If you've read one Redwall book then you've read them all, which if you enjoy them isn't a terrible thing. It has all the same charm and adventure as the other books and tells newish stories while circling around all the previous stories as well. It has it's merits and it's drawbacks but is overall enjoyable.

The hardest part about these books to read is that the writer insists on a strange speech pattern for basically every species and will write it out phonetically. It's like it's written in another language at times and it slows the reading down to figure out what the characters are saying. Like this quote "burrhoo! Ee wasper stungen oi." It's like every character is some english accent jar jar binks. It's not enough that he writes out thickly accented words but he invents mispronunciations for the words and then writes them in a grammatically incorrect way. It's exhausting to read and after 5 books it's driving me crazy. Before it was just the moles who spoke like this and the sparrows had their own annoying speech but in this one it seems like just about every character talks like this. I actually forgot what one of the main characters names were because the other main character mispronounces it everytime.

You want to convey that these characters are speaking in an accent then tell us what their accent is and the reader can imagine it, we know what an english or scottish accent sounds like just please write the story in plain proper english so I can actually read it. Remember too these books are written for kids... famished is already a big enough word for the age demographic without them also needing to figure out that "famishered" is just an intentionally mispronounced version of the word famished.

Feasts, battles, long journeys, violence and joy it's all here.

One of my all time favorite tales from Redwall. I love all the characters, especially the Long Patrol hares and the way it all comes together in the end made me very happy.

This was my favorite of the Redwall series, because I'm all about the fighting hares who speak in British accents. And I loved the badgers. Despite the ridiculous factor of these books - just reading the words "Urthstripe, Badger Lord of Fire Mountain" made me laugh - they are awesome. Someday I will probably reread up until The Pearls of Lutra (was there even a series after Pearls of Lutra?).

This is a story full of adventure, camaraderie, cute fluffy creatures and significant character deaths. The cutesy 'children book' illustrations topping each chapter heading are massively offset by the beheadings, impalements and other violent deaths found in the text. This is chock-full of likable characters with rambunctious attitudes, true villains to boo and hiss at and so many descriptions of mouth-watering food. When they're not adventuring or killing each other, these critters spend the rest of their time eating. As with all the Redwall books, there's a richness to this world where every species has its own distinctive voice and strength.
The story is the most complex and fulfilling out of the five I have read (reading in publication order) featuring: The Dryditch Fever and the quest to go and retrieve the remedy; The theft of Martin the Warrior's sword and the quest to go and bring it back; The siege of Salamandastron.
There was so much packed into this story with its multiple threads that gradually saw all the (surviving) heroes and villains bring about a satisfying conclusion.
The highs are exhilarating worthy of punching the air, and the lows very nearly brought me to tears on one occasion.
My only niggle is of the series as a whole: The scale. I know it shouldn't be important but I have a tremendous trouble fathoming how big all these creatures are in regards to their environment and each other. In one scene boats built by and for shews carry, as well as two tribes of shrews, three badgers (big and strong enough to roll boulders about), a squirrel, a mole, and a hare - all dwarfed by an immense water serpent (okay, I'll can justify a giant serpent as it is a mainstay of fantasy). In another, an otter meets a great eagle whose legs are the same size as the otter's body. Yet the whole lot (apart from the serpent) sit round the same table for a feast.

4/5 This was the last of the Redwall novels I read when I was younger. I’ve been trying to read one or two of them a year to finally finish reading the series. Salamandastron is the 5th book in the series of 22 total. They’re easy reading and stylistically very similar of each other. I think I enjoyed this one a bit more than the last in part due to the larger cast of characters and better protagonist in Ferahgo the Assassin and his son Glitch. I think Mariel was a much better hero than Samkin who was the hero this time around but the Pirate Lord from Mariel of Redwall was pretty boring villain compared to the the rest. Ferahgo is up there with Cluny the Scourge or Slagar the Slaver.

The series is fun but a bit repetitive but sometimes that’s just what I’m looking for. Not all fantasy tales need to be over deep or convoluted.

This book has an ad line on the cover that reads
"In the tradition of Watership Down"
My dudes, I have read Watership Down and
at no time do the rabbits put on armor and
battle to defend a fortress.
Are all the characters woodland creatures?
yes
But that is where the similarities end.

Where was I? Oh, yes.
Book good, series good. If you like good
versus evil in a medieval setting. Read these books.

I've got two primary thoughts after finishing Salamandastron:

1. I found this to be the best book in the series since the initial entry.

2. I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because there are soooooo many songs. I don't know if it's an exaggeration to say that at least 5% of this book is characters singing songs. Authors putting songs in books, comics, etc...is one of my biggest pet peeves. They never work and are almost always bad. Just write "They sang songs as they rowed" instead of writing a song that's a full page of dull text. I mostly just skip them any time they come up in a book at this point in my life. RIP to Brian Jacques but I'll be damned if the man ever met a moment he didn't think could be improved by having woodland creatures sing about it. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. I hope you'll sign my petition requesting fantasy authors stop writing songs in their books.

It is a good book if you skip all the singing.

Every couple of years or so, nostalgia calls me back to Mossflower Wood and the world of Redwall. Unfortunately, each trip has seen diminishing returns. The characters all feel the same. The plots are completely interchangeable. There’s a weird dose of animal racism that gets harder and harder to ignore. Some of the quirks that permeate all of the novels feel even harder to overlook here. How big are these animals in relation to one another and the world? Fish are massive, but a falcon can sit on an otter’s shoulder. Also, the dialects are beyond overdone. Molespeak used to be cute, but here every species has their own version of assorted British accents. It becomes cheesy and tiresome.

(I finished this a month ago and should have reviewed it back then, but I was more interested in diving into my next book than writing a review.)

Salamandastron follows multiple groups of characters whose paths eventually converge. The primary storyline starts at Salamandastron. Ferahgo, a blue-eyed assassin weasel, has set his sights on that place and is convinced that there is great treasure to be found there. He knows it’ll all belong to him if he and his band can manage to defeat Urthstripe, the great badger Lord, and his skilled warrior hares. Urthstripe, meanwhile, is distracted by family problems: Mara, his adopted daughter, has been growing increasingly rebellious and restless.

The secondary storyline starts at Redwall Abbey. Everything there is good food and celebrations, with occasional light punishments for scamps like Samkim the squirrel and his best friend Arula the molemaid, until a couple stoats accidentally do something horrible. Suddenly Samkim finds himself suspected of killing someone. As if that wasn’t bad enough, many of Redwall Abbey’s residents then fall ill with the dreaded Dryditch Fever.

This is the first Redwall book I’ve ever read. I had planned to start with Redwall, the very first book in the series, but my copy was used and fell apart in my hands when I opened it up. After a little searching online, I determined that I should be able to start with Salamandastron, the one other Redwall book I owned, without becoming too confused.

Salamandastron was given to me by a friend back when I was, I think, in middle school. If I had read it back then, I might have liked it more. Despite its copious amounts of (not explicitly described) violence and death, Salamandastron definitely read like it was meant for a younger audience - I’m guessing either the high end of the Middle Grade age range or the low end of the Young Adult.

Then again, who knows? Maybe the various accents in Salamandastron would have annoyed Younger Me too. The moles were definitely the worst, although the falcons and eagle occasionally gave me trouble too. Here’s an example that made me laugh bitterly - a mole saying he had trouble understanding an eagle:

n  

“‘Och, these vittles are braw eatin’, Dumble. Ha’ ye nae mair o’ these wee veggible pasties the guid hedgepig lady made?’

Droony squinched his eyes until they nearly disappeared into his small velvety face. ‘Bohurr, you’m heagle do be a-talken funny loik. Oi carn’t unnerstan’ a wurd ‘ee be sayen, Dumble.’” (290)

n

Oh really. And how do you think I felt every time one of the moles opened their mouths? There were times I just gave up and skimmed certain characters’ dialogue. Why did Samkim’s best friend have to be a mole? ::sob::

I can totally see younger readers being drawn in by the anthropomorphized animals and action scenes. And food descriptions! This book was chock full of delicious-sounding food. Unfortunately, sometimes all that food and eating detracted from the story. For example, at one point Mara’s friend Pikkle took part in an eating contest. This was after he and Mara had nearly been eaten by carnivorous toads. Not to mention, Mara and Pikkle should still have been worried sick about what Ferahgo and his band might be doing to their friends and family back at Salamandastron. But no, figuring out who could eat the most hot spiced apple pudding was suddenly the most important thing.

This was part of the reason why the book read so young: serious stuff happened, but it didn’t seem to have as much emotional impact as it should. Several good characters died! At least one of them senselessly! And one villain’s fate was saved from being gruesome only because most of it happened off-page and none of it was described in detail. If the other Redwall books have body counts similar to this one, I don’t think it’d be too out of line to say that Brian Jacques is the George R.R. Martin of Middle Grade fantasy.

But, again, those deaths didn’t have much emotional impact. Beloved friends and family died, and characters moved on within a page or two and were soon back to happily gorging themselves on delicious festival foods.

Meh. I had hoped to fall in love with this series, but Salamandastron has left me with no desire to try more.

Additional Comments:

I couldn’t figure out how to fit it into the body of my review, but I wanted to mention it anyway: I have never seen so many characters practice such terrible weapons safety in a single book. Samkim liked to shoot arrows wherever, just for fun, and all the adults around him did was ground him and then worry they were being too harsh. And one character, an adult who should have known better, straight up stabbed himself (not fatally, but still) because he’d been playing around with a sword like it was a toy.

Rating Note:

I gave this 1.5 stars on LibraryThing and Booklikes and rounded down to 1 star for Goodreads because it just didn't interest me enough for 2 stars to be appropriate.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

So far in my reading of the Redwall novels, the character relationships in "Salamandastron" are my favorite. I found all the Klitch/Ferahgo and Mara/Urthstripe dialogue and drama to be refreshing in what I still felt was a solid Redwall installment. However, my main hang-up with "Salamandastron" is the same I have with "Mattimeo", which is I found there to be one too many storylines to deal with. Just as I felt the General Ironbeak stuff didn't seem to matter, the journey of Thrugg and Dimble to find the Flowers of Icetor, although fun, feels irrelevant given the "interwoven-ness" of the other three storylines. I think "Salamandastron" could have worked just as well, if not, better if the focus was kept on Salamandastron and the sword of Martin. Anyway, still a strong novel in the Redwall saga, and I am again looking forward to the next!

Like with other Redwall books, not first time reading but first time reading aloud to daughter. Which, once again, A+++ super recommend. I thought this was a really strong entry, with Ferahgo and his son Klitch (don’t ever talk to me or my son again!) being compellingly evil and duplicitous antagonists. The concept of the illness as the subplot that (literally) plagues Redwall was also compelling, with Dumble being a lot of fun. It was also nice having the warrior be a squirell this time instead of a mouse. Plus the usual good stuff in reading Redwall aloud - fun accents of the hares and moles and, in this case, of the 'braw' Scottish eagles and falcons. Not to mention all the delicious food descriptions etc. This one also contained a bunch of songs, which were fun to try and create a tune on the fly for and sing.

Even though it follows most of the common things in a Redwall book, I think this was maybe one of my favourites so far. Good stuff.

This fifth installment in the Redwall series takes things up a notch, in my opinion. We have half a dozen different plot lines, which are all interesting and all fairly fast-paced. I found myself easily invested in all of the different stories, as well as all of the many main characters. And when these stories began to finally all tie together, I found it immensely satisfying. There’s a lot of action here, and some major character death, so young readers should be prepared going in. I still love this series. It makes me think of classic fantasy like Wheel of Time or similar series, but for children and featuring anthropomorphic animals. While not perfect, it’s a wonderful series that is holding up well to rereading as an adult. And, as always, the food descriptions were absolutely incredible. Don’t read these books while hungry!