RIP Brian Jacques

[Albertosaurus Rex]

That's so good to hear. Allow me to say one more thing, though. The Brian Jacques fanboy in me is rearing its head again.

While it is true that the books can mostly be read in any order, I think it's most rewarding to read them in publication order. I'm also providing the in-universe chronological order.

Publication order

Redwall
Mossflower
Mattimeo
Mariel of Redwall
Salamandastron
Martin the Warrior
The Bellmaker
Outcast of Redwall
The Pearls of Lutra
The Long Patrol
Marlfox
The Legend of Luke
Lord Brocktree
The Taggerung
Triss
Loamhedge
Rakkety Tam
High Rhulain
Eulalia!
Doomwyte
The Sable Quean
The Rogue Crew (forthcoming, he did finish it before dying)

Chronological order

Lord Brocktree
Martin the Warrior
Mossflower
The Legend of Luke
Outcast of Redwall
Mariel of Redwall
The Bellmaker
Salamandastron
Redwall
Mattimeo
The Pearls of Lutra
The Long Patrol
Marlfox
The Taggerung
Triss
Loamhedge
Rakkety Tam
High Rhulain
Eulalia!
Doomwyte
The Sable Quean
The Rogue Crew

When Brian Jacques originally wrote Redwall, he thought it was only going to be a single book. As a result, things work a little differently in that book. If you read a lot of Redwall novels and then come back to the first one, you will notice some discrepancies. For example Cluny, the villain of the book, is mentioned in later books, but any mention of the horse he and his horde of rats used for transportation is carefully avoided because the later books make it clear that there are no horses in this world, let alone domesticated animals. Only when writing the second book, the prequel Mossflower, did Jacques really flesh out his world and defined how it operated.

Earlier books in the series have more connections to each other. For example, Martin the Warrior is a legendary figure in the first book, but the books Mossflower, Martin the Warrior and The Legend of Luke flesh out his life. Likewise, as I mentioned before, some characters appear in multiple books, often introduced as youngsters and the later featured as aged characters. After The Taggerung, both kind of connections became much less common and in my opnion this made the series less interesting.

That was it. Happy reading!