fi author will write an alien species. The rabbits have their own culture, religion, stories, and limitations (like not being able to count above 4). He even threw in a bit of a made up language. It’s definitely an interesting case study on worldbuilding.

That said, there are points where you can tell this was written by a man 50 years ago. I found his treatment of does (female rabbits) to be worrying. While, yes, they are rabbits and are not humans, they are human-ized rabbits. Real rabbits cannot speak or reason or do any other number of things they do in this book, so if your rabbits are going to have a human-level of thinking capacity, they must have morals as well.

Does were mentioned purely as commodities to be fought over, workers to dig holes, and a necessity to secure the future of their warren. They did not seem to have a choice in their mates, but were excepted to mate when they were fertile to whichever buck won the right through battle. Does were generally regarded as timid and helpless, basically willing to go along with whatever a buck told her to do and unwilling/unable to stick up for herself. There was one notable exception, but all in all, I found the representation concerning.

This book perpetuates negative and probably damaging views about females. This knocks off a star for me, making it 3 stars rather than the 4 it otherwise would have been.

Content:

Sexual: see the above description about how does were described. There was never actually any mating shown on screen, though, so I’ll call it a PG-13.

Violence: PG-13. Quite a bit of battle for little rabbits, lol. It wasn’t gruesome, though.

Language: PG. I don’t remember any swear words.  

Learn more here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76620.Watership_Down