“Loamhedge” by Brian Jacques

It’s funny, I can remember when this book first came out as the most recent in the series.

Anyways, this book evokes a lot of “Mattimeo”, which is pretty nice actually, since that one is one of my favorites. It’s also one of the more familiar books since it’s one of the three to be made into an animated series. Examples of this are during the summer games at the beginning. Saro wins by jumping to the top of the pole, which is exactly what Sam does in “Mattimeo”. There’s also the same walltop race from “Taggerung”.

The main example of a throwback to “Mattimeo” is that the quest to find Loamhedge covers directly over the same path that Matthias took in that story. So landmarks are the same and all that. It also shows how they have changed over the years, with the Lord of Mossflower falling over. The Badger and the Bell remain though.

And of course, the Abbey is being attacked, same as “Mattimeo”. Same as most books really.

Now the reason why this journey to Loamhedge was undertaken was that Martha is a young hare who has been in a wheelchair her whole life. (Note the fact that this series deals with ableism quite well.) She has a dream that a mouse from Loamhedge, who also couldn’t walk but then was mysteriously healed, could help her. Therefore, an otter and a squirrel decide to go and find out what this cure is.

The resolution of this is actually very nice. I don’t want to give it away, but it works out very well. (Although we never do really find out the secret from Loamhedge…)

One nice touch is that the poem that sent them on their way to Loamhedge only mentioned two beasts, the otter and the squirrel. However, three Redwallers sneak off and join them. And it’s fine. Shows how the poems and such don’t have absolute control over the actions in the story, haha!

And a new tribe of shrews is mentioned here, the Guoraf shrews. I wonder if the Guosim turned into them, or if they’re entirely separate?

There’s so much more information that I wish I had about this series, sometimes I don’t think the stories really do it all justice.