By Brian Jacques
A peaceful abbey of mice defends itself against a one-eyed rat warlord and his army, while a young mouse hunts for a legendary lost sword.
Redwall Abbey is a quiet, welcoming place, home to mice who brew cordial and set out enormous feasts. Then Cluny the Scourge arrives: a huge, one-eyed rat with a poisoned tail and an army of stoats and weasels at his back, and he lays siege to the walls. A young, clumsy mouse named Matthias becomes convinced that the one thing that can save everyone is the lost sword of Martin the Warrior, the mouse who founded Redwall. He slips away to hunt for it while the defenders hold Cluny off however they can.
It's a real sword-and-shield war story where every hero and villain happens to be a mouse, a rat, or a badger, and there's not a wizard or a spell anywhere in it. The sword is just a sword; the courage is just courage. It sits at the top of the trail because it asks the most of a reader: it's long, the cast is big, and the war is genuine, with battles and losses on both sides. For a confident reader who wants to fall all the way into a giant adventure, this is the one. And if they love it, there are more than twenty more Redwall books waiting.