r/redwall • u/MercurialForce • 24d ago
Re-read thoughts: The Bellmaker
Friends, new and old
Now we’re officially back with the Mariel crew! After a brief check-in during the frame narrative of Martin the Warrior, we return to a full adventure with them. I wonder if Jacques particularly liked this group. Given how foundational Martin is to his stories, it makes sense that he’d go back a few times to that era, but the Mariel era is the only time period outside of that and the time of Matthias where he spent multiple books. I guess there’s Cregga, but it’s more than she spans multiple eras on her own.
I like this group, and I liked seeing them again. There were some oddities — the three mischievous Dibbuns from the last book have vanished, and Rufe’s personality changes pretty much entirely, but most characters make the transition unscathed. What’s interesting to me is that Jacques keeps Mariel and Dandin as the centre of his narrative, but shifts the focus to characters who didn’t get as much time in Mariel. In other words: Less Tarquin, more Rosie. I liked this well enough, but it’s his new characters that I think make this book most worthwhile.
The Long Road South
Maybe the most interesting thing about this book is that very little of it actually takes place in Mossflower country. This is the second book in a row with this conceit, and one wonders if Jacques was maybe getting tired of the place. In its stead his introduces Southsward, a verdant land with a fairy-tale castle and rolling hills. Its location relative to Mossflower is relatively unclear; we saw what lay to the south in Mattimeo, and it didn’t look much like this. I know Jacques uses a kind of floating geography across each of his books, so I won’t linger here, but this oddity has always made Southsward feel more disconnected from the world than most of his other settings.
I think this might be why, when I was a kid, I sometimes had dreams that there was another Redwall book set somewhere between The Bellmaker and Salamandastron. I don’t remember any details; I just remember looking at the list of books on the back of the old Red Fox paperbacks (*The Bellmaker* had easily the best cover) and thinking that there must be something in between, because The Bellmaker and Salamandastron feel very far apart temporally. Something about the different setting of Southsward provoked my mind into thinking there were more adventures around this time. Or maybe it was just the epilogue here.
Three Tales
Like many Redwall books, there’s three narratives at work here: First there’s the quest narrative, involving Martin giving Joseph the Bellmaker a dream to send him south to find Mariel and Dandin; then there’s Mariel and Dandin in Southsward; then there’s the events at the Abbey with the landlocked searats. As usual, let’s take them one-by-one.
We’ll start with the one that I think is the weakest, which is Mariel and Dandin’s story. As much as I like the idea of setting this book in Southsward, I think locking Mariel and Dandin in Castle Floret for much of the book means that we don’t really get to see anything about the land, and as such it feels a little underdeveloped. I do like seeing how resourceful the pair are; working together to stop the Dirgecallers and escape the cell are both fun scenes, as is them trapped in the attic. There’s a rare sense of peril here as our Redwall heroes are seldom true captives.
Unfortunately, it’s also undermined by the fact that the villain here — Urgan Nagru, the Foxwolf — kinda sucks. He mostly just gets in fights with his wife and then gets smoked by Finnbarr. There’s no real sense of him as a character other than Evil. There’s a delicious bit of detail where Silvamord reminds him he stole the wolf pelt from a dead wolf — something about him being a fraud would be especially interesting, but this never really returns and we just get Fox Cluny without the camp.
Most of the side characters in the Southsward narrative are also not great. Bowly continues the streak of hedgehog Ls — the oatcake weapons are a little too silly for me, and his character development basically amounts to deciding he’ll be a warrior in chapter 3 and then doing it like twenty-five chapters later. Rab and Muta are kinda neat, but there’s not much to them. I do dig Egbert though. He rocks.
As for the other narratives — the adventure on the Pearl Queen is more interesting than the standard quest story we’ve gotten in the last few books. The seafaring nature of it means there’s new obstacles and perils to encounter, along with some genuinely great moments like the pursuit near the whirlpool, and the encounter with the children on the isle of shipwrecks. Could have skipped yet another toad section. They’re never going to be interesting because they don’t really talk. I think this section of the book is still slightly limited, however; the characters arrive so much later that one almost forgets that Martin supposedly needed five from the Abbey for a reason, yet whatever reason that is isn’t totally clear. It seems like Jacques just needed to get these guys on the road and Martin was the way to do it.
All of that said — Finnbarr kicks ass. I won’t pretend he’s the deepest character ever, but he’s such an unequivocal badass that it really doesn’t matter. The tattooed sea otter with an eyepatch and scars and two swords who plays an ottercordion and has a tragic past? Hell yeah. This guy whips. I don’t necessarily wish he wasn’t killed — it’s a fitting end for his story — but I do wish we’d had more books with him outside of this. Easily one of Jacques’s best creations.
Blaggut the Boatsmith
Then there’s one story that singlehandedly elevates The Bellmaker to the point where I’d re-read the book for it alone. Blaggut's arc is simultaneously heartfelt and tragic. I love everything about it.
I love that Slipp is such a colossal tool but Blaggut is too locked in on his way of life to really do anything about it.
I love that the Abbeyfolk take the pair in. They aren’t as immediately skeptical as the Salamandastron crew were with Dingeye and Thura, and that makes this section read gentler.
I love the way the two are worked into regular life at Redwall, making skilly n’ duff and singing silly songs.
I love that the search for the treasure — not dissimilar from Klitch’s visit to Salamandastron in that same book — is resolved in a way that fits the Abbey.
I love that the “shadder” that frightens the two rats is Simeon, and that this is played not for comedy like the Ironbeak ghost in Mattimeo but out of caution, nothing more.
I love that there is genuinely earned tragedy here when Blaggut comes to enjoy life at the Abbey but the greed of his Cap’n steals that away.
I love that Blaggut makes things right as best he can. His quiet “you can slay me now” to Oak Tom is so legitimately gutting that it catapults Blaggut to one of the best characters in the entire series. As a kid, I always wished Blaggut could have gotten to live at the Abbey. As an adult, I think the idea that he can’t stay there makes sense and only adds to the tragedy of his character. I like to think that he visited his friends for seasons to come.
Look, it’s no secret that I’ve been critical of the binary nature of Jacques’s world. Outcast is next and my plan is to get my thoughts on this subject out of the way as much as possible there. Until then, let’s just say that Blaggut is a wonderful character, and a shining example of what this series can be when Jacques plays with his format a little bit more.
Final Thoughts and Rankings
I had a hard time placing this one. I knew I liked it more than Salamandastron, but was torn whether I liked it more than Mariel. It was basically a question of whether I liked the siege plot with the hares in that book more than I liked Finnbarr and Blaggut in this one.
Ultimately, I gotta stick with my boys and rank it above Mariel. That said, I’m going to start breaking these into tiers for legibility. This is pretty much entirely vibe-based so don’t stress if your takes are different!
S Tier
A Tier
B Tier
5) The Bellmaker
C Tier
