Watership Down

Im not sure if this is on the book list but I consider it a fantasy novel. I had already seen the movie of Watership Down and it was so good I decided to check out the book (this is one of the few instances where I saw the movie before reading the book). I loved this book, it's definitely up there as one of my favorite books of all time. The interesting thing about this book is how the rabbits human-like personalities but cannot do anything physically that an actual rabbit cold not do. This book also reminded me of A Clockwork Orange in that the rabbits have their own language and words for things that are not explicitly defined, but have to be intuited based off of context instead. A good example of this is Hrududu, the first time one is mention you don't know what it is, but when they describe how shiny and fast they are you realize they're cars. The author handles rabbits well as main characters, one of my favorite parts of the book is when they first use a piece of wood as a raft to save the rabbits that couldn't swim from the dog. When Blackberry first tries to articulate this idea to Hazel, Hazel can't understand what Blackberry is trying to say, a makeshift raft is simply beyond his ability to comprehend. It's only when he is shown what Blackberry is saying that he finally gets the idea. This idea is such a fundamental one to human culture, it's really interesting to read an example of where the idea of floating on wood may have originated from. Fiver is probably my favorite character in the book while also being the most mysterious, with his prophetic visions and intuition. Fiver is really the character that makes the book awesome. Not only does he provide foreshadowing for certain events in the book, but the way his powers are left completely unexplained while also being widely accepted by the other rabbits adds an epic element to the book that makes it feel more like a quest.