Redwall
core novel 1986 Redwall
Record
| First published | 1986 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.15 (132,513 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 352 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780091650902 |
Synopsis
Redwall is set at Redwall Abbey, home to a peaceful community of mice and other woodland creatures living under the guidance of its Father Abbot. Matthias, a young novice monk raised as an orphan within the abbey, longs for adventure and is drawn to old legends of Martin the Warrior, whose sword is said to be hidden somewhere within the abbey's walls. When the one-eyed warlord rat Cluny the Scourge leads his horde against Redwall, intent on conquering it, Matthias sets out on a quest to find Martin's legendary weapon so that he can help defend his home. As Cluny's forces press their siege of the abbey through repeated schemes and assaults, Matthias's search for the lost sword becomes inseparable from the wider struggle for Redwall's survival.
Where it sits
- Universe: Redwall
- Series: Redwall core; position 1 of 22 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Brian Jacques
Notes
- From the series record (Redwall): Brian Jacques's 22-novel high-fantasy sequence of anthropomorphic animals centered on Redwall Abbey, one continuous author-written saga (1986-2011; Jacques died shortly after The Rogue Crew's publication, completing the series). Listed here in original publication order; internal chronology deliberately left unpopulated -- the series' own well-documented publication-vs-internal-chronology divergence (e.g. Mossflower and Martin the Warrior are set generations before Redwall itself) is stated in prose per the same convention already applied to Valdemar's Last Herald-Mage set. Registered per the genre-boundary-transparency convention (talking-animal fantasy, same treatment already extended to Pern's dragons) -- this canon's marketing/critical consensus treats Redwall unambiguously as fantasy, not an animal fable in the Watership Down sense. No independently confirmable award history found.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Redwall: position 1 of 22: next Mossflower (1988)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Redwall
- FantasticFiction: Brian Jacques's Redwall books in order
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwall_(novel)
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