Pros: Cute talking animals if you like that sort of thing
Cons: A little TOO cute for me personally
The Bottom Line: Read it if you've always wanted to see Beatrix Potter write adventure stories. Avoid it if you're averse to huge helpings of cuteness.
Years ago I read a couple of the early books in the Redwall saga, and then I didn't read any more until now, when I came to this, the 14th book in what has become a fairly long (and quite popular) series.
For those unfamiliar with the premise of this long and popular series, Redwall is an abbey where an order of clergy lives. More than that, though, it's also a happy home to dozens of layfolk, strays, wandering adventurers, etc. From time to time, outsiders will rise up and try to destroy the abbey, apparently just because they--the outsiders--are mean (although there could be unexplored issues here, like maybe Redwall imposes brutal taxes on the surrounding land or something), and then the abbey dwellers have to fight bravely to defend their beloved home, and then eventually the bad guys are defeated and everyone goes off to a celebratory feast.
There's nothing wrong with this, of course. It's a simple story foundation with your basic good/evil conflict and plenty of redeeming social values.
Did I mention that all the characters in the stories, Redwallers and outsiders alike, are small animals?
No, I didn't.
Well, I'll tell you now: every character in these stories is a small animal. Some are smaller than others, for there is a wide variety of species represented, from mice and shrews to badgers and foxes, but they're all your basic woodland creatures and none is as big as, say, a deer or a bear.
If you like talking animal stories, this may the series for you, for I have not seen nor heard of a human showing up in any of the books.
The animals do have humanlike characteristics, however, such as wearing clothes, talking, living in abbeys, forming social groups familiar to humans, using weapons, making wine, cooking food, etc. Basically this is a semi-medieval world (pre-industrial, with no guns or sophisticated machinery) populated by rodents instead of people.
It's like Beatrix Potter for young adults, or Watership Down with more interspecies harmony.
Personally, I found the whole thing almost too cute to bear.
But let's go over some positives and negatives in an orderly fashion, as if I were a real reviewer.
Positives: The scenario is creative, I suppose. I mean, other than this ongoing series, you don't find too many books with rodents as characters. (Not after you get beyond the picture-book stage, that is: children's picture books are rampant with human-like animals. I guess kids just don't relate well to people.)
Anyway, it's a reasonably interesting idea to take the children's book concept of animal characters and extend it into a full length hardcover book that adults as well as older children might enjoy (as I understand from reviews that adults and older children do). I'll give the author that.
Further, his basic story in this book--I cannot speak to others--is nicely shaped, with lots of adventure, treachery, feasting, mistaken identity, romance and comic relief, as well as a sweeping story arc that leads us through many fine landscapes before culminating in triumph (with just a touch of sorrow). Every ingredient for a solid story is here.
In its broad outlines, here's how the story goes: The leader of a band of rogues is told by his witchy fox adviser that the Taggerung--a superfast, superstrong, supermagnificent creature with the power to rule all rogues--has been born in such and such a location. Taking his band thither, he finds an otter father with a baby, and he kills the one and takes the other to raise as his own son and heir (although he personally is not an otter but a stoat).
Some years later, the son is fast and strong and magnificent indeed, but somehow lacks the bloodthirsty nature of the rogues and just doesn't seem to fit in.
Meanwhile, back at Redwall Abbey (where the murdered father had lived), the otter kid's older sister encounters a series of riddles and commences to solve them with her friends.
Also there's a lot of singing and poetry.
After a while the otter kid runs off from the rogues to find himself, and we have him adventuring across the landscape, with rogues in pursuit, all drawing nearer and nearer to his true home and destiny: Redwall.
OK? It's not a terrible plot. So why the lack of enthusiasm? Why do I say it's too cute?
Let's discuss some negatives.
As I do say, it's all a little too cute for me. The writing style has a sugary edge, even though the story deals with tough gritty subjects like murder and torture and child abuse, and the good animals are all basically the same cute loving character. Children are all spunky and mischievous and get into trouble without meaning to, and older adults are wise and tolerant, and young adults are full of vigor and life. Even rascally characters are goodhearted. Not that there's anything wrong with this, and I'm sure it'd be a great situation to live in, but it makes for a rather saccharine reading environment.
To differentiate some of the characters, the author gives various species their own accents, and writes all their speech in dialect, which I found just plain annoying to read, as well as a cheap substitute for actual character.
Also, every few pages someone will sing a song or recite a poem, all written out for us in rhyme, and frankly the rhymes are not that great. Like greeting card poetry, it's just too damn cute.
Along the same lines, I got tired of the ongoing riddles the otter sister was trying to solve, because I never found them terribly interesting, and the conclusion of the big mystery was not really either surprising or satisfying to me. Although it does fit in and make sense, it still felt like a sideplot that never really added much to the story.
As a specific example of what I found too cute, certain words are always replaced with other, charmingly book-specific words. 'Anyone' or 'everyone' is 'anybeast' or 'everybeast.' 'Underfoot' is 'underpaw.' A young female otter is always an 'ottermaid.' Infants are 'babes,' but not just babes, they're 'otterbabes,' or 'molebabes,' or 'mousebabes.' A little of that goes a long way as far as I'm concerned, and there's more than a little in this book.
On top of that, the author tends to a phrasing and writing style that feels just slightly simplistic, as if he's benevolently talking down to the reader. The books are written for kids so perhaps I shouldn't complain, but there are kid books that don't irritate me with their phrasing the way this one did.
Also, I personally had a tough time believing that all the animals can live so easily together, or even really picturing a set-up that would allow them to do so. How do you make a dwelling comfortable for both badgers and squirrels? How do a mouse, an otter and a bunch of pygmy shrews share a burrow? How do a rat and a fox travel together across country? Aren't foxes bigger and hence faster than rats? Don't foxes EAT rats?
As a way of addressing this concern, all the good animals seem to be vegetarians, while the carnivores (stoats, weasels, rats--rats are really more omnivorous than predatory, but I guess the author just doesn't like them--and foxes) are vermin and are always bent on destroying things.
Maybe my imagination has just gone downhill in recent years, but I really had a hard time accepting the harmonious relationships of the various species, as well as picturing a lot of the more human-specific actions in my mind in a way that didn't make them seem ridiculous. I just couldn't quite get around the idea that animals look silly doing things like sitting in chairs, wielding cooking implements (where do they get the opposable thumbs for that?), putting on clothes and shooting bows, and that got in the way of my becoming fully engrossed in the story.
I see, on reading over this, that I sound extraordinarily like a cranky Philistine with no appreciation for the soft fuzzy things in life, and I have to state that these books are bestsellers and therefore a lot of people obviously like them and do not find the flaws I mention to be overwhelming, so I may be in the wrong.
In fact, I'm sure some people find the use of 'molespeak' (which seems to be a sort of heavy British farm accent or something) to be a charming and creative way to demonstrate the diversity which thrives in Redwall's happy environs, and 'everybeast' to be a lovely touch of detail in bringing this magical land to life, and so on and so forth.
All I can say is, they're welcome to it. Me, I could barely read the book for rolling my eyes.
I don't want to say it was TERRIBLE. It has a definite style, and you may like that style a lot. I imagine this could be a very good book for a child, for whom its combination of exciting adventures and cute animals might be just the thing.
But to me, it was like a giant fluffy dessert made of nothing but whipped cream and sugar with some irritating verses on top. I'm going to have to Not Recommend, just because I personally don't see wanting to read it ever again--but I do hasten to add that it's not one of those books I think everyone in the world should avoid because it's just that bad, so don't let me turn you off it if the adventures of talking, clothes-wearing animals is your idea of a good story.
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