I wish I could give this story two separate reviews--one for Veil's story, one for Sunflash's. Since I cannot, I have averaged the two ratings out to three stars and will review the two storylines separately.

Sunflash the Badger: 5 stars

When we first meet Sunflash, his name is Scumtripe. He has been captured and enslaved from infancy (or toddlerhood) by Swartt Sixclaw the Ferret. Sixclaw's treatment of the badger can probably be inferred by the name the ferret bestowed upon him: beatings, forced to wear a muzzle, no clothes even in winter, bad food, etc. Had this character been handled by any other author, he would have become pure angst fodder. In Jaques' hands, he becomes awesome.

Jaques doesn't spend too much time dwelling on Sunflash's time with Swartt. It's been a while since I've read the book, but I'm pretty sure Sunflash escapes in either his first or second scene. He and Scarlath, a kestrel he befriends, exact their revenge upon Swartt and his men, killing most of them and damaging Swartt's six-clawed paw permanently.

Sunflash wastes no time in reclaiming his identity. Scarlath decides he should be called Sunflash the Mace because of his golden stripe and his weapon of choice, and Sunflash goes with it. When I first read this book in middle school, I didn't know there was such a thing as Stockholm Syndrome; now, looking over the current YA selection, with its dark and heartbreaking stories of abuse, I'm glad Jaques chose not to introduce young readers to that terrifying bit of reality through Sunflash. There are true stories of Stockholm Syndrome, and fictional stories about that Syndrome do have their place, but I for one did not read the Redwall books to learn about child abuse. I read them for fun, and to escape from the trials of middle school. Jaques knew his audience and kept Sunflash a strong character.

I loved Sunflash and Scarlath from the moment I met them. Their friendship was deep and affecting, and I truly enjoyed every scene where they interacted with the mole family who took them in. When Sunflash discovered his destiny, I cheered. And when he reunited with his mother, I'm not ashamed to admit I cried a little.

I could have read two books about Sunflash.

Veil Sixclaw the Outcast: 1 star

Veil is the son of Swartt Sixclaw, who Swartt abandons as an infant following his mother's death. He is found by a young mousemaid named Bryony, who takes him into Redwall Abbey and raises him as a son.

This story had the potential to be the most morally complex Redwall book yet. Here we have an abandoned baby, who most goodbeasts are convinced will grow up to be evil, and his adopted mother is the only one willing to see the good in him. This could have been a beautiful story. It could have been about a little boy who grows up to do great things despite what is essentially a prophesy of doom on him. I was sincerely looking forward to watching Veil grow into a mighty ferret warrior, a beast every bit as clever as his father, who uses his cleverness for good. He and Swartt could have engaged in an epic battle of the wits, ending when Veil single-handedly defends Redwall Abbey against the vermin horde, all the while shouting "COME AT ME, BRO!" (or whatever the Redwall equivalent of that meme is).

You've probably gathered by this point that this is not what happens.

No, Veil grows up to be evil. He steals from the kitchens, bites his fellow dibbuns, pulls mean-spirited pranks on Redwallers he dislikes. Bryony refuses to believe her fellow Redwallers when they tell her what Veil does, and when faced with undeniable evidence, she makes excuses for him. "You don't understand...." or "If you were just a little nicer to him...." Needless to say, she is portrayed as extremely naive for believing in her adopted son.

I felt much rage at this.

Anyway, Veil finally fulfills the title of the book when he attempts to poison a fellow Redwaller and is caught (quite literally) red-handed. He is kicked out of Redwall as Bryony cries and the other Redwallers tell her they knew it all along. Like a good villain, Veil vows revenge.

Does he get a chance to redeem himself? Of course. After spending the majority of the book as a terrible piece of garbage, he finally sacrifices himself for Bryony. Rather than say, "I told you so! See? There was some good in him!" she essentially says, "Well....I know I raised him, and I loved him like a son, and hearing the rest of you tell me he was evil hurt me personally....but yeah, he was a terrible piece of crap. Horrible excuse for a goodbeast. We call them vermin for a reason. Should've let him die as an infant." I almost saw letters form above her head: CHARACTER: BRYONY! LEVEL UP! PLUS 50 MATURITY, PLUS 100 LEADERSHIP, PLUS 2,000,000,000 PARENTING SKILLS!

I nearly threw the book across the room. I only kept reading because I wanted to see what happened to Sunflash.

In conclusion: This may have been the only book by Brian Jaques I did not like. Props to him for throwing Sunflash in there; otherwise I wouldn't have liked this book at all.

A reread. One of my all time favorite Redwall books.

It's easy to see why this is the most divisive book in the Redwall series. It's a book of two very different halves. On the one hand you've got the Sunflash/Skarlath/Swartt plot which is excellent. Sunflash is oh so adorable, Swartt is a loathsome baddy and Skarlath is so wonderful and so very doomed that it makes re-reads quite painful. Salamandastron is my favourite Redwall'verse location (all the good stuff in this book begins with the letter 'S' for some reason) and all the hares are enchanting characters. There's also the sprinkling of Mossflower callbacks: Bat Mountpit! Wuddship Creek! That scene with Breeze and Starbuck from the end of the previous novel! It's just an effortlessly good read, although unbearably sad in parts.

And then there's the rest of it. Weirdly, the Redwall Abbey action doesn't kick in until almost half-way through the book and when it does, you really wish it hadn't. There's the usual cast of lovely, bumbling woodlanders with their meadowcream and their hotroot soup, and then there's Veil: the ferret outcast of the title. The whole point of the book is to examine what would happen if a vermin creature was raised by the Abbey to become good, would they succeed or would he revert to type? The results are just befuddling. You could argue that Veil only becomes bad because the rest of the Abbey expect it of him, and spend their time blaming him for everything that goes wrong to the point that he feels he may as well do bad things anyway. He also ends up sacrificing himself to save his former nursemaid Bryony. But then Bryony decides that despite this he was evil through and through because....that's just the way vermin are? What about Blaggut and Romsca and Grubbage, the characters Jacques wrote to prove that vermin don't always end up evil? We just gonna ignore those? How 'bout the fact that Veil's name was chosen because it was an anagram of 'evil' and 'vile'? WHO WOULD DO THAT? To a BABY? What did people expect from him? It doesn't help that Veil is written like a whiny, entitled little brat and Bryony becomes so passive and obsessed with him in the last few chapters I wanted to reach into the pages and slap her. Her reward for running after Veil and proving he's evil by letting him die for her (it doesn't make any more sense when you write it out, does it?) is to become Abbess. I wouldn't want an Abbess who refuses to believe in empirical evidence and occasionally drops everything to run after irritating young ferrets. Friar Bunfold was robbed of the job, ROBBED I TELLS YA! Anyway. The whole book feels like it should be leading up to an epic showdown between Veil and his father Swartt but....nah. It just sort of fizzles out when they finally meet up. No-one's gonna care about a whiny teenage ferret when there's badger lords and mystical fox seers and perilous hare warriors about the place.

If you leave the Redwall Abbey stuff aside, this is an excellent read. You can just ignore the title of the book and call it 'Sunflash is Awesome' instead because that's far more accurate. The publishers clearly thought so too, because half of the editions feature him and Skarlath instead of Veil on the cover. If you want father/son vermin dynamic you'd be better off reading Salamandastron and if you want vermin-rises-above-their-origins then you read The Bellmaker or Pearls of Lutra. Just try to forget that Jacques tried to do the whole thing in reverse a few books later with otter-born-into-vermin-horde story 'The Taggerung.' And that didn't have tragic badger/hawk dynamics to save it. Shudder.

This one felt very different from the other Redwall books. I was confused as to why it was about the outcast since the majority of the book actually revolved around a totally different character. However, it was a very bittersweet story and I enjoyed it much, and was brought to tears by the end.

I will be honest when I say that this book actually pissed me off when I read it. Mr. Jacques had a great opportunity here, to take one of his traditionally "evil" creatures and let him be a good guy. To break the conventions of his other stories and to do something different. And Veil does try, through most of the story, to be good. I could almost feel him fighting the author through much of the early part of the book. But no, in the end his evil side wins out, and he turns out to be no better than his genetics made him. The lesson that he wants to give here seems to be that, no matter who raises you, or what you strive to be in life, in the end the world will conspire against you and you will never be able to be better than your parents.

And I liked the Redwall books, I really did, and I still really enjoy several of them. This was one of the low points in the series, the entire thing feels like a wasted opportunity at the end, much like Veil himself.

I used to adore Redwall, and still have a soft spot in my heart for the earlier books, but this one was just awful. Jacques never provides any ambiguity in his characters: all the drama comes from physical conflict or from youngsters bucking the rules, never from relationships between characters.

Nowhere is this more evident that in Outcast of Redwall, where Jacques finally gave himself a chance to right a real wrong in his world: all mustelids are evil! In Jacques's world, if you're born a fox, rat, stoat, or weasel, you are automatically evil, and you have no chance for redemption even if you're raised in an environment as conducive toward peace as Redwall.

Fail. :(

After reading eight books, I'm starting to find them repetitive and predictable. I understand that they are written for children and maybe my taste in books has just matured over the years since i started this series, but still. How can you write 22 books in a series and have nearly the exact same characters over and over again ? And this book in particular made me realize how black and white these stories are. I was hoping this book would finally show off a good natured 'vermin' type in the so called Outcast of redwall. But, no surprise here, the little ferret who was raised by a sweet mouse lady turns out to be just plain evil for no apparent reason. It didn't make any sense to me that he grew up like that since he was raised the same as any other child in the abbey. But whatever. So he eventually gets kicked out of redwall for attempted murder and the little mouse lady, who refuses to think he's evil, goes after him. They have several encounters and not one time does Veil show any affection towards his adoptive mother. Then, at the climax of the story, Veil randomly decides to be good for a split second and sacrifice his life for the Mouse lady. Inconsistent !
In the end the little mouse lady realizes 'he really was evil after all, even if he did save my life. You cant change who you really are' which is just bullshit. Anybody can be anything no matter their heritage.
Not to mention the title character was hardly in the book at all ! It was mostly about the badger lord and his fight with Veil's father!


I like Redwall, I do. But this book was not the best. It felt very racist and it could've been a better book if it had gone in a another direction.

I'm inclined to say this might just be the best book in the series (or one of them anyway). It has one of the darkest storylines, it teaches some quite adult lessons, it even has a redemption arc...sort of?

Also, while there are three major battles I like that it ends the way it begins, with a straight fight between Swartt and Sunflash, with no-one else intervening.

Also also, this has quite possibly the most satisfying bit of justice I've read, a villain who beats a defenceless female rabbit being dealt with by a better fighter than him like the cowardly bully he truly is.

Not my favorite of the Redwall books — Swartt isn't a bad villain, and I quite like Sunflash as a departure from the usual badger lords we see, but there's still better books. And Veil's whole plotline just feels off.

This is two unrelated books mashed together in the most ham-fisted way possible. The main plot has its high points but the book long overstays its welcome and is easily the weakest of the first eight Redwall books.

A running problem I've noticed through the first eight Redwall novels is that they tend to have good main plots hampered by weak side plots and padding. It's easy to imagine Mr. Jacques turning in a solid 120-200 page story and getting told by an editor that every book needs to have a plot set at Redwall or that they all need to be 300+ pages long for demographic or pricing reasons but I don't know--maybe he was just a mediocre writer.

The A plot is about a badger named Sunflash who is the captive of a ferret with six-claws on one paw named Swartt Sixclaw. Sunflash is freed by a kestrel named Skarlath and they smash Swartt's six-clawed paw in their escape--making him an enemy for life. Swartt pursues them to Salamandastron where Sunflash becomes the new badger lord and--although heavily outnumbered--Sunflash and the hares manage to defeat Swartt.

The B plot involves Swartt having a son on the way. The babe is lost during a battle and brought to Redwall abbey where he is cared for by a Bryony, a mousemaid. Despite her best efforts, the babe, named Veil, grows up to be a complete jerk and is eventually banished after attempting to poison the head chef. The mousemaid decides it was all a misunderstanding and sets off after Veil with the help of a mole. Eventually they catch up with Veil as he catches up with Swartt and Veil ends up taking a spear for Bryony who returns to the abbey a little older and wiser.

In order to haphazardly patch these two plots together, we're subjected to random timeskips and egregious amounts of hand-waving.

Gripe #1: Sunflash is an idiot and his character arc makes no sense. When we first meet him, Sunflash insists on charging headlong into Swartt's camp and Skarlath only goes along because he owes Sunflash. They end up escaping after killing a few vermin and maiming Swartt. Sunflash asks Skarlath what his plan is and Skarlath explains that guerrilla tactics would serve them better than a suicide charge and Sunflash agrees. Shortly thereafter, Swartt gets tired of being sniped at and detours to recruit an army. At this point, Sunflash is completely unperturbed, reasoning that Swartt will be back someday. Character growth! Once they're at Salamandastron, however, Sunflash charges out of the mountain at the horde by himself, is captured, and only avoids being slain by Swartt's unjustified insistence that the vermin not slay Sunflash for some reason or other. Sunflash is rescued by the hares and they eventually beat back the vermin. Sunflash then pursues them with only Skarlath which ends up getting Skarlath killed. Shortly thereafter, Sunflash charges the remnants of Swartt's troops by himself, gets captured by Swartt who again decides to wait overnight before killing him for no good reason, and is rescued by Bryony. Sunflash learns absolutely zero lessons from any of this.

Sub-gripe: While doing their guerrilla tactics, the book tells us that Sunflash and Skarlath are simultaneously championing the weak and righting wrongs wherever they fight them while simultaneously being pursued by and harrying 60 vermin. Pick one or the other, they don't make sense together unless we're intended to assume that as soon as Sunflash leaves after saving someone a horde of vermin show up on their door.

Gripe #2: In order to fit in Veil's story, Swartt's journey makes no sense. Swartt travels east and kills a warlord to take control of his settlement. All of the vermin, including women and children, pack up and go with Swartt to seek riches. We're then told, by the way, that their customs require that Swartt marry the warlord's daughter. She shows up in the background of a few scenes and then dies in childbirth. Swartt gets a little too close to Redwall in his journey so they call upon some squirrels and otters to harass the vermin until they turn west off the path. It's in this battle that Veil's nursemaid is slain. So there Swartt is--depending on the book and means of travel--between two days and a week from Salamandastron but how can Veil grow up in a week? Easy, the book explains that Swartt "gets lost" and takes several seasons to make it from Redwall to the coast. Even though he's following a river to the sea. Even though he knows he just needs to travel west. He gets lost for the human equivalent of years on a journey of maybe 20 miles. It beggars belief. We're also told that all the women and children are conveniently gone by the time he makes it to the sea--presumably so we don't have to feel bad about bunnies killing women and children. It's all just so lazily done.

Gripe #3: Veil's arc makes no sense. We briefly meet Veil as a quiet baby with a penchant for biting but then cut to him as an adolescent. We're told that he's a wicked child, that he's always been a wicked child, and that all vermin are inherently wicked. Veil protests that everyone's always assumed the worst of him just because he's a ferret and that would actually be a decent arc except that we're immediately told that isn't true and that everyone in Redwall was nice to him (because Redwall) and he's just evil. Even after he sacrifices himself for no reason (he tries to bury Bryony alive shortly before taking a spear for her) Bryony admits that Veil was always evil and probably wouldn't have saved her if he'd thought he was going to die. Now mind you Mattimeo had evil shrews, Martin the Warrior had a mass-murdering hedgehog played for laughs, and The Bellmaker--the book immediately preceding this one--had a good rat. But nope, now all vermin are inherently evil and all woodlanders are good. This plot should have been left on the cutting room floor.

So overall, I was very entertained for the first 120 pages but after that it just got worse and worse. This is the first Redwall book I'd recommend skipping or maybe just stop and write your own ending about a third of the way in.

Having read many of the Redwall books, they can sometimes feel a bit formulaic, even for someone who loves them. While this book still had many of the same notes as others I've read, it felt different enough to me to still be interesting. My one gripe with it would be that it seems to lean even harder than others in the series on the quite problematic binary of irredeemably evil vermin species v. unfailingly good gentlebeasts. This is an element of this series that has always bothered me somewhat, and continues to do so.

I thought that it was sort of sad. But I still like it! This series has never failed me yet, I always like all of their books! A great read!