Book Review: Redwall

★★★★☆ (4/5, Really Liked It)

Cover art by Troy Howell, Ace Books 30th Anniversary Edition, 2017, US Paperback

My Rating: ★★★★☆

Intro & Summary

Brian Jacques’s Redwall is the first of the 22-book Redwall series. It establishes the titular Redwall Abbey, which comes under siege by the infamous villain Cluny the Scourge and his army. Matthias, a novice of the abbey, embarks on a quest to find the lost sword of the abbey’s legendary hero, Martin the Warrior, while the rest of the abbey dwellers keep Cluny’s hoard at bay.

I first picked up Redwall when I was around 8 or 9 years old. I liked to read, and had been reading since I was about 4, but this is the first book I remember being really good. It was also the first book that really got me into a series. M read it around the same time, possibly on my recommendation (it’s been so long I can’t remember), and then proceeded to devour the rest of the series.

She read much faster than me, so she was usually books ahead of where I was. But I think her enthusiasm for the series helped motivate me to keep going with it, too. I kind of slowed down and fell off after she moved away a few years later.

I’m honestly surprised I haven’t reread Redwall before now, considering it was so formative to my reading likes and habits. At some point maybe I just wanted to avoid that awkward situation where you learn, as an adult, that something from your childhood just doesn’t hold up. And that’s part of what this year’s reading theme is about.

Plot & Style

Jacques’s style is generally easy to read but beautifully detailed, a perfect combination for the children this book is aimed at. I was reading 3-4 years “ahead of my grade level,” but I think the target audience is around 10-12 years.

One of the more unique parts of Jacques’s writing is the accents. He loved regional accents, and he incorporated those into throughout the Redwall series. Most creatures speak in plain English, or a characterful dialect of it. And others are a bit more inscrutable. This is something about the series that people seem to either love or hate. Especially the moles’ molespeech.

“Arr, fourth’n uppards, same down’ards. Yurr, Walt, ‘ark, Doby. B’aint that same as your grandmum do foind when she’m rooten about olden toim fortications?”

Foremole, Redwall pp 122-3

Even some of the characters in the book need others to translate molespeech for them. I think it’s quite fun, though, once you get the hang of it.

A lot happens in this book. Reading as an adult, and as a writer, there’s a good number of times where problems are solved very quickly, and often very conveniently, but it’s usually at least fun. I don’t think children should be talked down to; they’re smarter and more capable of understanding things than a lot of people give them credit for. But simpler and more straightforward storytelling works well for their still-developing brains and sense of themselves and the world around them. And that straightforwardness can refreshing even as an adult.

What really surprised me was the violence. It was more graphic than I expected. I remember there being a certain brutality in spots from when I read it as a child, but it turns out that wasn’t my young brain just amplifying things. There’s nothing especially disturbing or extreme, and Jacques never uses violence for pure shock value nor lingers on any gore for any longer than necessary. But I feel like this book deserves a PG-13/PEGI 12 rating.

Younger children will probably by fine with it—I was, it was just more violent than anything I'd read up to that point—but some readers on the younger end might find things a bit scary or disturbing. If you’re expecting a cute and fluffy book about sweet mice living a peaceful, pastoral life, Redwall isn’t it. These creatures are fighting to preserve that peaceful, pastoral life. And it’s war.

World

The world of Redwall is based on our world but isn’t our world. I actually have a better sense from the series as a whole, and M and I both encountered a bit of whiplash from differences we didn’t remember from this first book.

Having read a lot of later books, this really feels like the first book of a series and that Jacques is still figuring things out. Once M and I realised that, it was easier to handwave anything that didn’t make sense with how we remembered the world.

The world of Redwall asks for some suspension of disbelief when it comes to size and scale. The animals range from dormice up to foxes and badgers, as well as a horse and mention of cows. Badgers and otters live alongside the mice of Redwall Abbey, so the mice are obviously scaled up in relation to their much larger companions, otherwise the size difference surely would have come up.

Constance, the badger in this book, is always described as big, but not in a giant type way, just big and strong. But at one point late in the book, Matthias (a field mouse) faces down both a cat and an adder, who are each plenty large enough to eat him.

The buildings, too, are strangely scaled. The abbey was made by woodlanders, established by Martin the Warrior (also a field mouse) and his companions. But when Matthias goes up into the attic it’s like climbing a tall mountain. I’ve been in some very tall medieval structures, but the description of his climb wouldn’t really fit with me trying to climb their walls.

You learn to ignore all this, though, for the most part. Jacques’s writing style is such that you just immerse yourself into the world and go along with the flow. Whenever I did start to think too much about the animals’ sizes in relation to each other, I found it helped to just think of them as different fantasy races, like in Dungeons and Dragons, instead of actual mice and otters and foxes.

There was one major question that came up, though, that led to a rather funny exchange with M. The Redwallers are predominantly vegetarian, though they do eat fish. That’s all fine and good and makes sense to me. But then there comes mention of cream and milk. And I started wondering… And then I sent a message to M that led to a (very dumb) idea for a (nonexistant) sticker.

M and I then spent the next hour or so each reading and trying to figure it out, messaging with what we learned from the text. Cows were mentioned after we realised dairy was on the menu, but there are no cows around Redwall. It finally settled on being goat’s milk, probably, but again… there are no goats around Redwall.

Looking it up, it seems this was another one of those instances where this is the first book and Jacques was still figuring things out regarding the setting. The world of Redwall eventually developed from something adjacent to ours into its own separate thing. Milk is now from a milkweed type plant, rather than being dairy. But that doesn’t make me any less confused.

Characters

Matthias is a field mouse and the main character of the book. He’s the equivalent of a teenager or young adult, who can sometimes be pretty childish. He gets almost irrationally angry whenever something doesn’t go his way or he encounters a roadblock, then is immediately overjoyed when it’s easily solved or overcome. He idolises Martin the Warrior and seeks to follow in his footsteps, leading him into mortal peril multiple times, out of which he emerges stronger and more mature.

Cornflower is also a mouse and Matthias’s love interest. And everyone is weirdly horny about her? At least in the first half of the book. That kind of goes away at some point. She treads the fine line of “woman as object” that I really don’t like. She’s charming and sweet and domestic, the perfect makings of a damsel or ornamental love interest for the hero. However, Jacques writes plenty of female characters, and writes them well (as evidenced by Constance the badger and Jess the squirrel, to name a couple from Redwall). And Cornflower, despite all indications to the contrary at the beginning of the book, is no exception. She does plenty during the siege of Redwall, and it turns out her femininity and domesticity are just a part of her character.

Cluny the Scourge is a villain and a rat, a warlord who seeks to claim Redwall Abbey and restyle it as his castle. And he’s brutal. He’s also, despite this brutality, a pretty competent leader overall. He orders his hoard around, plays them against each other to maintain his power and position and punishes those who disobey or displease him. But he’s also not afraid to get his hands dirty, even going ahead of his warriors during both battles and stealth missions. He’s a flawed but rounded and characterful villain, which is refreshing.

Final Ratings & Conclusion

Plot: 4/5

A fun coming of age and quest story, which also includes siege warfare. Events move a bit fast, and sometimes problems are too immediately and conveniently solved.

World: 3/5

I usually give “out world but not” a 3/5 unless there’s something extra special about it. There’s also too much confusion and too many first-book inconsistencies to rate it any higher.

Characters: 5/5

All the main characters fit into certain roles and meet certain genre expectations, but Jacques keeps them well rounded. Every character is charming, even the villains in their own way.

Does It Hold Up?

Yes.

I loved rereading this formative book from my childhood. It was wonderfully nostalgic, but I think even without that I would have enjoyed it.

M and I are already planning to reread the entire 22-book series at some point, but in chronological order this time, instead of publication order as we did the first time we read them. An exciting reading theme for another year, perhaps?

Read: January 2025

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