“Eulalia!” by Brian Jacques

Continuing on our adventure through the Redwall series, here we have returned to characters from Salamandastron. The Badger Lord Asheye has had a vision that a new badger will be coming to the mountain soon to take his place, so he sends out the young hare Maudie to find him and bring him back. Unfortunately Maudie has a run in with some Brownrats who decide to take Redwall Abbey. And meanwhile said badger Gorath has been captured by Sea Raiders who are heading towards Redwall Abbey to take it as well. Oh boy.

I know that I tend to go on and on about how sick I am of the tropes in this series (we haven’t had a quest to somewhere other than Redwall in a while and I’m getting a little tired of everyone attacking the Abbey) but I’ll try to keep my moaning to a minimum since I did really like this story. I mean sure the plot has been done before (literally they try to dig under the Abbey wall and that has definitely been done before like come on), but let’s move on from that shall we. Because there is tons to like here, mostly the characters.

First of all there’s Maudie. I’ve always been fond of the hares with their amusing way of talking and tendency to have good senses of humor, but she’s excellent as a character. Always ready to defend herself and others, and make a huge meal along with it. Of course she’s also able to talk herself out of trouble all the time.

On the other side, there’s Gruntan Kurdly, the leader of the Brownrats. Most of the bad guys in this series start off sane and slowly descend into madness, this guy starts off bonkers and only gets worse! It’s really funny to read about how he’s lecturing the rats on eggs or how he insists that he’s the biggest animal out there, therefore all badgers are actually tiny.

While we’re at it, having two groups of baddies attacking the Abbey is a little out of the ordinary and rather inventive since you can see how they destroy each other. They also chase each other around for some time which is always entertaining, especially since the heroes can see all that’s going on from the top of the Abbey wall.

Another plotline that I really liked and thought should have gotten more attention was Orkwil Prink’s. He starts off as a thieving hedgehog who is kicked out of the Abbey, but then finds Gorath and ends up saving the day in the end. I would have loved to have seen more of his development throughout, the spotlight was usually off of him and on the badger since they were always together.

Despite the fact that this book relies on tried and true plot lines, there are some incredible characters whose antics are hilarious. Which is what this series really is for, you don’t read it for the plot since we all know how it’s going to go, you read it to hear of heroic hares and brave badgers.