Amph Is Redwall even worth it anymore?

I just read one of the more recent books (Rakkety Tam) and it was kinda dull. Just want some opinions.

 

Not really, in my opinion. The first few books were good, but for me, it just started getting repetitive later on.

 

Aren't there 20+ books? These were popular 10 years ago, but IMO they've outlasted their good run.

 

Precisely 20, to be exact. I'll agree, back then there were only about 10 of them, and they varied in the story enough to be interesting. By now, though, they're just repeating the same formula.

 

It's a pitfall for any long running series.

The basic problem is: how do you keep things fresh and new without getting too far from your core original story? If you keep too close to your original themes, ideas, characters, plots, your story rapidly becomes stale. If you change things too much, it can put off readers (or viewers, or whatever kind of person your media attracts) for being something else that they didn't sign up for.

The problem is really visable in comics. How often do Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson get seperated, how often does Jean Grey die, how often does Iron Man go from hero to goat, how often does Batman go on brooding about everything he loses, and honestly, when was the last time Superman was interesting as a character (Actually, I know the answer to the last one: Red Son, which wasn't even in the main DC universe). Look at Anita Blake, look at Xanth, look at the Star Wars EU, etc. The more you do in the universe, the more you risk either falling into a rut or changing too much for your readers. Look at Star Trek and how the franchise slowly died off during the Voyager/Enterprise years.

How do you keep it interesting? You age the characters, you kill characters off, you match them up and break them up. If nothing ever changes, that annoys the people who like seeing characters actually progress and grow and change. If you match up characters or kill people off, you risk offending shippers or killing off the reason why someone reads your series. There's no way to win in the long term. Eventually, the choices the author makes add up, and the series is either stale - readers leave from lack of interest. Or, because too much has changed - readers leave because their favorites didn't turn out as they had hoped.

There's nothing harder in writing to do than a long series, and especially with where to end it. Neil Gaiman had it best, in my opinion. He realized early on in the Sandman that there's no happily ever after. Any story, carried far enough, ends in death. So, Gaiman wrote a story about how the King of Dreams learned that all things must change or die, and how he made his choice. Gaiman figured out where he was going with Sandman, the general idea of how he was going to get there, and wrote it out. BKV did the same with Y: The Last Man (which has the greatest last panel of any comic ever), Mike Carey did the same with Lucifer.

So, in short: change sucks but so does not changing, trying not to piss off the shippers while trying to keep all the shippers happy is really hard, and not knowing where to ends things is very bad and happens far too often.

 

Well said, Raven.

I actually only enjoyed two of the Redwall novels -- Martin the Warrior (which was the first one I read, and my favourite) and Mossflower. I found that the books started losing their charm quite quickly.

 

Raven, you're my hero. I agree with everything you said.

 

The Redwall book is always a good read and it is still one of my favorite books from when I was younger. Mossflower was epic in every way and Mattimeo was just fantastic in its depth, scope, and story. All of the others, and I've read many of them, seemed to follow the same formula as the at least one of the original three. Jacques knew that he had created a niche market and he exploited it quite well.

I might not read the Redwall series any more but I will definitely have them for my son to read when he's old enough.

 

Raven....you make a fantastic point.

I think that the biggest sign that a comic has lost it's touch is Spidey's "Brand New Day" storyline. Yeah, it reworked the universe drastically, but it was a sign that the writers were desperate because honestly, where does one go after "Civil War"? It just made a tired comic more tired.

As for Redwall, it actually was quite good until after "Legend of Luke". Then it slid downhill fast.


By the way, the reason I don't use italics is because my computer sucks.

 

I've read some of the Redwall books from the library and I can see what you mean by it - rats, foxes, virtually all carnivores aside from badgers and otters were the bad guys, all the other animals good...Although in some of the books like The Outcast of Redwall and The Taggerung made some interesting twists in that theme, virtually all the characters just seemed to be recyled from previous books with different names! They are still enjoyable if you can move past that, but I can see why readers who've been reading them a while will get fed up of them eventually.

With Star Wars EU, the peak was the NJO (in spite of some of it's flaws), and now I can hardly bring myself to read anything with Luke Skywalker, etc in them. I had a pleasent surprise when I read the first Darth Bane novel recently, so maybe there's still some life in Star Wars yet...

 

So just out of curiosity, how long is the author planning to continue with this series?

 

For as long as they keep selling, I expect.