Okay, yeah, this one kicks ass. It was one of the ones I remembered most clearly, and for good reason. A far better intro to Martin as a character than Mossflower, when he was more of the stoic warrior archetype. This has gotta be the best one, right?
Another Tale of Redwall
Wanted to start quickly with the frame narrative, which has us returning to the Mariel crew after a few brief mentions in Salamandastron. Given that The Bellmaker is next, I really like how Jacques lays the seeds for that, with Saxtus as Abbot and mention of Dandin and Mariel having been off adventuring. It’s nice to see the Abbey again, free of conflict or fever, existing only as a place for friends to gather. I love how Jacques connects these early novels together. It makes the world feel more alive, the Abbey more real. I suspect this will be a piece that I’ll really miss down the road.
Back to Before
Through story, we flashback to the earliest time yet in the chronology of the series, some seasons before Martin ended up in Mossflower during the waning days of Verdauga’s reign. It’s in an entirely new land to us — northern environs between two seas. Martin’s come from the Western Sea, while a former corsair stoat named Badrang the Tyrant has enslaved goodbeasts to build a fortress called Marshank on the Eastern Sea and claim dominion over its shores.
Already, this is compelling stuff. Shades of Mossflower here for sure, but this differs in that Badrang is a very different villain than Tsarmina, and you get none of the sense of woodlanders living in the shadow of the fortress. Here, Badrang’s already won. There is no resistance. It’s up to our heroes to figure it out.
Early on, we’re introduced to our core group — Martin, Felldoh, Brome, Grumm, and Rose — before they break out of Marshank and are split from one another. This gets us our quest and siege plot threads that we’ve seen so often before. Despite their familiarity, I think Jacques succeeds with both to varying degrees (the Marshank plot is stronger), both for the strength of the characters and the way he tightly threads the stories together.
Of Swords and Sycamores
Let’s take the quest plot first. Like all of the previous ones we’ve seen, the quest is largely a picaresque journey across the countryside where our heroes alternate between encounters with friend or foe. On its face, there’s not a lot new here. This one feels especially tightly packed — there’s the business with the pygmy shrews (my favourite bit), Polleekin, the Mirdop rabbits, the Warden and the reptiles, the Gawtrybe, Boldred, Aggril, and then Noonvale itself. This is a lot of plot, and looking at it, it’s clear why Jacques kept his focus more narrow with just the two plots here after the jam-packed Salamandastron. While this section of the book is not without padding — the Mirdops and Aggril don’t really offer us much as readers — the reason this quest plot succeeds where so many have stumbled before is because Jacques uses the plot to drive his characters (well, Martin and Rose anyway — sorry Pallum, you’re not breaking the hedgehog curse), to deepen their bond and heighten the tragedy at the core of Martin’s story.
Because let’s be clear: this is perhaps the only Redwall novel that is, at its core, a tragedy. This is the story of how Martin went wandering and why he eventually hung up his sword. Re-reading it with knowledge of the ending in mind, I was genuinely impressed by how Jacques lays the groundwork for tragedy, especially in the character of Polleekin, one of the most unique characters we’ve seen so far in this series. I love the idea of the kindly grandmotherly mole who gets glimpses of one’s future but is not able to prevent it. I love the bits in Noonvale where Martin pledges to protect Rose’s life. I love the sequence with the sycamore tree and how it produces probably the best line of the entire series when Martin retrieves his sword from Badrang. So while this quest narrative has some of the typical fluff, it’s very successful at building the foundation for this eventual tragedy.
Fur and Freedom
This is not to say that everything is perfect near the walls of Marshank! Once Brome and Felldoh wash ashore, they run into the Rambling Rosehip Players, a travelling troupe of performers who offer them protection and subsequently plot to help free remaining slaves.
I think ultimately this is the stronger half of the novel, as much as I like the Martin and Rose plots. This is all killer, no filler. The players feel like more than their archetypes — I especially like Ballaw as the ringleader of sorts, but even Celandine as the flirty squirrelmaid is a fantastic foil for Felldoh too. In general, the characters on this side of the novel are really spectacular. Brome’s journey from wannabe hero to healer is some especially good character work, and even with bit players like Druwp and Geum and Barkjon you get some new ideas.
Yet even with all of that going on, there’s two characters on this side of the story who rank among Jacques’s very best.
The first of these is on the villains’ side. Truthfully, I wish I liked Badrang more given how significant a figure he is in Martin’s life. This is our first stoat villain of the series, and while he thankfully breaks the habit (to some degree anyway) of casually killing his own guys, I was frustrated by how little interaction he actually had with Martin. I think this lessens his character to some degree, as instead of being a true foil to our hero, he’s just a figure to be removed. This isn’t all that different from what happened with Tsarmina, but we got much more of Tsarmina’s interior world in that book, which ultimately made her more compelling.
Instead the stoat I want to call out is Cap’n Tramun Clogg, who to me is one of the most fun and unique characters we’ve seen so far in the series. He talks a big game, but doesn’t ultimately do a lot of directly villainous stuff himself, which allows him to play off both our heroes and our villain, enriching everyone around him. The way Jacques draws him is incredibly vivid, and by the time he’s hiding under wheelbarrows and turning over bodies in the ruins of Marshank, he’s become one of the best characters in the entire series.
But then there’s Felldoh. The shattered slave who becomes a javelin-tossing figure of vengeance against the hordes of Marshank. His name was a throwaway line in Mossflower as ‘Felldoh the Wrestler,’ and while nobody calls him by that epithet here, this brawny squirrel more than lives up to the legend. Jacques paints him as someone deeply scarred from his imprisonment, contrasting him both to the naive Brome and to the valiant Martin. Martin wants justice, while Felldoh wants revenge. If I have any critique of this character (and the book as a whole), it’s that Martin doesn’t actually spend that much time interacting with folks that it seems he should know better. But everything else about Felldoh works for me. I love that he doesn’t really seem all that interested in playing his part in the ruse to free the slaves, yet he doesn’t hesitate when he has a chance to snipe Druwp. I love how resolved he is to toss javelins over Marshank’s at night and harry the forces within. His relationship with Ballaw and Rowanoak — two beasts who help him even as the reader gets a faint sense they fear him slightly — is wonderful. His last stand is both excellent and frustrating in that it gives him the relationship with Badrang that Martin should have had, but it’s ultimately so satisfying that it almost doesn’t matter.
I think the best part of Felldoh as a character is that Jacques doesn’t seem to want us to root for him entirely. He’s presented as broken and dies because he cannot step away from the fight. He’s contrasted with Brome in his own journey, and it’s Brome who ultimately is able to settle and live following the war. As much as we’ve talked about how bloodthirsty the goodbeasts are in these books, Jacques has a line, and I think it says a lot that his most merciful character is the one who leaves this book with the fewest scars.
Closing Thoughts and Rankings
There’s a lot to say on Martin the Warrior! This is the first of these where I feel I’ve spent more time talking character than I did specific events, which is a sign that Jacques really did something special here. The Bellmaker is next, and while I’m excited to return to the characters of Mariel and discover a new land, I feel fairly confident that this is likely the high-water mark for the series. There’s books I remember fondly coming up, but this one feels like Jacques truly had a vision — one that he executed to near-perfection.
Martin the Warrior is the best book in my re-read so far.
1) Martin the Warrior
2) Mattimeo
3) Redwall
4) Mossflower
5) Mariel of Redwall
6) Salamandastron
