Adorable and so full of heart. Like Narnia and LOTR combined.

Continuing to delve into this cute saga that many of my friends read growing up. I'm late to the party, but enjoyed joining the woodlanders on their mission to retake their land and freedoms. Chapters are wordy at times, but easy to follow. I just can't get over how amazing the descriptions of FOOD are. Makes me hungry every time there's a woodlander meal!

G

An awesome storyline for young adults, one of the best series out there. Mossflower was my personal favorite, but I only read the first five or six.

I found this a more enjoyable read a second time than the first. In 2008 I rated it three stars, and now it's a five star read! This is a new favorite alongside Taggerung.
One reason I loved this story is I loved all of the characters! Even the bad guys were great characters with complex dynamics that really helped to drive the story along. I love the relationships between the Redwallers/Mossflower creatures. Their closeness is admirable and emphasizes how their relationships and motives are different from the vermin. The Mossflower creatures are driven by self-less love, the vermin are drive by selfish-love. (Also, Gingivere is my favorite character from this story and you can't change my mind).
With each Redwall book I read, the more I see how Jacques explores the philosophical/theological themes in a way that isn't obvious or heavy handed. It makes for an enjoyable read for this theologian. While reading a conversation between characters or description of their interactions I sometimes pause and smile. Love and respect for the dignity of each creature creates a foundation for the Redwaller's that the other vermin lack.

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

1. There 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. And 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. It’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. I 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. There 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. There 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. So anyway: better than I expected, worse than I hoped.

Things have come to a pretty pass in the once-idyllic Mossflower Wood. The cruel (and unstable) wildcat Tsarmina rules over the land from her fortress Kotir, and the woodlanders are forced to turn over more and more of their food to feed Tsarmina's armies. Any resistance is immediately--and mercilessly--punished. And anyway, what chance do a bunch of mice and hedgehogs have against the hordes of weasels, ferrets, rats, and stoats . . . to say nothing of their wicked leader, Tsarmina? Then one day, a young mouse wanders into Mossflower Wood. But this isn't just any mouse--this is Martin the Warrior, veteran fighter from the North. With the assistance of a roguish mouse thief, a good-hearted mole, a misplaced shrew leader, a band of rather obstreperous hares, and a warlike old badger--to say nothing of Mossflower's own crackerjack troops of squirrel archers, fighting otters, and digging moles--Martin takes on the tyrant of Kotir, and he's determined to drive her and hers out of Mossflower and win freedom for the woodlanders . . . or die trying.

This is a delightful book. Although the story pre-dates the excellent Redwall, this was written afterwards and was, in fact, the second book in Jacques well-loved series--a series now boasting nearly two dozen titles. I don't know whether all the books lived up to the promise of Redwall; it's hard to maintain consistent quality across that many books. But Mossflower was one of the first, and it still feels fresh and fun.

Allow me to particularly recommend the audiobook version. Jacques has created unique dialects for the various animal species in his books--most notably the moles and hares, but birds and otters and others have distinctive speech patterns as well. These delicious dialects simply beg to be read allowed, to be savored aurally. I was fortunate to have a mother who read aloud to her children and threw herself into the various voices with gusto, but if you don't have access to someone who will read aloud to you (or if you've reached the age when it's no longer socially acceptable to ask to be read to), then give this audiobook a try. Jacques himself provides the narration, but the various animals are voiced by an assortment of actors who clearly enjoy what they are doing. Tsarmina is particularly well voiced--she sounds every bit the paranoid-megalomaniacal dictator. Gonff the mouse thief, Dinny the mole, Martin the warrior, the various hares and otters and mice and hedgehogs--all are chock full of personality, and an utter delight to listen to. In fact, I suspect the story itself only merits three stars, but the brilliant audiobook presentation elevates the material to four stars at the very least.

As with most of the Redwall books, there is little moral complexity. Good characters are good, through and through, and bad characters are bad--and you can usually tell the difference based solely on the species involved. Mice, hedgehogs, squirrels, otters, and moles are good. Rats, stoats, weasels, ferrets, and apparently toads are always bad. Foxes can never be trusted. Though, as it turns out, wildcats are not so easy to stereotype. Or at any rate, there are exceptions to the general trend of 'predators are bad.'

Still, even without the added layers of grey, the story has plenty to recommend it. We learn the value of loyalty, mercy, freedom, courage, respect, and self-sacrifice. And we learn the dangers of selfishness, cruelty, greed, and pride. The heroes of Jacques' stories are well worth admiring, and even emulating.

Jacques writes at a higher level than many young adult authors--his books are great for more advanced readers who are ready for a more expansive vocabulary but aren't necessarily looking for a lot of sex, swearing, and gore. Though, to be fair, there is plenty of violence in Jacques' work; it's just not as graphic as it could be. Indeed, Jacques spends much more time describing all the delicious foods the various woodlanders eat than he does detailing the nature of the wounds they sustain (or inflict).

Bottom line: This is a great book for readers of all ages. But be warned: it will probably make you hungry.

just lovely!!