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Book Review | . |
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The Bellmaker | . |
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Brian Jacques |
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| The Bellmaker tells us about a castle called Castle Floret which lies
far to the south of Redwall in the lands of Southsward. The Foxwolf, Urgan Nagru, his
mate, Silvamord, and thier band of sea rats take over the castle by defeating Gael
Squirrelking. Gael, his friend Rab Streambattle and some fierce warriors must retake
command of Floret before the Foxwolf rules all of Southsward. Mariel of Redwall and Dandin are in Southsward and they soon join the fight for good on the side of the Squirrel King. A search party is sent from Redwall to look for Mariel and Dandin so of course it is not long before they too have joined the fight with all the good creatures of the Southsward who have been recruited by the hedgehog Bowly Pintips. In between the action, there is, as always, lots of meals and feasts and lots of people being rescued. The hares have their usual "wot wot" speach and accent and the moles as always have their country-style "Burr you'm sure ee can manage dinner?". My Mum thinks this makes all the characters the same in each book and she gets confused but I like ti and I think it makes Redwall seem like a whole other world where different species of animals have their own species characteristics. You can tell straight away if a mole is speaking. One of the funniest bits in this book is where Meldrum the Magnificent (a hare) calls Egbert the mole, who speaks "properly" rather in mole speak, "Educated Egbert". Edgbert takes offence! I like the action in these books and I like all the descriptive writing. I sometimes like to try and draw the people in the stories too. This book had a different illustrator to some of the other ones but I could not really tell the difference - their styles must be very similar! 7th March 2000 |
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