Marlfox

[theradicalchild]

Marlfox by Brian Jacques

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this tale of Redwall, the titular Marlfoxes, a special breed of vulpine, led by Queen Silth, haunt Mossflower Wood and steal the tapestry of Martin the Warrior from Redwall Abbey, with a party consisting of the two children of squirrel warriors, Dannflor Reguba and Songbreeze Swifteye, following them, with the shrew Dippler and watervole Burble accompanying them. The prologue features a poem about wandering players, with plenty of other good poetry throughout the novel, and the first main chapter introduces several characters including Song’s father Janglur Swifteye, not to mention Ascrod and his sister Vanna, children of Queen Silth.

The wandering players, the Sensational Wandering Noonvale Companions Troupe, are enroute to Redwall Abbey, where a squirrel, old Friar Butty, serves as Recorder, mentioning the dry, rainless summer, and the death of the former Abbey Warrior and Abbot Arven, not to mention Abbess Tansy. Throughout the story, the Redwallers clash with the Marlfoxes and occasional rats and other “vermin,” with Dannflor having sporadic visions of Martin the Warrior, along with a featured power struggle including another of the Marlfoxes, Mokkan, High Queen Silth herself occasionally haunted by an entity known as the White Ghost.

The weather does ultimately become rainy early on, with several other notable characters such as Gawjo the squirrel warrior, and the osprey Megraw. There are links to the book’s chronological predecessor and a few characters present then, as well, and the story the author tells well, with the political theme of power struggle always being welcome in the fantasy genre. However, as with its precursors, Jacques takes the Tolkien-esque black-and-white depiction of the various species as inherently good or evil, with the eleventh Redwall book mostly being on par with prior entries, not a bad thing.

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