Lord Brocktree by Brian Jacques
Reviewed by Shiven
The badger, Lord
Brocktree, grimaces as he sails into the harbor of Salamandastron. Every male
badger eventually arrives at the legendary mountain, Salamandastron, and
claims it for himself, and this year, it is Brocktree’s turn. But shockingly, he
finds his father killed, the hares that serve at the great mountain imprisoned,
and a vermin wildcat ruling the mountain!
Lord Brocktree by Brian Jacques is an
intriguing read that will captivate the mind of any avid reader. Lord
Brocktree, the 11th badger lord of a certain royal lineage, must journey to
Salamandastron with the help of a haremaid (Dotti), an
army of hedgehogs, and many others. However, Ungatt Trunn, the evil wildcat,
has an army of unprecedented size and the badger lord finds that the only way
to win the battle will be to kill Ungatt in a one-on-one fight! Will the great
badger ever overthrow the evil wildcat?
I fell in love with this
book as soon as I picked it up. One of the many reasons I liked the book is
because of its winding and supremely complicated plot. In most of the adventure
books I have read, the protagonist is given a straightforward quest to
complete. Not in Lord Brocktree! Instead of the usual, plain plot in many other
novels of the same genre, this book pits the protagonist against a series of
brutal challenges and armies of unprecedented size. For example, when Stonepaw,
Brocktree’s father, is moving his army of hares out of Salamandastron using the
tunnels beneath the revered mountain, he unexpectedly faces an army of
unfriendly king crabs. After engaging in a fierce battle Brocktree’s army come
to a truce with the crabs and are granted a safe voyage through shellfish territory.
This is just one example of the unexpected events that occur during the novel.
A second reason I liked
the novel is because of the unique voice that each species has. This makes the
novel much more rapid because I could identify a character by the way that they
talk, so the author didn’t actually have to tell me who is speaking. For
example, the moles have a very thick accent, while the vermin (rats, weasels,
stoats, ferrets, etc.) use a weird slang. Although some characters’ accents are
extremely hard to understand while reading to yourself, if you simply read the
sentence out loud everything that the character says seems to make sense.
I would rate this book a
10/10, but let me make myself clear: if you are afraid of blood and gore, this
is not the book for you! This novel is the thirteenth book in the Redwall
series, but it makes perfect sense without reading any of the other books. Once
again, I love this book more than any other of its genre and would recommend it
to any battle-loving reader!
Firebird Fantasies, 357 pages
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