Exceptional writing by Brian Jacques, he brings these characters to life and gives them an epic story of daring adventures that bring you along for the ride of your life. The journey is only the beginning of the tale of the Legendary Warrior Martin’s search for information about his personal past and that of his family who he barely remembers.

Somehow, I managed not to review this when I read it, but it was highly fine and of excellent quality and all that.

In a word: disappointing.

I was actually looking forward to the Legend of Luke because it involved Martin and his fabled father. And indeed, the opening of the book was a breath of fresh air. I liked the linear nature as opposed to the back and forth the books usually feature.

Alas, as soon as the book reached the main story, the one about Luke, it became the same predictable formula of all the other books, though compressed to fit in the midsection of the book. The parts with Martin, Gonff and gang seem to only serve as a very long prologue and epilogue with no meaningful story or character development to speak of. Worse, the old mice telling the story in the first place reveal the climax before they even begin to tell the story!

I won't talk about the fact that no one can put together a coherent sentence in this world (now even the good guys talk like pirates! "Yore?" Seriously?). What I do find disturbing, though, is that with each passing book the good guys become more indistinguishable from the bad guys. I'm not sure which is worse; Martin and company *laughing* as a child is *beaten* or Luke and his tribe slaughtering a group of sea rogues to the last to steal their ship, not to mention some of the brutal and grotesque slaughter featured near the end of the book.

Unless you're fond of continuity bending, easily skipable. It adds nothing to the series.

This is my favorite of all the Redwall books. Anyone who says that this series is just for kids needs to read this story.

Why This Book

The Legend of Luke is one of my favorite Redwall books, and I have read most of them. Unlike other Redwall books this one has a story within a story. Luke's story. And this inner story is completely different from any other Redwall book I have read, in a good way. I highly recommend the Legend of Luke.

Surprising. I knew the actual story of Luke was amazing, but I thought that the framing story with the first two books was boring. It's absolutely not. Basically, it's a series of interconnected short stories, following Martin and friends as they travel to Martin's old home. The book deosn't feel disjointed or dull, a pretty impressive feat, and the main story with Luke is some of the best stuff we've ever gotten from the Redwall series. It still doesn't quite rank with the best few in the series, but it's still a great time. 8/10

This book is a welcome departure from Jacques, who has typically written in an almost identical manner for his entire Redwall series. The main part of the book (part 2) focuses on Martin's father, Luke, and his adventure of revenge for himself and his tribe. It's surprisingly grim, and displays many tribulations I wouldn't expect Jacques to portray in a children's series. It also explains why Martin might have hinted-at anger issues and possible repressed abandonment troubles. It even includes a memorable villain and ship, which is a major upgrade from the past series of villains who don't end up having a major part to play, in my opinion.

Legend of Luke is not without its downfalls. The first and last parts of the book are seriously disjointed from the middle. The first part has martin and his crew traveling through serious peril just to find out Martin's past, with people dying or risking death along the way. One might argue that losing one's friends would not be an acceptable risk for a history lesson. And it also brings up the question how anyone survives in Mossflower woods at all with the number of evil creatures that live in it. Worse, by the time you finish with Luke's story, you're 3/4's of the way through the book, and the slog they had gone through to find out about Luke is all but a distant memory, which brings me to part three.

The last part of the book is awkward, because the section on Luke really wraps things up, and its followed by Martin also wrapping up his emotions and sailing away. You really get the feeling that he should have simply shown back up at Redwall and greeted everyone as a wiser, more grounded mouse. Instead, you go on a strange, backward adventure through all the areas they've already been. Now, that's not to say it didn't have its highlights - mounting their ship on wheels to create a wind-powered hot rod, being one of them - but it still felt strange. It's like if LotR made you follow Frodo and Sam all the way back from the volcano to the shire again. Yes, there are still dangers, obviously, but isn't the story over? And because part 1 and 3 were separated by the comparatively large part 2, you find yourself separated from the characters, and I at least struggled to remember who some of them were.

Other than that, the book could almost be classified as a musical, as it has 30ish songs/poems throughout it - almost as many as it has chapters - which does cheapen that aspect of his books a bit. And it doesn't really dive into what happened to the remains of Luke's tribe, or go into the detailed construction of Redwall Abbey (Having Martin show up after you follow everyone around Redwall, doing entertaining building adventures would have been a much stronger part 3 to the book than Martin's return journey). That being said, I enjoyed Luke's story so much, it really drove the book home from me, and shows that (perhaps) Jacques may have grown a bit in his writing.

The building of Redwall Abbey makes for a snug narrative frame around the sandwich-filler flashback that makes up the bulk of the story. However, this is a prequel that leans more toward ret-conning Martin's origins rather than expanding upon them. The result, while a welcome change from the standard Redwall formula, feels ultimately piecemeal with a mostly padded out plotline. It's still an entertaining yarn but it would've worked better as a short novella.

Well, here's a cold, grim and problematic tale for Redwall fans.

First the good points:

1-A few peaceful Redwall moments in which gentle anthropomorphic animals meet for various meals and occasions without thinking of killing one another. (Unlike the other novels I've read, however, in this one those moments are conspicuously rare.)

2-I liked the character of Folgrim, the abused and mentally damaged otter warrior, because he was rescued from his misery by the redemptive medium of friendship, and that's always worth talking about.

3) A pleasant prequelian glimpse of Redwall Abbey in the making.

Now for the not-so-good:

This is the kind of novel that happens when a writer is so popular and well-established that he knows whatever he writes will be accepted and published. In other words, it's about as self-indulgent a work as I've ever seen. Yes, there are congenial Jacques-typical moments, but not nearly enough to justify these 340 pages. I'm prepared to swear as a writer that the book could have been cut by a hundred pages and lost nothing of value. In fact, by the time I finally finished it was feeling to me more like 500! I found myself longing for the charming, ingenious simplicity of Kenneth Graeme's “Wind in the Willows."

The story boils down to a revenge scenario, featuring Luke, father of Martin the great Redwall warrior hero. Sure, you could call it a justice-seeker’s tale as well, but to me revenge seems to rise to the fore.
Jacques starts with a number of loose ends carried over from prior stores, then creates a whole raft of new ones within the tale itself, including full subplots, making most of the work a meandery mess. I have a great memory, but I’m not sure how many times I lost track of whatbeast was whichbeast.

As usual the story is replete with Jacques’ ditties, and many of those I've read in the past have been fun or pleasantly nostalgic. Unfortunately, in “Luke” the author clearly thinks himself far more clever as a creator of verse than he actually was, and he goes absolutely overboard with fluff and filler in rhyme. Another problem that arises is that apparently he thought his story to be so unrelentingly grim—with reason— that he felt obliged to constantly break up the action with misguided ‘comic relief.’ And the two characters he uses for this purpose are Beauclair the hare and Chugger the ‘Dibbun’ squirrel, both of whom are downright obnoxious. I've almost always found the stories’ hare characters to be cringily over the top (wot, wot), but here Mr. Jacques introduces in Beau a creature so unbelievably annoying that I wanted to reach through the page and throttle him myself, then blame it on the villains. Wee Chugger, meanwhile, plays an important part in the rehabilitation of the aforementioned Folgrim, yet elsewhere he is an egregious example of glorified bad behavior. Over, and over, and over.

Suffice it to say that this is a long, long ways from being a Redwall favorite for me.

SO GOOD!!!!!

See Ruchita and Anne's reviews.

You can tell the good guys from the baddies by their names.
Martin goes North in search of his father, and his history, and has adventures, as usual. Suitable for YA, as overly simplistic, (not in language) but readable.

Father Luke tells Martin the mouse, "The first thing warriors must learn is discipline . . . Protect those weaker than yourself . . . always use the sword to stand for good and right, never do a thing you would be ashamed of and never let your heart rule your mind".

Beau, the rabbit, cooks: cheese and onion turnovers. . . in a flaky pastry, shrimp and mushroom bake in a parsley & turnip sauce. Dessert is a pear and plum pudding.

Mr. Jacques rhapsodizes:

". . . Fields of ripened grain and corn, swaying to a murm'ring breeze,
Shaking off the dew of dawn, when the eye sees signs like these,
Summer's long hot days are ended, harvest moons o'er stream and mere,
Tell the tale, as 'twas intended, autumn's peaceful dream is here."

". . . summer's last evening. Streaked to the west with slim dark cloud tails, the sunset was awesome. In the final moments the skies turned deep scarlet on the horizon, ranging up through crimson and rose to a delicate pink. Above this faded to a broad back of buttery amber with soft dark blue pierced by the faint twinkle of early stars." MMmm. Luscious. I can see it, the calmness and beauty. .

There are such snippets throughout, but be aware of Ruchita's review.

3.5 - 4 Stars

The Legend of Luke is the twelfth book in the epic Redwall Series by Brian Jacques. This series is aimed at Middle-grade aged/YA readers, but I am waaaay older than that and still enjoyed the adventure.
-with an all-ANIMAL cast (woodland animals)
-Fantasy
-Action
-Adventure
-Warriors
-Drama
-Danger
-Quest
-Journey of discovery/Courage/Strength
-Emotion
-Enchanting