This doesn't hold a candle to the original, although as a fan of Watership Down, this did make me smile from time to time, which is why I rated it as high as I did, but I suspect if I had come across this book somehow without reading the original, I'd have been less than impressed. The original book is a novel, this is a collection of 19 tales, some linked but mostly not. The first book really was a grand adventure, a tale of leadership and friendship and remarkable for its--yes, world-building, as Adams created a culture of and for rabbits. The folk stories embedded in the novel helped enrich that culture, and gave the ending a feel of myth that made a shiver run down my spine.
That just wasn't the case for me here. About two-thirds of the book are filled with folk tales about El-ahrairah "the Prince of a Thousand Enemies," the hero of rabbit lore that worked so well to enrich Watership Down. I think my favorite of those tales here was the first, "The Sense of Smell"--even if it was the one that I felt was most politically correct, and scientifically incorrect. (Man has not been the greatest cause of extinction. Look up the Cambrian Mass Extinction of over 500 million years ago. Or look up "Dinosaurs, extinction of.") The first two sections of tales are framed as being shared among the Watership Down rabbits. The third and last section of 8 tales are about the Watership Down rabbits and felt like catching up with old friends, even if this latest outing is by no means as impressive. Oh, and there are references to events in the previous novel left unexplained. So for more reasons than one, if you haven't read Watership Down yet, this really isn't the place to start. If you have and loved it though, as long as you know going in this is a different sort of animal--well, no reason you shouldn't enjoy it.
