The Bellmaker
core novel 1995 Redwall
Record
| First published | 1995 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.00 (24,899 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780399228056 |
Synopsis
The Bellmaker opens with the arrival of the foxwolf Urgan Nagru and his wife Silvamord, who storm Castle Floret with an army of rats and capture its squirrel royal family along with their nursemaid through Silvamord's deception. Joseph the Bellmaker, father of Mariel, takes up the role of hero this time, recruiting a varied band of warriors, including a hare, a hedgehog, a squirrel, moles, and shrews, inspired by the example of Martin the Warrior, to mount a rescue. While Mariel and her companions find themselves trapped within enemy territory as they try to free the captured royals, Joseph leads his own rescue force on a perilous sea voyage toward Castle Floret, the two efforts unfolding together against Nagru's tyranny.
Where it sits
- Universe: Redwall
- Series: Redwall core; position 7 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 7 of 22: previous Martin the Warrior (1993) · next Outcast of Redwall (1995)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Redwall
- FantasticFiction: Brian Jacques's Redwall books in order
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bellmaker
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