r/redwall

Let's say they were going to turn the Redwall books into another animated series, and you were invited to voice any Redwall character of your choice. Who are you choosing and why?

For my part, I'd love to voice Gerul the owl.

Okay, yeah, this one kicks ass. It was one of the ones I remembered most clearly, and for good reason. A far better intro to Martin as a character than Mossflower, when he was more of the stoic warrior archetype. This has gotta be the best one, right?

Another Tale of Redwall

Wanted to start quickly with the frame narrative, which has us returning to the Mariel crew after a few brief mentions in Salamandastron. Given that The Bellmaker is next, I really like how Jacques lays the seeds for that, with Saxtus as Abbot and mention of Dandin and Mariel having been off adventuring. It’s nice to see the Abbey again, free of conflict or fever, existing only as a place for friends to gather. I love how Jacques connects these early novels together. It makes the world feel more alive, the Abbey more real. I suspect this will be a piece that I’ll really miss down the road.

Back to Before

Through story, we flashback to the earliest time yet in the chronology of the series, some seasons before Martin ended up in Mossflower during the waning days of Verdauga’s reign. It’s in an entirely new land to us — northern environs between two seas. Martin’s come from the Western Sea, while a former corsair stoat named Badrang the Tyrant has enslaved goodbeasts to build a fortress called Marshank on the Eastern Sea and claim dominion over its shores.

Already, this is compelling stuff. Shades of Mossflower here for sure, but this differs in that Badrang is a very different villain than Tsarmina, and you get none of the sense of woodlanders living in the shadow of the fortress. Here, Badrang’s already won. There is no resistance. It’s up to our heroes to figure it out.

Early on, we’re introduced to our core group — Martin, Felldoh, Brome, Grumm, and Rose — before they break out of Marshank and are split from one another. This gets us our quest and siege plot threads that we’ve seen so often before. Despite their familiarity, I think Jacques succeeds with both to varying degrees (the Marshank plot is stronger), both for the strength of the characters and the way he tightly threads the stories together.

Of Swords and Sycamores

Let’s take the quest plot first. Like all of the previous ones we’ve seen, the quest is largely a picaresque journey across the countryside where our heroes alternate between encounters with friend or foe. On its face, there’s not a lot new here. This one feels especially tightly packed — there’s the business with the pygmy shrews (my favourite bit), Polleekin, the Mirdop rabbits, the Warden and the reptiles, the Gawtrybe, Boldred, Aggril, and then Noonvale itself. This is a lot of plot, and looking at it, it’s clear why Jacques kept his focus more narrow with just the two plots here after the jam-packed Salamandastron. While this section of the book is not without padding — the Mirdops and Aggril don’t really offer us much as readers — the reason this quest plot succeeds where so many have stumbled before is because Jacques uses the plot to drive his characters (well, Martin and Rose anyway — sorry Pallum, you’re not breaking the hedgehog curse), to deepen their bond and heighten the tragedy at the core of Martin’s story.

Because let’s be clear: this is perhaps the only Redwall novel that is, at its core, a tragedy. This is the story of how Martin went wandering and why he eventually hung up his sword. Re-reading it with knowledge of the ending in mind, I was genuinely impressed by how Jacques lays the groundwork for tragedy, especially in the character of Polleekin, one of the most unique characters we’ve seen so far in this series. I love the idea of the kindly grandmotherly mole who gets glimpses of one’s future but is not able to prevent it. I love the bits in Noonvale where Martin pledges to protect Rose’s life. I love the sequence with the sycamore tree and how it produces probably the best line of the entire series when Martin retrieves his sword from Badrang. So while this quest narrative has some of the typical fluff, it’s very successful at building the foundation for this eventual tragedy.

Fur and Freedom

This is not to say that everything is perfect near the walls of Marshank! Once Brome and Felldoh wash ashore, they run into the Rambling Rosehip Players, a travelling troupe of performers who offer them protection and subsequently plot to help free remaining slaves.

I think ultimately this is the stronger half of the novel, as much as I like the Martin and Rose plots. This is all killer, no filler. The players feel like more than their archetypes — I especially like Ballaw as the ringleader of sorts, but even Celandine as the flirty squirrelmaid is a fantastic foil for Felldoh too. In general, the characters on this side of the novel are really spectacular. Brome’s journey from wannabe hero to healer is some especially good character work, and even with bit players like Druwp and Geum and Barkjon you get some new ideas.

Yet even with all of that going on, there’s two characters on this side of the story who rank among Jacques’s very best.

The first of these is on the villains’ side. Truthfully, I wish I liked Badrang more given how significant a figure he is in Martin’s life. This is our first stoat villain of the series, and while he thankfully breaks the habit (to some degree anyway) of casually killing his own guys, I was frustrated by how little interaction he actually had with Martin. I think this lessens his character to some degree, as instead of being a true foil to our hero, he’s just a figure to be removed. This isn’t all that different from what happened with Tsarmina, but we got much more of Tsarmina’s interior world in that book, which ultimately made her more compelling.

Instead the stoat I want to call out is Cap’n Tramun Clogg, who to me is one of the most fun and unique characters we’ve seen so far in the series. He talks a big game, but doesn’t ultimately do a lot of directly villainous stuff himself, which allows him to play off both our heroes and our villain, enriching everyone around him. The way Jacques draws him is incredibly vivid, and by the time he’s hiding under wheelbarrows and turning over bodies in the ruins of Marshank, he’s become one of the best characters in the entire series.

But then there’s Felldoh. The shattered slave who becomes a javelin-tossing figure of vengeance against the hordes of Marshank. His name was a throwaway line in Mossflower as ‘Felldoh the Wrestler,’ and while nobody calls him by that epithet here, this brawny squirrel more than lives up to the legend. Jacques paints him as someone deeply scarred from his imprisonment, contrasting him both to the naive Brome and to the valiant Martin. Martin wants justice, while Felldoh wants revenge. If I have any critique of this character (and the book as a whole), it’s that Martin doesn’t actually spend that much time interacting with folks that it seems he should know better. But everything else about Felldoh works for me. I love that he doesn’t really seem all that interested in playing his part in the ruse to free the slaves, yet he doesn’t hesitate when he has a chance to snipe Druwp. I love how resolved he is to toss javelins over Marshank’s at night and harry the forces within. His relationship with Ballaw and Rowanoak — two beasts who help him even as the reader gets a faint sense they fear him slightly — is wonderful. His last stand is both excellent and frustrating in that it gives him the relationship with Badrang that Martin should have had, but it’s ultimately so satisfying that it almost doesn’t matter.

I think the best part of Felldoh as a character is that Jacques doesn’t seem to want us to root for him entirely. He’s presented as broken and dies because he cannot step away from the fight. He’s contrasted with Brome in his own journey, and it’s Brome who ultimately is able to settle and live following the war. As much as we’ve talked about how bloodthirsty the goodbeasts are in these books, Jacques has a line, and I think it says a lot that his most merciful character is the one who leaves this book with the fewest scars.

Closing Thoughts and Rankings

There’s a lot to say on Martin the Warrior! This is the first of these where I feel I’ve spent more time talking character than I did specific events, which is a sign that Jacques really did something special here. The Bellmaker is next, and while I’m excited to return to the characters of Mariel and discover a new land, I feel fairly confident that this is likely the high-water mark for the series. There’s books I remember fondly coming up, but this one feels like Jacques truly had a vision — one that he executed to near-perfection.

Martin the Warrior is the best book in my re-read so far.

1) Martin the Warrior

2) Mattimeo

3) Redwall

4) Mossflower

5) Mariel of Redwall

6) Salamandastron

I have yet to see it called out individually on here.

View Poll

Hello all, sorry if this has been posted before. I’m looking to read some of the books, as I haven’t read any Redwall book in decades. I ordered Lord Brocktree and Redwall, so I had the option to read them in chronological or in release order?

I know the suggested way to read them is release order but will I lose anything if I start with Lord Brocktree?

This is a weird one. I remember as a kid that this was one of the last ones I read prior to new books coming out (I think the first then-new book I have clear memories of is Taggerung), and since it’s situated before the literary KT-boundary that is the time-gap between Salamandastron and Redwall, it feels oddly placed within the broader context of the series, the first instance perhaps of Jacques writing the kind of monster-of-the-week story that would become much more commonplace in the post-Taggerung era. There’s some real structural curiosities here, some high-highs (Ferahgo), low-lows (the opening quarter or so really drags; the Abbey plot), and some kick-ass cover art.

Since Jacques juggles four (!) separate plots here, let’s take them one by one before bringing them together to see how they shake out.

Mara & Pikkle

This is probably the strongest of the early plots; the closest comparison Mara has to any other character is Auma from Mattimeo, but Mara has greater depth and seems a little more headstrong. Starting off with her and Pikkle (who seems unusually gluttonous, even for a hare) on the lam from Salamandastron works for me, as does having her befriend Klitch and his lackey. I think Jacques intended us to view her as naively as Urthstripe does, and I’ve promised myself that the way the vermin dynamic is treated in these books is something I’ll only handle in true depth when Outcast comes around, so I won’t linger too long here, but I will say some of Urthstripe’s lines are a bit much, even in context:

Friends? A ferret and a weasel, they are not friends, they are vermin! Have you no sense, Mara? Ferrets, weasels, stoats, rats, and foxes have caused murder and warfare in Mossflower since before the days of my ancestors.”

And then later:

Vermin are vermin, no matter what — I’ve learned that much.

I know Jacques was pulling on folkloric perspectives when casting out his world and he meant no harm, but just as we talked about the woodlanders being kind of bloodthirsty in Mariel, I think it’s worth mentioning this one part of the series that’s aged a bit, especially when read back-to-back.

Other than this, I do like Mara and Pikkle’s journey through Mossflower — even if brings back the underwhelming toad beats from Mariel and Mossflower —simply because these two and the Guosssom work really well together. Pikkle’s scoff-off with Tubgutt, Mara’s rescue of him, and their journey to the Great Inland Sea all work well for me.

Samkim & Arula

Like the Salamandastron plot, we have two threads coming out of Redwall. I think there’s an argument that neither of these are particularly necessary, but of these two, I think this plot is superior.

The Redwall action starts really roughly — I don’t know what it is exactly about this book, but the way the Abbey is portrayed and the characters described feels somehow like a reversion to the odd world-building of the first Redwall book. Here, we’ve lost the term Dibbun and instead just have a baby; having a Badger Mother is officially something Redwall has, rather than something informal; even the characters are named oddly, with “Mrs Faith Spinney” being just like a whole-ass lady’s name.

I do think think this section picks up a bit once Dingeye and Thura show up, and I genuinely like the idea of two vermin refugees hiding out in the Abbey. Unfortunately, this plot runs into some of the same problems that I mentioned above, where the Abbey-dwellers are entirely untrusting of the two stoats — even the Abbess grimaces when they touch her paws. A far cry from Abbot Mortimer offering shelter and hospitality to Cluny the Scourge! Worse yet, their fears are validated when Dingeye and Thura accidentally kill a Redwaller. This looks like it’ll take an interesting turn when Samkim is momentarily blamed for it, but between his quick pursuit of the two stoats and the arrival of Dryditch Fever, this thread is abandoned in favour of not one, but two quest narratives!

I do actually also like Samkim and Arula’s journey through Mossflower. While I think think it’s the lesser of the two quests — the joking about the bloodthirsty mole is a little goofy for me, and Spriggat doesn’t quite land as a character(please give me a good hedgehog, Jacques!) — having these two join up with Pikkle and Mara’s story is a really fun interplay that I wish we’d seen more of in the books.

This journey ultimately brings them to . . .

Salamandastron!

This is where the real juice of this book is, and if I have one major critique of the book, it’s that we spend relatively little time at the titular place, and all of it is so good that it feels like a real missed opportunity. Still, what happens here is we get our first true siege since Redwall, only this one feels far more organized than Cluny’s two attempts. We also get a better sense of how Salamandastron operates militarily, with our best look yet at the roles of the Long Patrol and Badger Lords in protecting this world’s western shore. I like Urthstripe as a gruff military leader who stands with his chipper hares against overwhelming odds; characters like Oxeye and Sapwood are distinct from previous hares, and we get a real sense of their desperation against Ferahgo. I do wish perhaps things had gotten slightly more dire — it never felt like they were truly in peril — but everything that happens here is a joy to read.

The reason for this, of course, is Ferahgo the Assassin, one of Jacques’s best villains. Unless I’m mistaken, he’s the only weasel leader we see in the series. I loved the way Jacques portrays him as this analytical smiling live-wire of a commander, and while I do wish we’d seen a little bit more of how his charisma might make people want to follow him, he has several good moments where he really stands out as someone to fear. Perhaps the best of these is when he discovers the assassination plot against himself and Jacques describes him just casually killing one of the foiled attackers in passing before turning to the other. Better yet is his dynamic with Klitch, which is utterly unique in the series — I love how they seem to harbour a kind of begrudging respect for the other, with their back-and-forth elevating both characters as they seek to breach the mountain. I do wonder perhaps if there was a missed opportunity to parallel Mara and Urthstripe against these two, but this is a Redwall book, so unfortunately Mara had to be off questing.

When she returns in front of an army of shrews, along with Samkim, Arula, and Urthwyte, there’s genuine catharsis in the way that she is able to save the mountain, but not reunite with her adoptive father in time. While I have my problems with the setup, Jacques’s structural gamble pays off big time here, with perhaps the best finale sequence since Redwall. Mara’s ultimate decision to return to the Abbey makes sense, and I do love the way it seems like Martin’s hand guides events here

Oh yeah, there’s the plague.

Then there’s the Dryditch Fever plot, which feels almost entirely superfluous to what’s going on in the rest of the book. It feels once again like Jacques didn’t feel entirely comfortable leaving Redwall alone once Samkim and Arula had set out, so he invented this plot, which necessitates a whole other journey from Thrugg and Dumble to go get flowers from some heretofore unmentioned northern mountains.

I actually dig the pair of Thrugg and Dumble, and while the journey to the mountains doesn’t offer a lot of surprises, I do unironically think it’s awesome that Jacques:

a) called his Scottish eagle King MacPhearsome

b) kept having his characters talk about how unintelligible their accent was, which is extremely funny coming from a Scouse writer

This plot generates some pretty harrowing scenes at the Abbey, but it really should have been placed in a whole different book, because it didn’t get enough time to breathe here and ultimately gave us less time with the best parts of this story.

Final Thoughts and Rankings

This one was a really tough one for me to place. I like the Ferahgo and Salamandastron plots a ton, and I admire the structural gambles, but this book drags in a lot of places. I thought about placing it above Mariel, but I think that book focuses better, with an Abbey plot that feels much more essential. Furthermore, I think Mariel works better as a part of an ongoing narrative than Salamandastron, which is easily the most skippable book yet. This lands Salamandastron at the bottom of my list.

Next up: Martin the Warrior!

1. Mattimeo

2. Redwall

3. Mossflower

4. Mariel of Redwall

5. Salamandastron

I find myself categorizing them as either woodlanders or vermin.

I don't have moles around here but, if i did, I'd consider it wrong to get rid of them.

Gophers on the other hand, vermin. They're the anti-moles. Probably talk like meth addicts.

Coyotes are basically foxes.

Am I alone in this?

Let's say you had a big homestead in the Redwall world, and roving bands of foxes, weasels, rats and other vermin were attacking your property and killing your animals. You are able to choose one band of warriors to defend your property from the ravenous vermin. What do you choose?

1. Log a log and the guiosm shrews?

2. The long patrol and badger lord?

3. A band of tree-swinging squirrels?

4. Choose your own band of guardians or offer a mixed variety!