Richard Adams - Plague Dogs, The - 5

[StefanY]

Plague Dogs, The

I didn't find this to be all that terribly bad, I just felt that it was incredible average and quite honestly blah in parts. From what I have heard, and read myself, I feel that this is definitely the low point in Richard Adams' writing.

I think that my two main problems with this book are first the amount of space that Adams uses to push his political agenda down the reader's throat. While I totally agree that the inhumane treatment of animals in research facilities is deplorable and that something definitely must be done about such activities, after a while when reading the novel I began to dread the sections of the book that did not concern themselves directly with the dogs' activities. This leads directly to my second issue, the sections of the book that concern themselves with the dogs begin to get rather droll as well as the dogs never really make any progress towards any sort of productive goal. As a matter of fact, they travel around the countryside for days and end up returning to the same spot that they were in after their first day of freedom following their escape. It gets to be very frustrating. The last fifty pages or so, the pace does change quite a bit and the book does have a satisfying conclusion.

I had no problems what-so-ever with Adams' writing style; he does have a way with putting sentences together that make them flow fairly easily. I also rather enjoyed several of the characters in the novel, especially the two dogs and because of this, really wanted to like the novel, but just simply found it to be more of a chore to read than a pleasure.
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