General Musing

In Marlfox Brian Jacques creates another wonderful story, this time about a family of legendary Marlfoxes who lay siege to Redwall Abbey. Again Jacques is about creating something new using the familiar setting of Redwall, and again he succeeds.

Family reunions are a recurring, but not overly used, theme in Mossflower wood, although not all are physically successful, eventually everybody is reunited to – the memory of – their loved ones. And everybody learns that that home is where the heart is, and for many creatures that place is Redwall Abbey.

A very fun book to read.

Another review in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques is The Taggerung, which for me was a rare exception in that the book is about an otter kidnapped after birth and brought up by the ferret leader of the Juska clan as the Taggerung, a great warrior. With all Redwall books the story revolves round the Abbey, this is no different. Yet it has a certain speed and flavour that differs from the majority of the books from the series.

One of my two favourite parts of the book are Cregga, a badger who recurs in a number of other Redwall novels, and the fibbing contest.

A great read!

The Bellmaker by Brian Jacques is story of Joseph, the maker of the bell which long tolled in Redwall Abbey. This is another feature I like about the Redwall series, a character mentioned in past books as a legend or who left a legacy has his or her story told. Naturally Martin the Warrior is as always a staple of the Redwall diet, but characters such as Joseph who’s legacy, the Joseph Bell, saves Redwall Abbey in the book Redwall are wonderful.

The Guosim, Guerilla Union of Shrews in Mossflower, always led by a leader called Log-a-Log, or Skipper, who is always the leader of a clan of otters are always fun, and although they are portrait in similar ways they do always seem to be as different as the characters who’s names change. The fight between good and evil always exists, and not to forget the badgers, moles, perilous hares, mice, squirrels and the many Dibbuns (little ones) make the stories varied. Yet each story has its moments, be they riddles, songs, poems or battles.

A very good read.

I first read Redwall by Brian Jacques when I was 15, I loved it. Remembering that I stood in the livingroom bawling my eyes out after one of the following books, can’t post the spoiler here, my father bought me the whole series. I’ve been reading them in a chain, only taking time out briefly to read a very small selection of other books. I’ll be posting reviews of the books here in a series of reviews.

As the first book in the series this book has a special place in my heart, over 17 years later I still loved and enjoyed it. The story, filled with talking animals living in an Abbey called Redwall, is a true fable, “… in prose [and] verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.“^[1]. And although I have a slight aversion to anthropomorphism, Redwall is an exception to this.

This book introduced me to one of the legends of Redwall Abbey, Martin the Warrior, and laid the basis for many hours of fun.