I loved the Redwall series when I was young. When we'd go to visit my grandmother's house, I'd head to the library and grab a bit pile of books, and the Redwall books always featured among them. I read quite a few of them--up to Lord Brocktree, I think--before my interest waned, partially because the plots were all kind of blurring together, but also because I just moved on to other things. When my book group picked Redwall as the next book, I was eager to read it again, curious if it would hold up as I remembered it.

Well, as the star rating I gave it probably gives away, it didn't. When I was young, I didn't care as much about all the holes in the worldbuilding, content to forge ahead with the story and see how Matthias was going to defeat the evil Cluny the Scourge, but now that worldbuilding is almost my primary interest in fantasy there are too many questions that come up that annoy me for me to really immerse myself in the story.

For example, what are the relative sizes of the creatures? Are rats twice as big as mice like they should be, or are they roughly the same size? Constance can't be the mouse equivalent of forty feet tall like she would be in the real world, because she fits inside all the buildings. On the other hand, Julian the cat and Asmodeus the snake are the proper proportions and one cart with a horse can carry Cluny's whole army, so I could never get a real handle on how the characters were supposed to look in relation to each other.

Speaking of the horse and cart, who built it? Who built St. Ninian's? The church is mouse-sized, because Cluny is able to smash the lectern while talking behind it, but the cart is human-sized, because it can carry his army in it. Though the wheels can't be as large as they would proportionately be, because they're repurposed to Cluny's siege engine, and that wouldn't make any sense. The abbey is big enough for a thousand Sparra to live in it, but isn't described as being human-sized with mice dwarfed within its halls.

I suspect I'm supposed to just not think about it that much, honestly.

Worse than that, and a lot more obvious now that I'm older, is the extreme black-and-white moral essentialism that fills the book. All mice, squirrels, moles, voles, etc., are kindly and gentle creatures, who only fight in order to save themselves and would rather spend their time feasting and caring for others. Badgers and hares are fierce warriors, but use their strength for good and so can dwell among mice.

On the other hand, Rats, ferrets, weasels, and so on are evil to the core, unable to build or create anything good, and normally lazy and untrustworthy unless ruled by fear. Foxes are...well, they're honestly racist Romani stereotypes, with the thieving and the secret knowledge and the treachery all there. Sparra are dirty and violent and fight all the time and speak only broken English (well, "English") and are pretty much the quintessential stereotype of the lazy, violent Other who is always Taking Our Jobs, except with less job-taking and more murder. And the way Cluny was written, it was all I could do not to add "ARRRRRR, me hearties!" after every line of dialogue he had. There isn't a single shade of grey anywhere in this book.

Of course, this immediately leads to the Orc Baby Dilemma. If rats and weasels and so on are really all innately evil, then the proper solution is genocide, because letting them live will only perpetuate suffering and death. But genocide over what might happen is obviously beyond the pale, so the innately evil species end up living on until the next evil overlord comes through and whips them up into a conquering horde, and then more squirrels and mice and moles die until a hero kills the overlord and disperses the evil monsters.

Speaking of, I'm honestly surprised that shrews fell on the "good" side. Here's a quote from Wikipedia:

They are very active animals, with voracious appetites. Shrews have an unusually high metabolic rate, above that expected in comparable small mammals. Shrews typically eat 80–90% of their own body weight in food daily.

Based on their biology, shrews are the obvious candidate for a conquering horde simply because they need to eat so much. They'd be like locusts, swarming the countryside and literally eating everything in their paths.

You might say that this isn't the point, because these are children's books, but I'm pretty sure that children are capable of handling moral nuance. Even as a child, I remember thinking that the morality here was a bit simplistic. The only thing I missed was how problematic the implications were, and now that I'm older that's pretty much all that I see.

I can't even take refuge in the character arcs, because there aren't any. Matthias is the only character who undergoes any kind of change or growth, and it's more like a switch being flipped than an arc. He goes straight from novice monk (monks of what, exactly?) to having the soul of a warrior with basically no stage in between. He never has to wrestling with killing, or decide if this is really the life he wants for himself, or confront the Gunslinger's Dilemma, where only killing can protect civilization but by taking up the gunsword to kill he proves himself uncivilized. Nope, everything goes great and he even gets a wife out of the deal, which is honestly really creepy because he and Cornflower don't interact much and the Abbot gives her away like a milk cow.

Well, Cluny goes insane, but I'm not sure that counts as a character arc.

I am obviously no longer the audience for these books. There's just too much there for me to enjoy it in any capacity, and I would have stopped halfway through if I hadn't been reading it for my book club. It's a bit sad to know that part of my childhood is forever ruined for me, but you can't step in the same river twice.