THE LEGEND OF LUKE

The 12th book in the animated epic about the inhabitants and friends and enemies of Redwall Abbey, this is a grand, seafaring odyssey about Martin the mouse warrior and his treacherous return to the place of his youth. After the evil Vilu Daskar mercilessly massacred Luke’s wife and most of his tribe, Luke left his son Martin behind in order to avenge his wife’s death, never to return. With only the words of an old ballad to go on, an older and determined Martin, Trimp the hedgehog, and the mousethief, Gonff, set forth to battle weasels, water rats, aggressive crows, and tree vermin. Tricking the fox, Sholabar, into giving up his sea vessel, they locate half of the wreckage of Luke’s ship wedged between two monolithic boulders. Martin is reunited with four remaining shipmates who give him Luke’s journal; it outlines his capture by Vilu Daskar and plan to ram Vilu’s boat into the mammoth stones, thereby avenging his wife’s death and ridding the seas of Vilu’s treachery forever. Martin’s inner search and struggles with beasts of both land and sea will remind older readers of Homer, while also satisfying voracious fans of Jacques’s series. The formulas are gratifyingly intact as Martin discovers, as all fatherless children hope to, that his parent had not abandoned him, but heroically sacrificed his life for the welfare of others. (Fiction. 11-14)