Mossflower

[Banya]

I'm currently re-reading this one, and I'd love to discuss the characters and events of the book.

[Kitsune]

This has always been and forever will be my favorite Redwall book. Why? They give the "vermin" a chance to run instead of just killing them like they do in other books. That always bothered me.

[Banya]

What I love most about Mossflower is that the woodlanders take an offensive on the vermin, whereas in most of the other books, it's the vermin who take offensive action against the Abbey.  The Thousand Eyes Army did venture into the forest to try to capture the woodlanders, but because of Brockhall and Camp Willow and Moledeep and the strategic actions taken by Skipper's crew and Lady Amber's band, the woodlanders were well-hidden and fighting.  I also love the scenes of infiltration by Mask and Chibb.

[Søren]

It's been so long since I've read it, but it's my favorite. Something about it seemed to endear me to it more then any of the other books. Way more then Redwall.

[Skyblade]

Mask is one of my all-time favorite characters and my favorite otter. One who's read the book can guess why.

This one was interesting. I'm not sure what else to say. It didn't captivate me as it did many other readers, but I like it.

[The Skarzs]

It also really captured the spirit Martin had that was so praised in the other books. He was determined, honorable, and relatable to some extent. He made mistakes, he did suffer, and he needed friends to help him.

[Delthion]

The one thing that I don't like in Mossflower, and in practically all the Books, Tsarmina was driven mad. Almost all of the main villains were driven mad before they fought the main good character. This always makes it seem that the main protagonist couldn't have defeated the main antagonist without being driven mad. Gulo, Cluny, Tsarmina. That's all that I am thinking of right now, but all of them were driven mad before they were defeated, and it is almost never the protagonist that kills them, this also makes it seem that even in the weakened state that the main antagonists were in, the protagonist still couldn't have defeated them.

[The Skarzs]

Yes, that is a main occurrence in a lot of the books. (There was also Gabool, who was literally mad.) It might be just to discourage vengeance or killing in general, but a lot of the fights could have been better if both fighters were more properly . . . Equipped, shall we say.

Now, Martin could have killed Tsarmina. In fact, he probably would have if she hadn't tried to flee. He drove her into the water; he was winning the fight. Only difference was that he wasn't the one who killed her.

With Rakkety Tam, Gulo nearly killed the squirrel, and Tam was pretty far from killing the wolverine. They were both rather beat up.
Gabool was running amuck like the mad creature he was, and he was faced with three opponents rather than just one. It was quite reasonable to run and try to find another way to take care of them, which is where the scorpion came in. It wasn't very satisfying to read his death.
Cluny was killed indirectly by Matthias. It was the mouse's actions that killed the warlord, and it was more than mere chance that he was killed by in animate object, unlike with Tam and Gulo. (How ironic. . . Killed by the bell instead of saved by it.)

[James Gryphon]

Well, the fact is that a lot of the villains are vastly more experienced than the protagonists. When they aren't they usually have a big edge in size or strength. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Rakkety Tam could not have killed Gulo without getting a lot of help, or that Martin couldn't beat Tsarmina without her aquaphobia (I disagree with Skarzs' assertion that Martin was winning; we know that he was almost mortally wounded, and there's nothing to suggest that Tsarmina was injured worse than he was). That said, I don't think there's any evidence that insanity decreased the fighting abilities of Cluny or Gabool; I've gone on at length about this before, but to avoid typing out a long essay on a phone, I'll leave it at that.

Finally, I think it is actually more satisfying to have poetic deaths (like Gabool getting killed by his scorpion) than to just say "And then the hero ran the villain through". One time I can think of where that happened was the end of Outcast of Redwall, and it was an extremely underwhelming ending. The big bad villain shouldn't go down easily. If they do, that undermines them throughout the entire book. You want the villain to remain threatening; if the book ends with him dying like any other hordebeast, that's not nearly as likely to happen.

[Delthion]

What I would like is that the protagonist directly kill the antagonist, but with much more difficulty, like losing a limb or two and in a last ounce of desperation managing to kill them.

[Banya]

I agree with that, Del.  I loved the ending of Martin the Warrior.  Seeing Rose killed by Badrang gave Martin an extra rush of hatred and adrenaline.  Martin's victory was less <Martin running Badrang through> than <Badrang falling on Martin's sword>, but I appreciated that Martin still directly killed his enemy.  I'm not disappointed by deaths like Cluny's and Gabool's, as they were endings that fit the villains.  I was disappointed by Kurda's death, though; that was extremely underwhelming.

[LT Sandpaw]

The events in Mossflower would suggest that Martin was in fact losing, and rather badly at that. What was (I think anyway) cool was he had a very Captain America approach to the fight, by the fact that he simply wouldn't give up. Even after taking a severe beating he kept getting up and continuing the fight, way past the normal capacity.