Redwall by Brian Jacques has been touted as a classic but I'm not sure this is one I would recommend. I found it predictable, needlessly long, and frankly pretty boring. This is a difficult book to categorize as either a middle grade or young adult novel as it handles mature themes with a lot of gratuitous violence besides being a brick of a book (somehow this didn't bother me with the Harry Potter series but it did with this one). The story is a coming of age quest/adventure story set in the Middle Ages with rodents and various other wild animals as the main protagonists. Matthias, our hero, is a young mouse who is studying to be a monk at Redwall Abbey when a giant rat named Cluny the Scourge shows up on the scene. Matthias must then embark on a personal journey to seek the sword of a famous mouse warrior in the hopes it will turn the tide in the battle against the forces of evil. This is the first in a rather long series but I must be honest and say that I have no desire to continue with these characters. I really can't figure out what all the fuss is about so it's a 3/10 from me.
PS While I was double-checking my spelling of the character names I discovered that there is an actual cartoon of this book series. To say that I am shocked would be putting it mildly. That one is not going on my watch list. |
| Source: Amazon.com |
What's Up Next: Born to be Posthumous The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery
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