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Summary: An Intriguing Puzzle
Review: This is a story of life in the far future, narrated by a twelve-year-old boy. Riddley Walker describes events and places in a savage, primitive dialect. In this strange world we gradually perceive what it was that reduced mankind to barbarism: a nuclear war thousands of years ago. The people in Riddley's tribe have a new religion based on the holocaust of the remote past, and legends about the lost world they look back upon: (boats in the air and picters in the wind, the 1 Big 1 put in barms time back way back.) The first obvious clue that the book is set in England (now Inland) is the map at the front. The frequent rain is another clue. The parts where the book is most inventive are when Riddley walks through the ruined towns: "Crumbelt birks and broak stoans all a jumbl and a parcht smel unner neath of old berning." Riddley becomes caught up in a plan to try and get things moving "frontways". That is, to get back all the things that were lost. The secret of achieving this seems to lie in a group of special ingredients: one of these being a bag of yellow stones that two factions are fighting for. I like to think of "Riddley Walker" as a sort of sequel to Robert Swindells' novel "Brother in the Land." There are certain things that link the two books. "Brother in the Land" was published four years after "Riddley Walker". It was set in England immediately after the nuclear war and was narrated by a boy not much older than Riddley. Even at that time new words were starting to creep into the language. The boy wrote his account in the hope that any descendents reading it would learn from what happened and not start the whole conflict up again. Thousands of years later in Riddley's time, it seems things have not changed. Most of the paople are unable to read anyway. Even if they could, they would have little inkling of what the long-dead narrator was saying. "Riddley Walker" is a very rewarding book. It's both puzzling and entertaining. Read it more than once and you'll always find new things.
Rating: 
Summary: a lidl fun
Review: I parbly wer preddy gud at speln bfor I redd this buk Riddley Walker an I parbly arn enny gud at it enny mor but thats ok. Cuz I wud rather be 1 wut redd this buk its amazn. The man Rusl Hoban wut rowt it he wer usin his maginatn he wer teln the tales. He has makt a wurl wut is prymevl an it wer in the futr at the sayme tym. The wurdz he makt em up also an we ken stil unnerstan em they iz frum us an is frum them 2. An he put the musik innit the wurdz 2. You shud jus by this buk an redd it. There is 1 trubba wid it ther arn enuf starz forit.
Rating:
Summary: Not For Everyone But a Revelation for Some
Review: Trubba. You have to truly be a word person. Not a crossword puzzle word person (like my wife). But a word person. Words. Language. Dripping and rolling off the table. You like MOBY DICK specifically BECAUSE Melville is wordy. You're a word person. You'll read Hoban's RIDDLEY WALKER the first time, mystified and astonished. You'll read it the second time, and it will unfold word bombs in your mind. You'll read it a third time and it will be too late - you've been quietly transformed. IF YOU ARE NOT A ROMANTIC (classic sense) LOVER OF WORDS STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK. IF YOU WANT A SIMPLE PLOT, A SIMPLE STORY, STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK. If you want to travel the pages of one of the most astonishing literary works of the 20th century, read RIDDLEY WALKER. Trubba not.
Rating:
Summary: Language and Humor
Review: To the other reviews, I only want to add that Hoban's pidgin English is often uproariously funny and one of the many pleasures of reading the novel.
Rating: 
Summary: I spent $12.95 for this?
Review: After reading this review page, I was convinced I'd found the book that would be my next keeper. 5 days later, unfortunately, this was turned in to the used bookstore. I hate getting rid of books, and I had a difficult time deciding on this one, but it had to go. Actually, the feature that would be most expected to turn someone away from this book, the dialect, was not the culprit. I found that fascinating, and trying to translate the words, locations, events, and legends into their proper contexts was very entertaining. My problem was with the plot. It's extremely uneven. The first third of the book is very slow, maybe unnecessarily so, supplying a large amount of info on this future society's history, culture, etc. Then all of a sudden, things are moving at ten times that speed, characters and events fall in with too much convenience and not enough information, and the story loses its flow. Quite a disappointment, considering all the good things I've heard about it. Choose carefully.
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Summary: what can i say that hasn't already been said
Review: What can I say that hasn't already been said? I taught Riddley to my Popular Literature course a few years ago and like most of the reviewers here I was hooked after the first page. I've tried to give it to everybody i know who loves literature. So far, only one of my brothers has actually finished it. He and I write each other and always close by using the classic Riddleyism: "Trubba not." Reading Riddley is almost a spiritual experience. Often, I just pick it up and open it up to a random passage and read for inspiration. Hoban is an awesome writer. Awesome as in awe inspiring. It's enchanting, chilling, inspirational. I don't agree that it's without hope, as one reviewer said. By the end of the book, when Riddley is putting on his own puppet show/morality play, things are better. His plays have a moral conscience. In fact, I'm working on a paper about the development of moral conscience in Riddley Walker. Does anyone know if there is a body of academic criticism on the book? When did the book go out of print? I taught it about two or three years ago and was able to get copies. I certainly look forward to having a new edition in my library. In case anyone is interested, I taught this book in Popular Literature, a course where you can choose a theme or genre of popular fiction. I chose Post-Apocalyptic literature. End of the world novels. The books included: Riddley Walker, Alas! Babylon (Pat Frank), A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller), Lucifer's Hammer (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle), Swann Song (Robert McCammon), The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood), The Postman (David Brin)--forget about the horrible movie, read this wonderful book), The Gate to Women's Country (Sheri S. Tepper), The War of the Worlds (H.G.Wells). I have taught this course before and taught other books too like The Shore of Women, some of David Gerrod's novels about the alien worm invastion--those books have been out of print for a long time too. There is a wealth of post-apocalptic novels out there. I try to read all I can. My students usually suffer terribly through these novels. Some begin to save needle and thread, liquor, flashlights, candles, and flinch at loud noises. Well. Trubba not.
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Summary: To the reader from Texas: Sept. 99
Review: The above reader asked if anyone knew what Sharna Pax means. It came to me suddenly when I was reading Riddley Walker for the second time after a gap of 12 years. It means "Sharpen up the axe". If you say it quickley (and it helps if you come from Yorshire in England where many of us naturally talk like Riddley and his mates), you get "sharp'n up axe...sharn'up axe...sharnu pax..." If you put that back in the context, it makes sense.
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Summary: Arga Warga 2 1 who duz not like the book
Review: Trubba not! This book is a coming of age novel set in the time after Eusa split the littl Shyinin Man the Addom. (Nuclear war in contemporary usage). Riddley is a twelve year old boy who watches his father die, and then has to take over his role as Connexion Man. Although Riddley is only twelve, he has an adult's insight into humanity that twelve year olds of our day wouldn't necessarily have. Hoban wrote this novel in near-phonetic spelling, showing the sub-theme of language being a dynamic force that changes with time. Although it can be hard to read and understand at times, it is worth getting through cover to cover.
Rating:
Summary: an ancient and beautiful form
Review: Riddley's back! My copy is tattered by now and this edition has a wonderful cover. Most people don't realize that the novel is not the only form of prose fiction. A 'novel' is a prose fiction work about domestic relationships and social shifts against a stable background, usually a comfortable one. Deep psychological exploration of characters through shifts in relationships with others. No action. Think of books by Iris Murdoch, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen. The other sort of prose fiction is called the 'prose fiction romance', involving movement through space and time, a quest, and the protagonists' character is revealed through his\her choice of actions. Think of Old Man and the Sea, Huckleberry Finn, Don Quijote. Action is hard to write. Try it sometime. The techniques of writing the PFR are never taught any more. Considered bad form. So here is Riddley again, the bearer of the ancient tradition of the folk tale, so brilliantly done, the young man utterly unsinkable. Welcome back. You have been missed. Does anyone know what Sharna Pax is? That was the only one I could never figure out.
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Summary: a rich feast for lovers of language
Review: Successfully evokes the primitive, natural mind, free from all the baggage and artifice of current english usage. The fractured english used is raw and alive, as no other normal novel could be.
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