Brian Jacques

Troy Howell

An anniversary edition of the epic fantasy offers an exciting combination of riddles, mysteries, and adventure filled with courageous and villainous characters, including Cluny the Scourge and Matthias, the humble mouse turned hero.

Redwall

Kirsten Simkiss

I remember reading these books as an elementary schooler and absolutely loving them. Granted, I think I started somewhere in the middle with these ones because the protagonists changed so often. With my nostalgia for the books, I remember specifically loving the riddles that the characters had to solve that came in the form of poems but I remembered very little of the books individually.

As an elementary school child reading this, I probably would have given it 4 to 5 stars. As an adult, I'd give it a 3. It was a little disappointing to find how much nostalgia for the series didn't hold up it's end of the bargain. Still, for my final verdict, I decided to have younger me and older me meet in the middle and I gave it 4 stars.

First I'll tell you the things I liked about the story. I still loved the riddle, although I have no idea how Martin the Warrior would've known that the heir to his sword would be named Matthias. I love that the characters are distinct. So many times in books where there's a war going on, it can be hard to keep track of which minor character is which. Not so with these books. I didn't mind the shifting of perspectives either. I think it balanced out the action on both sides and what was happening. It provided a nice level of suspense, though nothing too scary.

There were also a few things that I didn't care for. The plot, unfortunately, drags on and on. Much of the book is devoted to Matthias's story of hunting down this fabled sword to save the Abbey. Why will it save the Abbey is never really explained, but Matthias believes it and it rallies everyone around him to fight in the end. It's a long and arduous search, which leaves the rest of the story to Cluny's attempts to gain access to the Abbey. Three quarters of the book is literally that. The ending is also very odd. Though I don't doubt that Cornflower and Matthias would be a happy couple, there is nothing less romantic that being ordered by a dying abbot to get married and live in the revamped gatehouse. If you've read the epilogue for Harry Potter and you didn't like the kid's name, just wait until you see what these morons named their kid. Furthermore, the author doesn't give a flip about actual animal anatomy or biology. For instance, mice don't just have one baby like people do. Most small mammals have more than one baby in a litter. There were also countless times where I was confused as to how something would be anatomically possible. At one point, a cat and an owl are walking "wing in paw" like people might hold hands. The visual picture is absurd.

So, for this one, I would definitely recommend it to younger readers who enjoy fantasy and war, but I wouldn't offer this to anyone past the age of 12.

Redwall

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