this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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Redwall. Such a fun book series, but when you think about it, it strongly endorses something that pretty neatly maps to racial essentialism (the "bad" species, e.g. rats, stoats, ferrets, etc, are portrayed as inevitably irredeemable, even when raised by "good" creatures).
I still have a couple books I got Brian Jacques to sign when I was a kid. Haven't read any of them as an adult though
Yeah I have a signed copy of The Legend of Luke myself. I still love the books, tbh, I just would never suggest that a kid read whichever one has the Veil character (the one that goes whole-hog in explicitly endorsing what I'll call species essentialism). Apparently that was Outcast of Redwall (which as I recall wasn't a very fun book anyway).
Yeah, I enjoyed the books as a kid but there was always something about this that bothered me.
Yeah this is something fantasy suffers from in general but it just feels worse in Redwall. I remember finding it odd even as a kid (partially because I liked the Ferrets and wanted them to be good)
I loved those books. I kept wanting one of the bad creatures to be a hero, i thought there was at least one that did it? Or maybe I just wanted it to happen so much and the author did a switcheroo on me. That said the badgers got me hyped af