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primeideal"Redwall," a fantasy series about anthropomorphic rodents and other woodland creatures, was one of my favorite series as a kid. The heroic quests! The varieties of organizations and accents! So when I saw a Reddit post looking for recommendations of similar books, I was intrigued by the "Deptford Mice" trilogy, which was billed as a dark fantasy. And while the first book didn't really work for me, it's an interesting compare-and-contrast with the Redwall series.
Like Redwall, "The Dark Portal" features mice as the good guys and an army of rats as the enemy. And like Redwall, there's not a whole lot of moralizing or speculating about what makes mice good or rats evil--it just is. They both are written by UK authors, and feature a range of accents depicting the linguistic diversity of the British Isles. Redwall is set in a fictional secondary world, and while there are a few anachronistic this-world mentions in the first book, by and large humans and their creations don't exist. In contrast, as the name might suggest, the Deptford Mice speak Cockney rhyming slang, visit Greenwich Observatory, and cross the road like they're playing "Frogger." (I wanted to see even more of this weirdness--what do human objects look like to a mouse scale?)
Redwall goes back and forth between several different POV characters, in third-person limited. The Deptford Mice jumps back and forth much more quickly, paragraphs at a time, so that it's effectively third-person omniscient. In both cases, there's humor to be drawn from the villains' infighting and power-struggles; they often are much more cruel to each other than the villains are to them. In Redwall, we get to hear in-universe poems and songs (although I know some readers aren't fans of this trope in general); in Deptford, we have to settle for summaries.
Redwall is set at the titular Abbey, and the first book features an evil snake named Asmodeus. Quests are often given by the spirit of Martin, the Abbey's founding Warrior, appearing in people's dreams and giving them mystical advice. Critics may point out that this is kind of cheesy and/or cliche.
But the Redwall protagonists are beasts of action and free will next to the Deptford Mice, who very rarely "do things" so much as "react to things being done." The prologue lampshades this when Albert Brown strays into the Grille, a scary evil place that leads to the realm of the rats:
But then the tone shifts rapidly, and the Green Mouse becomes referenced as someone whom pious mice pray to--"if there really is a Green Mouse, why does he allow such suffering?" Arthur's ceremony goes off without incident, but Audrey's is a mystical experience--she beholds the Green Mouse, who tells her never to surrender her new mousebrass. She refuses to accept her father's death, and goes into the Grille in search of him; when she returns, she promises her mother never to return. But then, oh no, she left her mousebrass behind! So she really has to have someone go back on her behalf, it was important, she had a vision and everything, but she promised her mother. And then there are the mysterious bats in the attic of the house. It really feels like the "higher powers" are duking it out and the POV mice characters are just dragged along for the ride. Maybe that's supposed to be making a statement about the nature of faith and the divine, but it's not very interesting to read a book with this little agency.
There's a foreign rat from Morocco who I'm guessing would be considered "problematic" by today's hot-take crowd, she speaks in an affected accent and is hungry for magic powers beyond the fake fortune-telling she does. The ebook copy I read may have suffered from poorly-uploaded OCR, because there felt like a lot of typos and misplaced punctuation. This book may be better for middle-grade readers, and/or as a readaloud with amusing accents. Ultimately, I think it's possible that if I reread Redwall it might not hold up as well as I remember it, but I still think that it would do everything "The Dark Portal" does, and better.
Bingo: Non-Human Protagonist, probably Family Ties, maybe Urban Fantasy?
Like Redwall, "The Dark Portal" features mice as the good guys and an army of rats as the enemy. And like Redwall, there's not a whole lot of moralizing or speculating about what makes mice good or rats evil--it just is. They both are written by UK authors, and feature a range of accents depicting the linguistic diversity of the British Isles. Redwall is set in a fictional secondary world, and while there are a few anachronistic this-world mentions in the first book, by and large humans and their creations don't exist. In contrast, as the name might suggest, the Deptford Mice speak Cockney rhyming slang, visit Greenwich Observatory, and cross the road like they're playing "Frogger." (I wanted to see even more of this weirdness--what do human objects look like to a mouse scale?)
Redwall goes back and forth between several different POV characters, in third-person limited. The Deptford Mice jumps back and forth much more quickly, paragraphs at a time, so that it's effectively third-person omniscient. In both cases, there's humor to be drawn from the villains' infighting and power-struggles; they often are much more cruel to each other than the villains are to them. In Redwall, we get to hear in-universe poems and songs (although I know some readers aren't fans of this trope in general); in Deptford, we have to settle for summaries.
He was shocked at the way the rats glorified death and sang about it in this way--murders, stranglings, guttings and roastings, all sorts of barbaric cruelties were chanted.
And then there's the matter of religion.Redwall is set at the titular Abbey, and the first book features an evil snake named Asmodeus. Quests are often given by the spirit of Martin, the Abbey's founding Warrior, appearing in people's dreams and giving them mystical advice. Critics may point out that this is kind of cheesy and/or cliche.
But the Redwall protagonists are beasts of action and free will next to the Deptford Mice, who very rarely "do things" so much as "react to things being done." The prologue lampshades this when Albert Brown strays into the Grille, a scary evil place that leads to the realm of the rats:
There was just no reason and he kicked himself for it. With a shudder he remembered the warnings that he had given his own children: ‘Beware of the Grille!’ He had never been brave or overtly curious, so why did the Grille call to him that spring morning, and what was the urge to explore that gripped him so?
And into the last chapter:...something was guiding her small, delicate feet towards him. It was as if this meeting had been decided long ago fated since before she had been born. Now she was merely carrying out the part set for her.
While Albert is missing, his children, Arthur and Audrey, go through a coming-of-age ceremony where they pass through the Chambers of Winter and Summer to receive their mousebrasses, metal icons that represent some symbol of their destiny. The Maypole imagery here is very reminiscent of the Bel Tine festival in the first Wheel of Time book--and the worldbuilding seems to be based on British pre-Christian religion and mythology. Included in that is the Green Mouse, who at first seems to be an expy of the Green Man. (Ironically, I saw a book review recently that suggested that, while some ancient religions' reconstructions in the modern day do seem to be truly old-school deities, the "Green Man" himself may be more a synthetic reconstruction--which of course didn't stop Robert Jordan from stealing him, either.)But then the tone shifts rapidly, and the Green Mouse becomes referenced as someone whom pious mice pray to--"if there really is a Green Mouse, why does he allow such suffering?" Arthur's ceremony goes off without incident, but Audrey's is a mystical experience--she beholds the Green Mouse, who tells her never to surrender her new mousebrass. She refuses to accept her father's death, and goes into the Grille in search of him; when she returns, she promises her mother never to return. But then, oh no, she left her mousebrass behind! So she really has to have someone go back on her behalf, it was important, she had a vision and everything, but she promised her mother. And then there are the mysterious bats in the attic of the house. It really feels like the "higher powers" are duking it out and the POV mice characters are just dragged along for the ride. Maybe that's supposed to be making a statement about the nature of faith and the divine, but it's not very interesting to read a book with this little agency.
There's a foreign rat from Morocco who I'm guessing would be considered "problematic" by today's hot-take crowd, she speaks in an affected accent and is hungry for magic powers beyond the fake fortune-telling she does. The ebook copy I read may have suffered from poorly-uploaded OCR, because there felt like a lot of typos and misplaced punctuation. This book may be better for middle-grade readers, and/or as a readaloud with amusing accents. Ultimately, I think it's possible that if I reread Redwall it might not hold up as well as I remember it, but I still think that it would do everything "The Dark Portal" does, and better.
Bingo: Non-Human Protagonist, probably Family Ties, maybe Urban Fantasy?
