The Bees

I genuinely don't think I've read any animal fantasy (e.g. Watership Down) - in fact according to the Goodreads Popular Animal fantasy list I've basically read Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Animal Farm, The Chronicles of Narnia and something about a wolf that wasn't White Fang - Oh, and Tarka the Otter.

So something like the Bees is way out of my comfort zone as I obviously can't deal with anthropomorphism in my books. So, how did it go with the Bees? Overall, pretty well, most of the time Laline Paull managed to get the balance right and the bees came across as non-human, in other places the parallels drawn between Bee and Human, or any of the Myriad were a little too strained to work effectively. But at the end of the day these were minor quibbles and this is an outstanding work of imagination. Highly recommended.