YMMV / The Urthblood Saga

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Machus the Sword, Urthblood's fox captain, is among the series most popular characters.
  • Jans and Broggen, the mouse/stoat duo, has also gotten a lot of attention.
• Moral Event Horizon: Wolfrum crosses it when he uses Cyrus as a Human Shield while being attacked by Smallert. While it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, he subsequently shows no remorse for his callous action and is only concerned about his own life, unlike Smallert.
• Once Original, Now Common: By the time the novel was written, the whole concept of "noble vermin" was still fresh and unusual, and it is one of first Redwall fics to discuss and cover it to such an extent. Nowadays however, it's rare to find a Redwall fic that doesn't include it, or that plays the Always Chaotic Evil mantra from the official novels straight, so this aspect might seem rather conventional to new readers.
• The Scrappy: Urthfist's arrogance, pig-headedness, obsessive need for violence, vicious racism and ironclad conviction of being in the right on every issue, not to mention his killing of fan-favourite Machus doesn't exactly endear him to readers.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The Crimson Badger was mostly written when Highwing didn't think anyone else would ever read it, and done for his own pleasure. One thing that survives from this period is that the first couple of chapters, after Urthblood reveals his prophecy about the coming darkness, mostly consists of various supporting characters going about their daily chores which, while introducing and establishing characters that will become important later, doesn't really add that much to the plot. It isn't until chapter 9, when the badgerlord's army arrives at Redwall, that things start to get really interesting, and even then it isn't until Interlude with Hares that we truly get to the central conflict of the story.

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