Mossflower

Plot: Various cute woodland animals team up to defeat less cute (subjectively) woodland animals. There is water-based siege warfare.

1.tThere was a point in my life where I devoured every Redwall book I could get my hands on and I ended up reading at least three quarters of the series before things started to feel repetitive. Mossflower was favorite of the books I did read, so I really wanted to see how it withstood the test a decade and a half of acquired cynicism.

2.tAnd the answer turns out to be “not too badly, actually”- I made allowances for the book being aimed at younger readers when rating it, but even without that it was a zippy story with many interlocking plot elements which managed to keep me invested. We have simultaneous subplots of Martin & Co’s quest to the big fire mountain and the La resistance activities in Mossflower, and they play off each other pretty well. The exploration suplot gives us new animal species and cultures and a prophetic volcano. The resistance subplot is basically guerilla warfare and BOY do I love my guerilla warfare plots. (As with everything, I blame Animorphs.)

3.tIt’s nowhere near perfect: The morality is far from nuanced (as it typical for a Redwall book) and the good guys and bad guys have big neon signs over their heads proclaiming them as such. The characters are so incredibly homogenous that most of them bleed into each other with little trouble. Sometimes the “cute” bits are saccharine enough to tip over into cheesy. Tsarmina was basically worfed a la Azula in the last quarter of the book, and with even less rationale for it than Azula had. The intellect of the bad guys is far too “oh they are not intelligent per se but they ARE cunning” for my tastes, which I thought was unfair because when was a smart antagonist a bad thing?

4.tI can appreciate that all of these things are standard fare for middle grade books, but I’ve read way too many middle grade books which go “give me nuanced morality or give me death” to really let this one off without comment. Mossflower very much does not shy away from topics like loss or grief, which makes the strict good/evil dichotomy that much more disappointing.

5.tThere were some very good characters and plot elements: I got attached to the bats (for SOME unknown reason because they were weird). The Mask and Chibb are my favorite characters (look, all of you whitebread jerks can make as much fun of Chibb as you want but he was very much the MVP in your little resistance crew okay and also HE doesn’t have opposable thumbs how is he supposed to cook stuff). Gingivere was a sweetheart who leveraged his limited power into maximum utility. The siege warfare was great, even though there was less of it than I hoped and it tied far too much into Tsarmina’s sanity slippage. I also really, really loved how the whole thing between Tsarmina and the mercenary crew captain played out- definitely the best part of the book, that. Too bad Tsarmina immediately turned into a gibbering mess afterwards.

6.tThere were a lot of things which struck me as pointless or overblown, but that’s mostly down to my lack of interest in all things action-oriented. 90% of fight scenes make my eyes glaze over (unless they involve things like siege warfare), so the climactic cat vs. mouse battle? Really didn’t do a thing for me. (Boar’s bits were pretty cool though, ngl.)

7.tSo anyway: better than I expected, worse than I hoped.

Mossflower is better than Redwall--but it's very close to being a rewritten version of Redwall, so if you want to ding it points for following it, that's allowable. The reason I find it superior, though is that it has shed the hints of humans (horses, etc) that made Redwall an anachronism in its own series, and Martin and Gonff are superior as a duo to Matthias solo.

And then there's the Salamandastron excursion! It's almost a throwaway (other than bringing a ship into the story, is it really essential to how it ends?), mostly serving to give some mystique to the hallowed artefact that remains in Redwall, but it's a show-stealing digression and introduces us to what is hands-down my favourite strand of Redwall lore.

This is another old favorite of mine that I rediscovered on audiobook. Like Martin the Warrior, the audiobook features a full cast including the author Brian Jacques who is a masterful storyteller and his radio experience is clearly evident. I always feel like I'm reviewing the entire series when I review a Redwall novel but here goes. Yes, it's forumlaic. Yes, all of the books have a similar theme. Yes, the good guys are pretty easy to spot from the bad guys, but I DON'T CARE! Haha.
Eh ahem. Seriously, I'm not sure that if it's because I have so much nostalgia built up around this series but I love it. The storytelling is good. There is a lot of detail that it feels like you could actually visit this place. It's light-hearted but sometimes it's refreshing to read a swashbuckling book with a happy ending. This book also features Gonff who is one of my favorite characters in the series. He's impossible not to like. I also tend to enjoy the prequel stories because of Martin who has a pretty fascinating life story and ultimately drives the entire series through his spirit which serves as a symbol of goodness. I realize that this is a bit of a gush review but I like these books too much to really be objective.

I remember my dad coming home with another box of used books. Before he resold them, he'd let me look through them. I saw these two books on the top of the pile. One was called Mossflower, and the other was called Mattimeo. They caught my eye because they're pretty covers but also because they have animals on them. I was curious and read the back to see what the books were about. I liked how the cover of Mossflower said, "Before Redwall Abbey was built, there was no freedom for woodlanders..." I've always loved a good story of rebellion, so I was intrigued. It was funny that the cover of MF said it was the prequel to Redwall, and the cover to MM said it was the sequel. I figured, "Okay, now, I have to get this book that's in the middle," and that started my long journey with Brian Jacques and his wonderful Redwall series, of which I've since read every single book.

I'm going to maintain my rating of this novel. This is now the third time I've read the book in a traditional format, and I've listened to the audio book version, read by Mr. Brian Jacques himself (which I highly recommend, if you get the chance--his Liverpool accent makes everything better).

At first, I was a little disappointed that I'd chosen this book as my next reread. It seemed really slow and not entertaining, and I figured I'd outgrown this series. I started it when I was in high school, so I was always older than the target age range, but I hadn't read much fantasy then, and I really enjoyed the concept and Jacques' writing style. Last month, though, I was thinking that even our favorites can lose that appeal for us over time.
Then, I read further and remembered why I love this book so much. It's charming and cute. Jacques tells a good story that builds appropriately. The characters have great personalities and feel real. I love the relationships they have or build throughout the novel, and I love the concept. It's interesting to see how Jacques was clearly inspired by other children's fantasy writers and then how he diverges from the tropes and his predecessors to make something unique.
My only complaint this time around is that there's A LOT going on in the story. I think Jacques wanted to include all his inventions, but he did a little too much. I wish he'd focused more on the main plot line of the woodlanders trying to defeat Tsarmina, the Queen of the Thousand Eyes. But he has these side stories that introduce different animal groups, and it's a little unnecessary.
The one thing I found funny this time is that this book is pretty violent for a children's book! I would say the target age for this is 7-12, and there are some graphic moments of necessary and unnecessary slayings. I never thought of it that way before, but being an adult reading this, I'm thinking, "Geesh! What a way to introduce kids to the violence of warfare and rebellion." I think it's realistic, and our heroes and heroines are animals, after all, but some of the scenes are a little surprising in their light brutality.

Overall, I'm glad I reread this book! I got into it again and was excited to move forward and remember the plot as I read further. I enjoyed getting reacquainted with Jacques' world and the characters, especially Martin the Warrior, Gonff, and Young Dinny. I still recommend this series--the later books become REALLY repetitive, but the earlier ones are original and have interesting plot lines, stories, and characters. Also, they'd be fun to read aloud or to have your kids read aloud. There are dialects that would be entertaining. I'm not sure I'll reread another book in the Redwall series, but after rereading Mossflower, I think I might!

Fun series.

Mom read this aloud to me. The time we spent together reading this was five stars alone, to top it off the writing in this book was a simple folktale telling with some amazing riddle work, wonderful characters and beautiful descriptions on the beauty of life. Yes! Okay I am sorry but mom and I just have to mention how beautiful these descriptions of life are. The rising of the sun in the morning. The feeling of a hot, long summer day before it has even begun. Mom and I could just picture the beautiful food. The food sounded hearty and simplistic. It sounded warm and hearty. It sounded like every meal was an amazing meal and that it’s enjoyment was only heightened by the experience of eating it with friends. Seriously the discriptions in them selves could just be read like one reads poetry.
As for the story it was simplistic yet made complex and enjoyable by the characters and the riddles. Brian Jacques has an amazing back for writing and solving riddles. The riddles themselves even had to the texture and taste of the story.
And man those characters. I would love to be friends with any of the woodlanders. They carry human emotions, yet the show how those emotions can better us and how they can better others. Of course we could also not forget the villains. They are wonderful old school villains who have some good wit about them.
Over all a great book to read alone or read with others.

Rereading this with my elementary kids was SO fun! I remember loving the series at their age. My middle child (age 7) was adamant that she didn’t like the book, yet every time my oldest (age 9) chose it for us to read, they both were enthralled. So much so that my middle child chose to finish Mossflower instead of continuing with our other book.

It was glorious to hear them laugh uproariously (thank you Dinny and hares), ask about different tools (ballasts, pikes, etc), how fast badgers can run (20-25 miles per hour at top speed), and connect with characters enough to be sad when they died. So glad we read it together!

This will always be one of my favorites. We first met in the Florida library when I was 10. We reunited when I was 13 and facing my own wildcats in the form of high school bullies. We then parted ways for over a decade when I was 18, until last year. Martin & Gonff are childhood heroes with a tale that translates for any age group.