Full disclosure, this one is definitely in my top three, beaten outright only by the Long Patrol, which is mostly about hares, and maybe tied with Pearls of Lutra, which is ambitious and weird enough to rise above its shortcomings. This mid-nineties period where Mr. Jacques had the formula and rhythms down and fresh ideas in every book really was the peak of the series, and definitely not just the time when I was between nine and twelve years old. Martin The Warrior, much as I bitch about characterization and cohesion, was a solid work. The Bellmaker blows it out of the water.
Many warriors own the glory, but the saying at Redwall is, this is the bellmaker’s story, because the dream was his.
I did that from fucking memory. And then I couldn’t find my copy (no doubt read to pieces by 2001 or so), but I went online and checked, and it was spot on. This shit has everything. A cool, tense conflict out in the world, a solid quest from Redwall, a home game plot at Redwall (yes, there are three whole subplots!), prophetic dreams, evil warlords, little poems, a cool hare (gotta have a cool hare), reprised roles by Mariel and the boy mouse who’s not Mariel. This is the book where Redwall found its groove, and even, gently, began to question some of its own premise. This is the first and best example of the vermin-assigned species who makes good! (If you don’t count Tsarmina’s boring brother, which I don’t. He’s is weird because, while his family was evil, cats were, like owls, one of the few species that got to choose their own alignment, and the first cat introduced in the series was a good guy.)
It’s not actually done well, but it’s done.
Okay, so. The titular Bellmaker is Mariel’s dad. See: Mariel is Redwall for girls. He has a dream about peril afflicting his daughter, who has gone nebulously traveling because Redwall is very boring when it’s not being invaded. He and some guys head out to her aid. And her boring friend’s aid, I guess.
(It is interesting, now I think about it, that Mariel and whatsisname were not in any way an item. I’ve expounded on Redwall’s gender issues before, and I certainly noticed them as a child. Mostly it’s that fairly common fantasy phenomenon that there are apparently no systemic barriers to being a girl mouse/mole/otter/etc. who stabs villains, but there are way less of them and people act like it’s surprising for no apparent reason. How the books handle romance is certainly related. Comfortable, homey old married couples abound. The dudes of Redwall are frequently struck silly by the prettiness of a lady, regardless of species. And at the end of a book, couples are frequently stuck together as sort of automatic rewards, the he was a boy, she was a girl logic of Matthias and Cornflower or Martin and Rose, Gonff and, uh, somebody, she was probably also named after a flower. But there’s nothing in between, no courting or attraction or flirting. This is probably at least in part because the books were written for children, but I read plenty of books at the time that included romances, and skillful writers frequently managed in a few, age-appropriate strokes to actually set up relationships that made sense. Alanna, Cimorene, they all got to, like, interact with their future spouses. Mariel and, um, look, I refuse to look up that guy’s name, even though I think it’s in my Mariel essay? They have a fully functional working relationship, are the same age and species, and fill the heterosexual slots. But they never become an item? Does Mariel’s status as fighter rather than some support class healer preclude her romantic future? Are Redwall matches predicated as much on whether or not you hit baddies with weapons or not as gender? Note to self, a queer feminist reading of Redwall...)
I gotta be honest, I have no idea who went questing with The Bellmaker. The cover informs me there was a mole and an otter there? They were just some guys. One of them was a grizzled sea captain, I think? To provide exposition as they chased after Mariel. I think the team went by way of Salamandastron and maybe got some aid from the badgerlord, but that’s extrapolation, not memory. They had a very cool sea voyage. Sharks were there. The Green Maelstrom’s first appearance (I think it came back in another book) as a giant, permanent whirlpool that fuckin ate ships. It’s such a delightfully pulpy detail I treasure it still. That’s definitely how whirlpools are! The quicksand of the sea! Also there were definitely pirates at some point. There are always pirates.
So what was up with Mariel? She was questing. Redwall in this mode was the purest form of sword and sorcery. She and the guy who was not her boyfriend wandered south into a new land called… Southsward. This would broadly be the same direction as both that weird skunk’s underground snake cult in Mattimeo and the proto-Redwall abbey of Loamhedge, but neither are mentioned. Southsward was ruled by blandly benign mouse royalty, but they have been captured or driven into hiding or something equally plausible, because of…
The Foxwolf!
He has a personal name, too, but his sobriquet and claim to fame was that he had killed a wolf and wore its skin everywhere, which was very metal but also confusing (and at no other point in all these books is there any intimation that wolves are a thing). And he had a wife as evil as he was! Jacques was great at cartoonishly evil, camp matriarchs. Man could outstrip Disney.
(Note to self again, Evil Queens of Redwall would be a great sub-heading for that essay…)
The evil queen once drunkenly calls out her evil husband for having found a dead wolf, skinned it, and completely fabricated all his supposed glory. This never comes up again but as a child I found it a fascinating little aside about the nature of evil. And how also this is basically an animal with a fursona.
Anyway Mariel and the guy get captured by The Foxwolf and Mrs. Foxwolf and thrown in a dungeon. There they meet a cool hare, who I believe was from Salamandastron? But even if he wasn’t, hares are all just Like That. It’s genetic. He helps them escape by prying the hinges off a locked door, which was the coolest shit I’d ever heard when I was ten years old. Didn’t know it was a bit hoary even then, to the point where a book I read a year or two back made sure to note that when two characters had been imprisoned by the villains, the hinges were not on the same side of the door that they were.
They bust out, they do quest stuff, they eventually get caught up with by Mariel’s dad and his friends, there is a battle, the castle is retaken by its rightful owners, because monarchy is awesome as long as you make sure you don’t have an evil one.
Meanwhile.
(Fuck, I’m weirdly psyched for this.)
A couple pirate rat survivors of some pirate scuffle early in the book find their way to the abbey. I have no idea why they do this; it is possible it makes sense because of something I have forgotten. Probably it was just because they were sure the abbey was full of treasures. Bad guys always assumed this, not understanding that the real treasure is harmony and huge quantities of pie. One of these rats had been the captain, one just a random stooge. They convinced the goodbeasts of the abbey to let them stay as they would any other hard up randos from the forest, but were viewed by most with rank suspicion. The captain stayed on mission, trying desperately to locate all that treasure, while the stooge (his name was Blaggut because that is the sort of name you get when you are a pirate rat) was slowly won over by the peace and plenty.
The captain was on mission, but not, like, bright. Having befriended some of the abbey babies, he became convinced that he could trick them into leading him to the treasure, because they were trusting and innocent. In a surprisingly emotional scene for the series, they do, but they’re baby treasures, like, cool rocks and a pretty feather. Enraged, he starts fucking swinging, successfully killing at least one random abbey baby-minder, wounding another, I think? And then he drags his stooge into the night, and then the stooge knifes him, goes back to the abbey to apologize, and becomes a hermit in penitence.
In any other setting, this would be a wholly unremarkable turn of events, but it is Redwall’s first concession that evil might be anything other than a biological condition, written with what passes for subtlety when everything else that’s happening is Swords. I was fascinated by Blaggut. He would have successors, Romsca the ferret pirate captain from Pearls of Lutra being a standout example. In the days of webrings, these guys had dedicated fan pages! Scads of fanfic! Brian Jacques apparently believed that kids’ stories should have black and white, satisfying morality, but his fans proved him wrong, as weird children who feel like outsiders always will. These were the same kids who would write good drow and tragic vampires and fanfiction where the villains were wholly exonerated and the secret good guys all along. And then, you know, keep growing up, but finding the shape of our own worlds and souls through the medium of tragically othered villains was so vital in a certain moment.
And then he wrote Outcast of Redwall, and everyone I know who was even a little bit a Redwall kid is still mad about it to this day.
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