A Review

So, now we come to the purpose for this blog. I recently finished reading Richard Adams' Traveller.  I was really intrigued by the premise: the story of the Civil War told from the viewpoint of Confederate General Lee's beloved horse Traveller.

The premise of this story was so neat, and I really badly wanted to like it.  The problem was the whole story was told just from the horse's view point. I know, that was supposed to be the draw, but for me it ended up a hindrance.

The horse, of course, did not know the names of any of the places where the battles were fought, so I had to piece together what was going on from my memory of how the war went and the small sections of historical information included in the narrative to try and help readers keep up.  But my knowledge of the early war is not great and I was just about lost until Gettysburg. 

Almost all the narrative comes from Traveller's conversations with other animals, especially the other generals' horses.  He uses nicknames for all the people in the book, including General Lee, whom he calls, "Marse Robert."  But it does make it difficult to remember who is who among the generals, for example through the whole narrative he calls General Pickett "Ringlets" and Stonewall Jackson is "Cap-in-His-Eyes" for his habit of wearing his hat down low over his eyes.

Also, Traveller, being the general's horse regards every battle as a victory, even the whole war itself.  Several times I wanted to throw the book across the room and shout "That was a terrible loss, you stupid horse!"

But the story is told in first person and the character's voice is done very well.  To me it really sounded like what I thought a Southern horse would sound like.

All in all it was an interesting read, but aggravating from a historical point of view.