A nice addition to the Redwall mythology. I liked that Samkin got another appearance and if you're a fan of the Hares from Salamandastron, this is the entry for you! (Warning, their appetites will rub off on you and you will want ALL the food.)

It did feel a bit fractured though. Personally, I would have liked it if the "dry-ditch fever" and shrew arcs were in a separate book so that Samkin, Mara, Salamandastron, and the assassin's horde could have gotten a bit more focus. It was hard to get invested in the different arcs when they were left alone for such long periods of time.

Really enjoyed this one. Having read the reviews a lot of the people who were unsatisfied with Salamandastron seemed to share one main point of contention and that was the large amount of pov characters throughout the book. I think there were around 6 at most before characters joined each other in the progress of the book. I found this to be a great way of getting a full scope of the adventure, I loved thrugg the otters little side quest to collect the mountain flowers and found that these individual adventures helped divide up the story until the time was right for them to all converge together. A lot of the reviewers also seem to hate the myriad of different accents used by the various animal species, the mole dialect being the primary cause of annoyance. For me these accents and mannerisms are what makes the redwall books so great, it helps strengthen the characters in my imagination. For those people who hate the way Jacques always writes detailed food scenes then your definitely reading the wrong books as this is a major part of what makes redwall so great. Salamandastron itself was a great book and I'm looking forward to reading more of the same.

Kinda different vibe compared to the previous books but not in a bad way. One of the protagonist side characters has a bally annoying tic in their speech which made me sinfully wish they would die first. And everytime the well-known Badger war cry comes along, I hear yodeling in my head and I hate myself for it as I chuckle at the thought. Imagine. Fearsome bearish badgers growling and grunting threats at their sworn enemy in a stand-off on the premise of war. Then they start yodeling. I'd be beaten dead from laughter.

I'm getting tired of these books but due to my rules, I have to finish all of them. This is a story of one of the badgers, her overpowering "father," and a weasel that wants to take over the holy mountain. Out of the books read in the series thus far, this one has FAR too many characters and story lines going on at the same time to make it readable. If you're not reading in one sitting, you're trying to remember who the random mouse is that's on another mountain looking for flowers. It's terribly confusing. It's not the worst story in the world, to be sure, but the many story lines makes it quite challenging.

I’m beyond thrilled to finally be stepping back into this mystical animal run world of moss flower, and while I always adore tales of redwall itself, I loved the different aspect that was mostly following the badger people under the mount of Salamandastron, which just made the whole tale more of a war saga than anything else. That and the creative threat and problem actually facing the redwallers this time around not necessarily being evil rodent but something far more deadly… disease. 4.25/5

An excellent story full of heroes, villains, adventure, badgers, Long Patrol hares and that lovely idyll of Redwall Abbey. Brian Jacques writing is perfect. As always in a Redwall book there is a fantastic amount of food description which makes you hungry while reading!

Good grief.

Jacques threw everything and the kitchen sink into this one, huh? Mild spoilers ahead, but in general... What might have felt bloated if attempted a few books earlier worked surprisingly well because of how the third act brought together every storyline.

Seriously.

Roll call for things from this book- We got a whole new cast of heroes and villains got introduced, we saw Redwallers try to coexist with vermin for the first time, the Sword of Martin got stolen, We lived in Salamandastron for the first time, we got a full-blown siege of Salamandastron, we got Marla’s journey, we got to see the toads in the swamps again, there were MULTIPLE Guossom tribes, we got ghost island, WE GOT A PLAGUE!?, there was Thrugg and Dumble’s wild adventure, a shadow trope, we slew the deepcoiler, Ferahgo and his son matched wits with Urthstripe, EAGLE!, and the final battle.

And yet somehow all these pieces were given the depth they needed to be impactful, if not outright successful, in contrast to the shallow feelings that I walked away from Mariel with. It's fun to contrast these two books against each other, to understand the power of consistency and follow-through on ideas.

In general, I’m really happy with this book. Want to dive deeper with me and my friends, about all this? Look out for Season 5 of the Books and Badgers podcast, streaming everywhere, and ONWARDS TO MARTIN!!!

Listen. I read a bunch of these as a kid and I LOVED them and I have very fond memories and with COVID and other life things reading has been really difficult for a very long time. So I've been reading this series and it's delightful and kind of like meeting an old friend as I slowly remember the stories. 12/10 would recommend rereading stuff you like if you're hating books like me right now.

I have run out of steam for the Redwall series.

1- The characters are new in every book now, and there is very little attention paid to where each book falls in the chronology of Redwall Abbey's development. The reader spends a lot of time wondering who each creature is related to, when this story happened, etc. with no answer.
2- Brian Jacques talks about food too damn much. If I read one more line about Foremole's deep-n-ever beetroot pie, buttercup cream or strawberry cordial, I am going to scream. Seriously, 25% of the book is menu and eating. AUGH!
3- Which makes other parts of the book anachronistic because they are all about woodland creatures killing each other, poisoning, stabbing lances through hearts, slicing throats, I mean seriously gory, violent stuff.
4- The accents are now pissing me off. The moles speak this kind of cockney that is so annoying and difficult to read I skim over all of it. The otters speak this pirate-type baloney, also skimmable. And the rabbits speak like I don't know what -- crazed British/Australian goofballs.

The plots are very good. There are always disasters to resolve (Dryditch disease) and bad guys to annihilate (Ferahgo the Assassin). And the clever plot twists and cliffhangers kept me curious and reading past the annoying elements.

However, between the food and the accents, I skimmed at least 50% of this book. Time to stop. The first 3 books in the Redwall series are great though.

In the prologue to this fifth novel of Redwall, Ferahgo the Assassin, a weasel, has killed the badger lord Urthound and his wife Urthrun, leaving their two babies, one striped and the other white, to die of starvation. But do they die? Chapter one opens after many long seasons. Ferahgo and his Corpsemakers have slowly moved northward and are determined to capture Salamandastron, ruled by the badger lord Urthstripe and protected by the hares of the Long Patrol. However, Urthstripe’s daughter Mara runs away with one of the hares named Pikkle Ffloger. Ferahgo’s son Klitch tricks the two, and they are almost captured by the horde, but they escape, only to be deceived by a lizard named Slinkee who leads them to a group of cannibal toads under King Glagweb. However, they are rescued by Log-a-Log and his shrews, and together they set out to find the Blackstone, symbol of leadership among the shrews, which is now in the possession of the white “ghost badger” who lives on a mysterious island in the middle of a large lake. Their plan is then to head for Salamandastron and help in the fight against Ferahgo.
Meanwhile, at Redwall, two deserters from Ferahgo’s army, Thura and Dingeye, are taken in, but after they accidentally kill Brother Hal they escape with the sword of Martin the Warrior, intending to return to Ferahgo. A young squirrel named Samkim and a molemaid named Arula set out after them. Shortly afterwards, however, the abbey is plagued with Dryditch Fever, so the otter Thrugg and his little friend Dumble, a dormouse babe, set off for the Mountains of the North, ruled over by the golden eagle Wild King McPhearsome, to find Icetor Flowers which are said to cure the fever. After Thura dies of Dryditch fever and Dingeye is killed by the fox Dethbrush, whom Ferahgo had sent out to find them, Samkim and Arula, along with another group of shrews under the leadership of Alfoh, chase after Dethbrush, who now has the sword and is trying to escape in a boat through the same lake where Mara, Pikkle, and Log-a-Log have gone searching for the Blackstone. Will Samkim and Arula recover the sword of Martin the Warrior? Will Mara and Pikkle get the Blackstone back for Log-a-Log? Will Thrugg and Dumble return fever cure in time to save Redwall? And what will happen in the battle for Salamandastron?
Some people may find the plot a little confusing, because the chapters go back and forth describing the activities of Urthstripe and Ferahgo at Salamandastron, of Mara and Pikkle on their journey as they look for the Blackstone, of Samkim and Arula in their search for the sword, of the Redwallers as they deal with the Dryditch Fever, and of Thrugg and Dumble seeking the Icetor Flowers. However, the story is told so well, in Jacques’ inimitable style, that this should not be too much of a problem for most readers. The “veiled curse du jour” of this particular Redwall book is “hellsteeth.” There are also a few common euphemisms and childish slang terms, such as gosh, darn, and “frogsbum.” Otherwise, it has the usual strong sense of good versus evil, with no lack of villains to overcome and a host of quaint characters, such as Furgle, Tubgutt, Nordo, Spriggat, and Rocangus, to work together in overcoming them—and a few surprises along the way. I especially liked the way that Mara eventually comes to understand the truth, even though in the end it is a little late to do anything about it. That happens in real life sometimes. I have never read a Redwall book that I did not thoroughly enjoy.

So, despite the fact that I usually don’t like the random, usually unrelated to the main plot Redwall Abbey stories, this one wasn’t too bad. While the fever was random and Thrugg and Dumble’s quest added even more viewpoints to the already viewpoint-heavy book (seriously, there’s six different major viewpoints in this book: Salamandastron, Ferahgo/Klitch, Mara, Samkim, Thrugg, and Redwall), the side plot was a welcome relief from the five other viewpoints going on. The Salamandastron viewpoint was probably the best, especially since it introduced a place that hasn’t really been visited for a very long amount of time before. Plus, Salamandastron is where the hares are, and I love me the hares.

Ferahgo was a decent villain, probably one of Redwall’s best in terms of cleverness/presence/power over others/sanity, although I grew tired of the antagonism between him and his son. For once I’d like to see a villain who actually loves his family; I’m not sure if Jacques has that in future books, but considering his archetype for villains, probably not. When I saw the movie Epic, I was so excited that the villain loved his son. It’s not something I see or read often, although maybe I’m just not reading the right books.

Is it just me, or are all the heroes (well, Samkim, Arula, Mara, and Pikkle) incredibly boring? I mean, Samkim and Arula are pretty much useless; all Samkim does is kill the Deepcoiler and that could easily have been done a different way. Samkim is worse than Dandin of Mariel of Redwall in terms of hero material. Mara’s the true hero of the four; she’s the one that does all the work and gets the most—scratch that, gets any–development. Her awful rebellious stage is annoying and cheesy, but at least she gets better.

Really, Redwall Abbey could have been completely cut out of the entire book and it would have been a better book. More focused, better characters, better development.

I absolutely hated how Samkim and Arula were never punished for their arrow-firing stunts. The elders were all, “They should probably be punished, but…they’re really quite good, we’re being too hard on them, we’re going to let them off and reward them instead.” When I did archery back in the day, I got in trouble just for bending down and picking up an arrow that had fallen close to another shooter. But in the discipline-less Redwall Abbey, rather than punish Samkim and Arula, Hollyberry lies, the elders say, “Oh, no, that punishment was too harsh! How terrible!” and Samkim and Arula say, “Suckers!” I think this is why I disliked Samkim all throughout the book, really.

As much I love this series, I have to admit that Jacques does a ton of retconning throughout. I’m pretty sure he just forgets characters and so either a.) gives the wrong name b.) changes their backstory or c.) completely changes their character. In this book, he calls Rufe Brush “Rufe Brushtail.”

Excellent book, great action, pretty sad at parts but also really fun.