Mossflower | ||||||||||||
Brian Jacques | ||||||||||||
Ace Books, 373 pages | ||||||||||||
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A review by Georges T. Dodds
Mossflower is not the first work to imbue animals with human
traits. Aesop's (6th century BC) and Jean de la Fontaine's
(17th century AD) fables both used animal protagonists in their moral
cautionary tales. More recently, books like Paul Gallico's
Jennie (1950), Richard Adams' Watership Down (1972),
William Horwood's Duncton Wood series (1980-present), and
Gabriel King's The Wild Road (1998), have produced more or less
anthropomorphic animal characters. However, the standard to which
such tales are compared is still Kenneth Grahame's children's classic
The Wind in the Willows (1908).
Perhaps inspired by the
idealized evocation of the English countryside of such late-Victorian
fantasists as William Morris, Richard Jefferies, and Sir Henry Newbolt,
and very much like Grahame's work, Mossflower presents a rich
pastoral setting and endearing animal characters. Jacques' world of
anthropomorphized woodland creatures is well detailed. Descriptions
of the foods and drinks of the woodland folk are
mouthwatering. Different species speak in different dialects
(particularly moles), and specialize in different trades and
weaponry. There is plenty of action and adventure, with narrow escapes
galore -- plenty of material to keep a young reader happy. These are
amongst the many reasons why the Redwall series has been
so popular. However, the best novels for young adults are those that
can appeal, perhaps on different levels, to both younger and older
readers. At the risk of offending the legions of Redwall
fans, this is where I find that Mossflower fails dismally.
Right from the very beginning it is made quite clear that the Mossflower
residents are paragons of virtue, while Tsarmina and her minions are
either evil and/or incompetent. Not a single Mossflower citizen nor
a single minion of Tsarmina's even consider aiding or defecting to the
other side. All of Tsarmina's weasel and stoat soldiery are painted with
the same brush -- all are quarrelsome, stupidly incompetent, and
status-hungry, eat mouldy rations, and apparently have no wives or children.
On the other hand, the Mossflower residents co-operate, are intelligent, thrifty, brilliant battle tacticians, return from a battle to
crumpets, deep-dish pies and an assortment of wines and teas, and have
loving home lives with cute and slightly mischievous children. Worse
yet is that when any character on Tsarmina's side shows the least bit
of leadership or intelligence, they are quickly and more or less
randomly killed off.
Similarly, within a few dozen pages it was patently obvious that while
there might be a few hurdles and a few unfortunate deaths, the good guys
would ultimately defeat the bad.
The apparently poor oppressed residents of Mossflower are not as saintly
as it might at first appear. One of them, Mask, a master of disguise,
lures a fox-minion of Tsarmina's -- Fortunata -- into believing he can
help her infiltrate the Mossflower community. She, admittedly a spy,
is confronted and then shot down in cold blood and left to rot in the
woods. However, when Mask is discovered aiding in the escape of
Gingivere and two young hedgehogs from Kotir and Tsarmina fatally shoots
him with an arrow, he is given the Mossflower equivalent of a state
funeral and his death is added to the litany of Tsarmina's heinous
crimes -- talk about a double standard.
At other times, the Mossflower
forces apparently disappear into the woods, only to fire a deadly
volley of arrows at the admittedly doltish enemy forces. While this
in itself is fine, they follow their slaughter by dishonourably
laughing aloud at the enemy survivors.
At this point, I actually began wishing Tsarmina might actually emerge
victorious, as she was certainly far more interesting than any of the
supposed heroes of the story. Tsarmina, a parricide and imprisoner
of her brother, while certainly not well-intentioned towards the
Mossflower-folk, actually does relatively little to deserve her
overwhelmingly evil reputation. The oppression of the woodfolk apparently
dates back to her father's reign, so whatever her intentions she cannot
entirely be blamed for it. Her first two military forays into the woods
are both in response to escaping prisoners, and only after these does she
lead specifically punitive raids. This is not to say that Tsarmina is
a saint -- far from it. But on the other hand she isn't the devil incarnate
that the Mossflower folk portray her to be.
Tsarmina is by far the most
interesting and least one-dimensional character in the whole book. She
is an excellent archer, and the only military tactician on her
side. She must hold together her crumbling kingdom surrounded by a
bunch of whining, infighting incompetents -- not an easy task. One
does wonder towards the end why she has such an insane fear of water,
and although not stated anywhere, one may assume she has had a
premonition of her own death. However, this unexplained fear of water
seems a bit odd since, unlike domesticated cats, most wild cats are
quite comfortable in water.
The main heroic characters, Martin, Gonff, and Dinny, while cute and
cuddly for young readers, have no complexity to their personalities:
they do not go beyond a simplistic "me and my friends -- good;
enemy -- bad" mentality. While they encounter many physical challenges,
they are never put in a morally ambiguous position where they might need
to question their motives or reconsider their assessment of the enemy.
Furthermore, their only solution to any conflict seems to be to either
run or fight, but never to actually enter into a dialogue with the enemy.
Finally, I saw no great originality in Mossflower. The underdog hero(es) fighting the
incredibly evil despot, the prophecy in the murals, the instructions
in the form of riddles, the always necessary quest through the token
mountains and swampland, and the castle sinking under flood waters
have all been done before. Nothing in Mossflower elevates the
novel above dozens of others with a slightly different assemblage
of the age-old building blocks.
Given the fast-paced story, all these criticisms can certainly be
overlooked by the average young reader, but discerning young readers
and older readers may find this title not entirely satisfying.
Georges Dodds is a research scientist in vegetable crop physiology, who for close to 25 years has read and collected close to 2000 titles of predominantly pre-1950 science-fiction and fantasy, both in English and French. He writes columns on early imaginative literature for WARP, the newsletter/fanzine of the Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association. |
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