Listening to the audio version I liked that it was again read by a full cast, with slightly better recording and mixing (but still bad). The story and characters themselves are much improved from the paper thin tropes of Redwall. The story arc itself is funnily enough almost exactly the same though (bad guy threatens everyone, hero goes away for 5/6ths of the book questing, and returns to kick butt with a new sword). Kind of interesting to see the author improve with a second attempt.