REEEEEDWALL! EULALIAAAAA!
It took a long time, but I finally read all twenty-two books in the Redwall series, written by Brian Jacques who passed away just a short while ago. From Redwall to The Rogue Crew I have read them all.
Animal fiction is my favorite book genre, and as such, my choices are extremely limited. The Redwall series is probably the most famous series of animal fiction. Warrior Cats may have a gigantic following, but the Warriors series' fandom is almost completely online: you'll find the books in the "Popular Series" of the children's section, but talk to people in real life and most of them will have never even heard of it.
I picked up the first Redwall book, aptly named Redwall from my local library, where they were selling it for fifty cents. I loved it. They had Mossflower too, so a few weeks later, I went and bought that too. I have borrowed most of the series from the library except for the few that I have bought due to being on sale for cheap.
I still wish there was confirmation on just how big the characters in the series are. The books have suggested everything from normal animal sizes to human height. My personal theory is that they're larger than normal animals, but still quite small, as in Rakkety Tam, the titular Rakkety Tam and Sister Armel were able to run along the branches of trees to escape their enemies.
If you're looking for creativity and a variety of stories, Redwall is not for you. There are twenty-two books in the series, but the vast majority of them have one of the following plots:
That's twenty-two books where most of them follow one of the four above plots. The world of Redwall is not very developed. Only Mossflower and Salamandastrom has been fleshed out, pretty much every other location is vague in location and mentioned only once in the book they're featured in. Still, even with its limited geography, technology, etc., there's still room for a wide variety of stories and I am very disappointed that Jacques fell back on one of the above four for most of the books. Why couldn't we get a book about, say, an abbot trying to choose a successor and struggling with whether he's making the right choice or how Salamandastrom and its ever hungry hare soldiers dealing with a famine? How about trying to negotiate a peace treaty against two tribes who aren't necessarily evil, but don't get along? There's lots of story potential that doesn't have to involve taking down a vermin villain. I wish Eulalia! had been more about Gorath trying to control the Bloodwrath instead of it getting pushed to sideplot status.
This would not be such a problem if the characters made up for it, but Redwall has very few memorable characters at all. Most of the characters are generic and literally interchangeable with each other. If you look them up on the Redwall Wiki you'll find most of them have extremely short entries despite being the main characters in their books. (I have seen many people claim that Triss is a mary sue, but how can she be a mary sue when she is just like every other hero in the series? The only notable thing about her is she is the first official female chosen bearer of the Sword of Martin.) At most, they may have one or two quirks that set them apart, but are on the whole, the same as the others. Someone described the books as having "the exact same characters, just with different names" and I can't disagree with that. It's very telling that I can't, off the top of my head, remember the names of the protagonists for most of the books because they are that generic. The ones I do remember are either the ones the series won't let you forget about (Martin and Matthias) or the ones that actually do stick out noticeably from the rest (Mariel, Gonff, Deyna/Tagg, Tiria, Gorath, Mara, and Veil for example).
The villains are also mostly the same: cruel, heartless, willing to kill anyone and anything, including their own beasts, to get what they want. The main things that separate them are their occupations, such as corsair, tyrant, or slave trafficker. Razzid Wearat was touted to be the most vile villain in the series yet, but I found him to be one of the tamest. Other villains easily outdo him in terms of evilness. Their minions aren't much better, either just as cruel as their masters, dumb and bumbling, or planning to overthrow the boss so they can take over. The noticeable vermin are the ones who fell out of these norms. Gliv is considered memorable because she was the first vermin character to say outright that she loved someone. The Marlfoxes were great villains because their main battle was with each other, not the woodlanders, each one scrambling for the power. Notably, in Marlfox, the water rats they ruled over instantly gave up their warring ways to live peaceably on their island. Most vermin groups in the Redwall books are forced to become peaceful, honest beasts. Even though the water rats were forced to discard their weapons, they did so quite happily. What was interesting about Riggu Felis and Pitru was not their evil deeds and war with the otterclans, it was their antagonistic relationship with each other. Vilaya and Zwilt were at their best when they were challenging each other, not Redwall.
Onto individual vermin, they are the ones that smashed the rigid, set stereotypes Jacques set for species. Romsca the ferret corsair is one of the most popular characters in the whole series for good reason: she is probably the most developed character Jacques ever created and he did a damn good job with her. She started out with personality and Jacques put a lot of effort in her transformation from ruthless pirate to a beast who learned to truly care about another being, a woodlander, and sincerely protect him and do everything in her power to help him. Blaggut the searat learned that he could be something better and stood up to his captain not out of a desire for power, but for justice and to do the right thing.
If the characters in Redwall had half the characterization characters like Romsca and Mariel, it would reach new heights.
Redwall relies a lot, definitely too much, on stereotypes for its characters. The most obvious one that people have brought up often is that vermin are evil by default and woodlanders are good by default. The phrase "the only good vermin is a dead one" comes up a few times and the Redwall series, to my memory, has only directly addressed this prejudice once: by Mara the badger and it was turned on her head when she was the one being portrayed as foolish. If you look at the grey characters section of the Redwall wiki, you will find characters who did nothing but good things like Gingervere and his descendant, Squire Julian, yet are listed as grey just because they are vermin species. Julian in particular was one hundred percent good: he was a vegetarian and never caused trouble, yet he gets categorized as grey just because he's a cat? Then there are characters like Blodd Apis, who tried to kill others just for traveling on her lands, then, failing at that, drugged them and tried to murder them when they were out, or Triggut Frap who was insane, but undeniably cruel, enslaving children to try to force them to do his bidding, and yet they are listed as grey just because they are hedgehogs and hedgehogs are by default, good. Tugga Bluster was one step away from being a vermin leader: he even ordered the Guosim to attack Redwall's inhabitants. Had any of those characters been rats or stoats or foxes, they would land in the villains section no question about it.
Morality aside, there are also other stereotypes: does every non-commanding officer hare HAVE to be an overdramatic glutton? When Buckler Kordyne and Martha are considered unusual because they are neither of those things, (and Buck is considered "not like the other hares" because he doesn't speak in their incredibly English dialects) there's something wrong. Axtel Sturnclaw is considered different for being a warrior mole and moles just aren't warriors. It's not just qualities that certain races have affinities for: I can accept that hares in general have big appetites, but when it's every hare and when a big deal is made out of a character not fitting their species mold exactly, that is what I have an issue with.
So what do I like? To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what it is. The quality of the writing is high, though. I gladly suffered each of the books' repetitive plots, one dimensional characters, and unfortunate implications because Jacques knows how to make these things exciting. I'm not even sure how he does it. Another thing is, like I said earlier, the choices for animal fiction stories are extremely slim.
Despite my grievances, it was a fun ride, Redwall. Sad that this is the end.
Animal fiction is my favorite book genre, and as such, my choices are extremely limited. The Redwall series is probably the most famous series of animal fiction. Warrior Cats may have a gigantic following, but the Warriors series' fandom is almost completely online: you'll find the books in the "Popular Series" of the children's section, but talk to people in real life and most of them will have never even heard of it.
I picked up the first Redwall book, aptly named Redwall from my local library, where they were selling it for fifty cents. I loved it. They had Mossflower too, so a few weeks later, I went and bought that too. I have borrowed most of the series from the library except for the few that I have bought due to being on sale for cheap.
I still wish there was confirmation on just how big the characters in the series are. The books have suggested everything from normal animal sizes to human height. My personal theory is that they're larger than normal animals, but still quite small, as in Rakkety Tam, the titular Rakkety Tam and Sister Armel were able to run along the branches of trees to escape their enemies.
If you're looking for creativity and a variety of stories, Redwall is not for you. There are twenty-two books in the series, but the vast majority of them have one of the following plots:
- An enemy force attacks Redwall Abbey in hopes of conquering it.
- Someone or a small group of characters leave Redwall on a dangerous journey while the remaining population solves riddles and does a little exploring of Mossflower Country.
- There is a vermin tyrant that must be ousted.
- Someone or a small group of travelers must travel to Redwall/Salamandastrom to warn the abbey of danger/defend the abbey from vermin/become a Badger Lord/join the Long Patrol.
That's twenty-two books where most of them follow one of the four above plots. The world of Redwall is not very developed. Only Mossflower and Salamandastrom has been fleshed out, pretty much every other location is vague in location and mentioned only once in the book they're featured in. Still, even with its limited geography, technology, etc., there's still room for a wide variety of stories and I am very disappointed that Jacques fell back on one of the above four for most of the books. Why couldn't we get a book about, say, an abbot trying to choose a successor and struggling with whether he's making the right choice or how Salamandastrom and its ever hungry hare soldiers dealing with a famine? How about trying to negotiate a peace treaty against two tribes who aren't necessarily evil, but don't get along? There's lots of story potential that doesn't have to involve taking down a vermin villain. I wish Eulalia! had been more about Gorath trying to control the Bloodwrath instead of it getting pushed to sideplot status.
This would not be such a problem if the characters made up for it, but Redwall has very few memorable characters at all. Most of the characters are generic and literally interchangeable with each other. If you look them up on the Redwall Wiki you'll find most of them have extremely short entries despite being the main characters in their books. (I have seen many people claim that Triss is a mary sue, but how can she be a mary sue when she is just like every other hero in the series? The only notable thing about her is she is the first official female chosen bearer of the Sword of Martin.) At most, they may have one or two quirks that set them apart, but are on the whole, the same as the others. Someone described the books as having "the exact same characters, just with different names" and I can't disagree with that. It's very telling that I can't, off the top of my head, remember the names of the protagonists for most of the books because they are that generic. The ones I do remember are either the ones the series won't let you forget about (Martin and Matthias) or the ones that actually do stick out noticeably from the rest (Mariel, Gonff, Deyna/Tagg, Tiria, Gorath, Mara, and Veil for example).
The villains are also mostly the same: cruel, heartless, willing to kill anyone and anything, including their own beasts, to get what they want. The main things that separate them are their occupations, such as corsair, tyrant, or slave trafficker. Razzid Wearat was touted to be the most vile villain in the series yet, but I found him to be one of the tamest. Other villains easily outdo him in terms of evilness. Their minions aren't much better, either just as cruel as their masters, dumb and bumbling, or planning to overthrow the boss so they can take over. The noticeable vermin are the ones who fell out of these norms. Gliv is considered memorable because she was the first vermin character to say outright that she loved someone. The Marlfoxes were great villains because their main battle was with each other, not the woodlanders, each one scrambling for the power. Notably, in Marlfox, the water rats they ruled over instantly gave up their warring ways to live peaceably on their island. Most vermin groups in the Redwall books are forced to become peaceful, honest beasts. Even though the water rats were forced to discard their weapons, they did so quite happily. What was interesting about Riggu Felis and Pitru was not their evil deeds and war with the otterclans, it was their antagonistic relationship with each other. Vilaya and Zwilt were at their best when they were challenging each other, not Redwall.
Onto individual vermin, they are the ones that smashed the rigid, set stereotypes Jacques set for species. Romsca the ferret corsair is one of the most popular characters in the whole series for good reason: she is probably the most developed character Jacques ever created and he did a damn good job with her. She started out with personality and Jacques put a lot of effort in her transformation from ruthless pirate to a beast who learned to truly care about another being, a woodlander, and sincerely protect him and do everything in her power to help him. Blaggut the searat learned that he could be something better and stood up to his captain not out of a desire for power, but for justice and to do the right thing.
If the characters in Redwall had half the characterization characters like Romsca and Mariel, it would reach new heights.
Redwall relies a lot, definitely too much, on stereotypes for its characters. The most obvious one that people have brought up often is that vermin are evil by default and woodlanders are good by default. The phrase "the only good vermin is a dead one" comes up a few times and the Redwall series, to my memory, has only directly addressed this prejudice once: by Mara the badger and it was turned on her head when she was the one being portrayed as foolish. If you look at the grey characters section of the Redwall wiki, you will find characters who did nothing but good things like Gingervere and his descendant, Squire Julian, yet are listed as grey just because they are vermin species. Julian in particular was one hundred percent good: he was a vegetarian and never caused trouble, yet he gets categorized as grey just because he's a cat? Then there are characters like Blodd Apis, who tried to kill others just for traveling on her lands, then, failing at that, drugged them and tried to murder them when they were out, or Triggut Frap who was insane, but undeniably cruel, enslaving children to try to force them to do his bidding, and yet they are listed as grey just because they are hedgehogs and hedgehogs are by default, good. Tugga Bluster was one step away from being a vermin leader: he even ordered the Guosim to attack Redwall's inhabitants. Had any of those characters been rats or stoats or foxes, they would land in the villains section no question about it.
Morality aside, there are also other stereotypes: does every non-commanding officer hare HAVE to be an overdramatic glutton? When Buckler Kordyne and Martha are considered unusual because they are neither of those things, (and Buck is considered "not like the other hares" because he doesn't speak in their incredibly English dialects) there's something wrong. Axtel Sturnclaw is considered different for being a warrior mole and moles just aren't warriors. It's not just qualities that certain races have affinities for: I can accept that hares in general have big appetites, but when it's every hare and when a big deal is made out of a character not fitting their species mold exactly, that is what I have an issue with.
So what do I like? To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what it is. The quality of the writing is high, though. I gladly suffered each of the books' repetitive plots, one dimensional characters, and unfortunate implications because Jacques knows how to make these things exciting. I'm not even sure how he does it. Another thing is, like I said earlier, the choices for animal fiction stories are extremely slim.
Despite my grievances, it was a fun ride, Redwall. Sad that this is the end.