Redwall

This was a re-read for the first time as an adult, to see how a childhood favourite held up. The Redwall books were a vital formative influence in my life, introducing me to good-versus-evil fantasy full of perilous journeys, ancient prophecies, and heroic battles, at an age when I wasn't quite ready to tackle The Lord of the Rings (and perhaps didn't have a full grasp on what fantasy was). I absolutely devoured and lived in these books, to a degree that I haven't really experienced with any series since.

It took a couple of years for the flatness of the books' worldview to wear on me. Why were mice always good and rats always bad? If otters and badgers were good, why were weasels and ferrets, their cousins, always evil? Where would mink (surely equidistant between an otter and a ferret) fit into this world? These were big thematic questions for me as a tween! The few books that dipped a toe into moral greyness never did enough to satisfy me. Though this black-and-whiteness was the author's intention, it bothered me, and pushed me towards books like Garry Kilworth's Welkin Weasels, which allowed for characters with more interesting ambiguity. But it's to Brian Jacques' credit that he got me thinking about that kind of thing at all.

Anyway, about this specific book. I love how uncertain and odd (perhaps even “bad”) the worldbuilding is compared to the rest of the series. In this iteration of the setting, we have horses and cows, French cuisine, and the implied existence of Portugal and Virginia. It makes no sense and the scale of the world is impossible to reconcile, which will bother some, but I really enjoy the almost fairytale-like ambiguity. It's like a bedtime story that the teller is working out as he goes along, fully committed to the drama but a bit hazy on the details.

All the hallmarks of a Redwall book are here: a sadistic villain, a stalwart hero, exquisite banquets, strange riddles, acts of derring-do, strong West Country accents, violent deaths, and a big climactic duel. The plot is straightforward and the characters don't hold up to much scrutiny, but I like that Jacques' formula hadn't yet calcified. In terms of prose, he was no slouch and didn't patronise his young audience – Redwall is written with a more ambitious vocabulary than some current fantasy for older readers.

The tone is all over the shop, and surprisingly dark in places, with death and violence described in unequivocal language. You go from cosy scenes of mice lunching on wholesome food to enemies lying in “a red mist of death”, getting slowly strangled, or being killed with boiling water. As a kid these deaths sometimes disturbed me. Reading them as an adult, I'm surprised and sort of impressed that Jacques would go there. It may be a cute little mouse's world, but the stakes are life or death and the body count is sky high.

Even though this entry isn't perfect and hasn't all aged well, I can totally see how the series sowed in me a love for books with rich descriptive language and a degree of darkness, even (or especially) when aimed at younger readers. It encapsulates so much of what I still look for in books and in my own attempts at writing. I'm thankful to Jacques for having me reading grisly deaths and looking up words like “legerdemain” and “alacrity” as a child. I never read his last few books, but maybe I'll finally get around to it now.