Redwall

Since publishing my post titled Men and Guns, I've had a number of people ask me what on earth Redwall is.  Well, let me tell you, it is one of the best series I have ever read and probably the one I have read and re-read the most.  I read the first three books of the series way back when I was a second or third grader in elementary school and I have never looked back.  The picture above is of my book shelf with 20 of the 22 books of the series.  I do own all of them but I had the two missing ones with me at my apartment and have yet to unpack them.  But that is beside the point.  Redwall is a series that was written by the brilliant author Brian Jacques.  Sadly he passed away on February 5, 2011.  I cannot even begin to describe how heartbroken I was when I found out that one of my favorite authors had died and that the stories of Redwall were at an end.  He wrote the series starting with the first book, Redwall, published in 1986 all the way until his final book, The Rogue Crew, published posthumously in 2011.

The first thing you need to know is that the characters in the books are all human-like animals, meaning that nearly all of them are capable of speech, have human emotions, wear clothes of some sort, and generally walk on their hind feet.  In many ways, they are similar to the talking animals in the Chronicles of Narnia.  Within the books, a character's species generally determines if they will be good or evil.  Mice, otters, moles, hares, squirrels, hedgehogs, shrews, badgers, owls, and small birds are generally considered the noble species with very few exceptions.  Vermin include rats, foxes, weasels, ferrets, stoats, wildcats, ermine, sables, snakes, ravens, crows, magpies, and rooks.  Other species also appear in the novels but they are usually only in one book or take more of a background role.

The books primarily center around the goings on of Redwall Abbey, a red sandstone abbey, and the surrounding Mossflower Woods.  There are also numerous mentions and several stories centered around the mountain fortress of Salamandastron, home to the Badger Lords and the famous Long Patrol hares, the mountain's army.  There are many other places that are also mentioned but most are only featured in a single book.

Central to many of the books and the only character who is mentioned in every one of them is Martin the Warrior.  He is one of the founders of Redwall Abbey and its guiding spirit.  In the few books he appears in where he is alive, he is a force for good, incredibly strong and brave with the ability to form an army and lead them into battle.  Most often though he appears as a spirit, protecting his abbey by sending messages and warnings through dreams and occasionally appearing in full sight.  Also mentioned in nearly every book is Martin's sword, a deadly weapon of incredibly beauty that was forged by a Badger Lord from a star that fell to earth.

That's all just the foundation of Redwall, but what makes it come to life and what makes the series so fantastic, is its characters, its story.  I'm an emotional person.  I watch a sad movie and I'll cry or if its really happy, I might cry then as well.  I'm the same with books.  But, generally, once I've seen a movie once or twice, I don't cry again.  And with books, for the most part, I just cry the first time I read it.  But Redwall, oh man, those books, most of those books made me cry the first time I read them because invariably a character I got very attached to ended up dying.  To this day about half of those books can still make me cry, and I don't know if you can really tell in the picture, but most of those books are pretty battered both from the number of times I've read them and from how long I've owned them.

Redwall is defined by its characters, by their courage, their personality, their abilities, their journeys.  I've heard numerous people complain about how the books are very repetitive and predictable.  I disagree with that.  I suppose you could say that the general structure of the stories stays fairly similar:  bad guy appears, good guys generally have to go on quest of some kind to be able to defeat evil, bad guy thinks they're going to win and sometimes almost do, but good guys always triumph in the end.  Having the same general structure though doesn't make the book repetitive, in my opinion.  Yes, you know how the books are going to end, but you don't know how its going to get to that point.  You don't know the other challenges that are going to come up, you don't know how the characters will react, what other adventures they will have as they journey along.  There's so much that you can't predict, that isn't at all repetitive.

And so, if you have never read Redwall, here is a very brief introduction to it.  I could go into much more detail, but then I don't think I'd be able to stop.  And besides that, there's no way to describe the feelings these books invoke.  The way it feels setting off on another adventure, fighting alongside the hares of the Long Patrol, feasting with the woodlanders, joking with comrades, singing on the march.  There's nothing quite like it.  So if you decide to undertake this adventure, you won't regret it.  The doors of Redwall are always open for you.