Mariel of Redwall by Brian Jacques

Publisher: Philomel

Year: 1992

Pages: 400

It may behoove you to read the previous book in this series, Mattimeo

One thing I’ve noticed about Brian Jacques is that he’s not afraid of strong female characters, and in fact Mariel of Redwall was the first book of the Redwall series to feature a female lead, but it is certainly not the last (as we shall eventually see).

I never cared for Mariel of Redwall when I was a young boy. Perhaps it was because the sword-wielding Dandin plays consistent second fiddle to the knotted-rope-swinging Mariel, which I thought was decidedly lame. Everybody knows the formula, I thought, for such fantasy tales: the sword-wielding male is always the lead, and the attractive female with the weak bludgeoning weapon is always in the back, providing both a romantic interest and a physical foil to the strong males.

I can appreciate the story more this time around, and for several reasons. First of all, I’m not so blinkered and pig-ignorant as to only care about males swinging large swords in my stories anymore. Second, Jacques is really starting to develop his archetypes for hares, who in the Redwall universe are fearsome warriors that serve the badger lord of Salamandastron; they have tremendous appetites, talk with exaggerated British accents, and get more flippant the more worried that are. Since Jacques tends to favor mice as the main warriors in his stories, the hares are usually relegated to a supporting role, but Redwall books are really made by an ensemble cast, and Mariel of Redwall really starts to see that develop—Jacques fleshes out his archetypes, however circumscribed, and builds out the history of Redwall. This story takes place before the eponymous book and sometime after Mossflower. The “Joseph Bell” of the original novel is in Mariel… being shipped to its original owner, Rawnblade the badger lord, when it and its maker, Joseph the Bellmaker (not the mention his daughter Mariel), are captured by searats led by the fearsome Gabool. Various and sundry plots turns happen which eventually led a beleaguered Mariel to Redwall Abbey, where she befriends a number of the more petulant inhabitants and adventures with them to find her lost father and kill Gabool.

It’s all rather standard Redwall fare at this point, really, the exception being that (a) the main character is a woman (mouse) and (b) alert readers can really see Jacques’ art improving, this book no exception. One change that I’ve noticed is that the “quest” portion of the book (in this as well as in Mattimeo) takes up far more focus than the “homefront” portion—that is, when searats attempt to invade Redwall Abbey, just as when an army of ravens tried in the previous book, this plot thread is almost an afterthought. There are always a certain number of warriors in Redwall, despite its ostensibly peaceful mission, and they always manage to fend off the schemes and tricks and direct onslaughts of the invading army with, it seems, very little effort. This is in stark contrast to the original Redwall, when the invasion was not only dire, but front and center, forming the greater part of the narrative. Jacques tries, I think, to create more complex stories, but inevitably ends up dividing the same constant mass of plot among more parts, diluting the efficacy of each.

Don’t take that as too harsh a criticism: Mariel of Redwall is not only a good book in its own right, but another strong step in a long, progressive evolution of Jacques’ writing and the Redwall canon. I recommend this as strongly as I recommend the rest, even if I prefer others to this one, relatively speaking.

Mattimeo by Brian Jacques

Publisher: Philomel

Year: 1990

Pages: 448

It may behoove you to read the previous book in this series, Mossflower

In the early days of the Redwall series, it was common for Jacques to reuse some characters; though he tended to create more self-contained books later on, I think he wrote as he did in the early days because some of his original characters and lore were so endearing.

Mattimeo takes place a mere few years (though the animals measure time in “season,” four of which would, I assume, equal a year) after the events of Redwall. The main characters are still Matthias the Warrior, Constance the badger, Cornflower the mouse, &c. The difference here is that most of the characters have children now, and it is these children who form a third of the tripartite narrative—Mattimeo, son of Matthias, especially.

The basic plot is that a mutilated fox from Redwall, now named Slagar the Cruel, manages to kidnap some Redwall children, both in order to gain misguided revenge and to eventually profit from his slave trade. Predictably, the book is a bildungsroman for young Mattimeo, and to a lesser extent his enslaved companions. Meanwhile, while the young animals march south, a group of Redwall warriors goes on the hunt, picking up companions along the way. The third and final piece of the plot is the army of ravens that invades Redwall itself, whose advances must be checked by a ragtag group led by Constance the Badgermum.

Jacques weaves these stories with his usual aplomb. Expect your mouth to water at all the descriptions of food; expect a number of stoats, ferrets, and weasels to get stabbed, crushed, or otherwise killed in the course of battle. Expect the ghost of Martin to make an appearance, as he seems to do in most of the early books.

I admit to being a little underwhelmed by the villain in this one—not the mutilated fox, but the polecat who enters later. The entire climactic battle was a bit difficult to understand, which put kind of a damper on its excitement. So, too, the battle on the homefront, with the ravens, was solved with a bit of a deus ex machina and wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped. I recall being similarly disappointed with Mattimeo when I first read it as a young boy.