John > Recent Status Updates

I haven't read this in a while and I don't quite remember where I left off, but I just read Chapter 23-25. They mostly consisted of someone nearly drowning in mud, racism against lizards for some reason (who were doing nothing) and firefighting. It was alright I guess, but nothing super memorable. It is fun reading about the battle tactics in these books though.

I notice when a book is mediocre but decent I get a little antsy looking for interesting writing details, negative or not. It is somewhat obvious jacques wrote this redwall time period with the mindset of needing the characters to be different enough from the redwall/mattimeo cast to avoid confusion. The plot seems to be rushing itself a bit. Suddenly a magic sword appears and mariel is out on a quest already. idk

I remember reading William Horwood's Skallagrigg when I was hardly old enough to understand its themes and what it meant, but it stuck with me and I found the author after all this time thinking about it. His style of writing is definitely descriptive and memorable, and I can immediately see how I remembered his other book so well just by the way his descriptions stick in my mind here. It is artistically written.

Pretty good so far. Interesting how this book is inbetween mossflower and redwall. I don't think a single character featured in either of those books is alive here, they mention being related several generations down from mossflower protagonists. I like how jacques doesn't give the whole timeline away, kind of a puzzle connecting what happened when.

Great ending. I read the last third of the book in one sitting so that should be an indicator that I liked it. It was cool seeing how things worked out to be the way they were in the first book, with enough details left out that another book could fill in the gaps. With redwall I was kind of like, eh that was fine, but now that I've read the second book I want to read the rest!

kotir army seemed to be at their lowest, although a big group of foxes showed up and decided to help kill/enslave everyone in mossflower. Moles are going to dig under kotir to flood it with a river, and make it fall into an underground lake. engaging enough that I want to see how it ends, so that's good i guess.

I thought it was interesting how this book and the last both had main antagonists taunted with nightmares of how they were going to die. In fact, here's my prediction: Tsarmina falls into a river or something and drowns. I have a feeling the book will play out that way. Not that that wouldn't be satisfying with all the buildup, just a little predictable.