Mouse Guard

Very pretty art, basic/ok worldbuilding, the interactions between the characters, revelations and general plot reminded me of a standard fantasy tabletop RPG in a good way. You won't find anything super worth dwelling into in the writing here I think, but the art is pretty and it makes for an entertaining 40 minutes.

Beautiful art and a cool setting, but sadly boils down to a simple story of a kingdom vs rebels. The setting of small mouse warriors was really cool, but the main plot doesn't use it at all. More than half the book is just mouse vs mouse in a mouse-sized kingdom and no sense of scale.

It was a quick read and I liked it well enough to give it 3/5, but it feels like a waste of potential for what could've been a great high fantasy series.

I assume most people are like me in that they saw this and picked it up because it reminded them of Redwall. Which is fair - the tone and world definitely bring me back to my childhood of reading those books and watching the cartoon. But other than that nostalgic feeling, there isn't a ton of depth here.

The plot is weirdly convoluted for what is a very quick read that is pretty light on world building. Despite that, you do get to know some of the characters and you can glean quite a bit of the history of this world from the conversations the mice have with each other. There is refreshingly little exposition here, although I admit I probably would have enjoyed more of it.

The art is very nice throughout the book. The style evokes a feeling similar to a children's fairy tale, which lets it smooth over a lot of more intricate details in favour of big fights and acts of bravery. It's pretty violent, though; it feels like it's written for children with the art and sparse world building, but the action is violent beyond what I'd give to a younger kid.

It was an okay read for me, but it's the sort of book I might look into again when I have kids. If you can get a kid into Redwall, they're probably going to love this as an intro to graphic novels, too.

This graphic novel series fills the Redwall-shaped hole in my heart and I can't believe I didn't know it existed until now??!!?

Mice with swords dealing with the world from a mouse's point of view. What's not to like? The artwork is incredible, and the story simple but well told.

I read this because I was interested in getting the RPG, and I'm glad I did.