Book Review: Redwall by Brian Jacques
Jul. 14th, 2006 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Redwall
Author: Brian Jacques
Published: New York: Avon Books, 1990 (1986)
Page Count: 351
Total Page Count: 22,064
Text Number: 63
Read For: my own enjoyment
Short review: The first book of the Redwall series. For the first time since it was built, Redwall Abbey is under attack: the warlord Cluny the Scourge, a massive, evil rat who uses his tail as a whip, wants to capture Redwall, enslave the inhabitants, and claim Mossflower for his own. The peaceful mice of Redwall must fight back or die. One young apprentice monk, Matthias, rises up from among the Redwallers to become a warrior and an adventurer, going on a quest to find and recover the long-lost sort of Martian the Warrior, founder of the Abbey, so that he can challenge Cluny to battle and save Redwall. As the first Redwall book, it actually the most out of place in the series: Jacques is still experimenting with setting, human influence, and the nature of Redwall itself. As a result, it does read as a first novel and feels a bit unfinished. Nonetheless, his book is already full of the riddles, memorable and amusing characters with fun accents and turns of phrase, intelligent and exciting battle sequences, and ongoing quests and adventures. Redwall is one of the books in the series that I remember best between rereads: it is a classic, an exiting read, and an appropriate beginning to the rest of the series.
Redwall definitely reads like a first novel. By the second book in the series, the Abbey will be almost entirely non-religious and almost all of the human references will be gone; in this one, there is still an order that mice have to train in to, and there are carts, farms, farm animals, and other references to human buildings and influence. Because this novel is so different from what the series would quickly become, it feels out of place. The human elements in particular are a bit off-putting and take away from the independent, intensely complex social life of the animals in Mossflower and beyond. With human being on the edges of the picture, the Redwallers and vermin don't seem as human themselves, but rather like undercover imitators. In some books, a human world outside of the rodent world works very well (see the Rats of NIMH series), but not in Redwall. I have a hard time getting through this book and taking everything at face value because of the religious and human overtones.
That said, that really is my only major complaint about the book. It doesn't have any characters, good or bad, that I love as much as some of those in other books, and so it isn't a personal favorite, but the adventures and riddles in particular are most certainly classic, golden Jacques. He always manages to cover so much in just a few hundred pages: from the start of a war to the end, with new characters, new areas to explore, journeys to take and ground to cover, mysteries to be solved, and battles to be won. Perhaps that's what I love most about the Redwall series: so much happens that it's impossible not to learn, love, indulge, and remain actively interested. Even if this is the first in the series, all of those features are already there. The new cultures, the journey to retrieve Martin's sword, and the battles against Cluny are enlightening, thoughtful, and skilfully executed, and the entire book reads swiftly and enjoyably. Not my favorite Redwall book, but a good one, and I would definitely recommend that you read it first if you're considering starting in on the series. Many of the others can be read out of order, but this is where it all began.
Posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Brian Jacques
Published: New York: Avon Books, 1990 (1986)
Page Count: 351
Total Page Count: 22,064
Text Number: 63
Read For: my own enjoyment
Short review: The first book of the Redwall series. For the first time since it was built, Redwall Abbey is under attack: the warlord Cluny the Scourge, a massive, evil rat who uses his tail as a whip, wants to capture Redwall, enslave the inhabitants, and claim Mossflower for his own. The peaceful mice of Redwall must fight back or die. One young apprentice monk, Matthias, rises up from among the Redwallers to become a warrior and an adventurer, going on a quest to find and recover the long-lost sort of Martian the Warrior, founder of the Abbey, so that he can challenge Cluny to battle and save Redwall. As the first Redwall book, it actually the most out of place in the series: Jacques is still experimenting with setting, human influence, and the nature of Redwall itself. As a result, it does read as a first novel and feels a bit unfinished. Nonetheless, his book is already full of the riddles, memorable and amusing characters with fun accents and turns of phrase, intelligent and exciting battle sequences, and ongoing quests and adventures. Redwall is one of the books in the series that I remember best between rereads: it is a classic, an exiting read, and an appropriate beginning to the rest of the series.
Redwall definitely reads like a first novel. By the second book in the series, the Abbey will be almost entirely non-religious and almost all of the human references will be gone; in this one, there is still an order that mice have to train in to, and there are carts, farms, farm animals, and other references to human buildings and influence. Because this novel is so different from what the series would quickly become, it feels out of place. The human elements in particular are a bit off-putting and take away from the independent, intensely complex social life of the animals in Mossflower and beyond. With human being on the edges of the picture, the Redwallers and vermin don't seem as human themselves, but rather like undercover imitators. In some books, a human world outside of the rodent world works very well (see the Rats of NIMH series), but not in Redwall. I have a hard time getting through this book and taking everything at face value because of the religious and human overtones.
That said, that really is my only major complaint about the book. It doesn't have any characters, good or bad, that I love as much as some of those in other books, and so it isn't a personal favorite, but the adventures and riddles in particular are most certainly classic, golden Jacques. He always manages to cover so much in just a few hundred pages: from the start of a war to the end, with new characters, new areas to explore, journeys to take and ground to cover, mysteries to be solved, and battles to be won. Perhaps that's what I love most about the Redwall series: so much happens that it's impossible not to learn, love, indulge, and remain actively interested. Even if this is the first in the series, all of those features are already there. The new cultures, the journey to retrieve Martin's sword, and the battles against Cluny are enlightening, thoughtful, and skilfully executed, and the entire book reads swiftly and enjoyably. Not my favorite Redwall book, but a good one, and I would definitely recommend that you read it first if you're considering starting in on the series. Many of the others can be read out of order, but this is where it all began.
Posted here on Amazon.com.
