Jesse Karp is back with a review of Mouse Guard, by David Petersen!
You could hardly ask for a faster-paced and exciting adventure featuring mice with swords than you will find in Mouse Guard. Channeling Brian Jacques' Redwall stories, author/illustrator David Petersen has crafted a small world of populated mice and deadly foes for them to battle (snakes and crabs, naturally). Between narrow escapes, epic battles and furious duels, he has packed in secret plots, mysterious hooded conspirators, stolen maps and the exceedingly clever device of the Mouse Guard itself. Selected from the mouse population to guard secret mice towns and patrol the perilous lands between, they are sort of a medieval special forces group of rodents who fight with all the courage and gusto of Errol Flynn.
What Mouse Guard lacks as a novel (strongly defined characters, for instance), it more than makes up for with its' graphics. Painstakingly detailed, every color selected for its atmospheric tone, with rough-hewn figures that suggest the toughness of these scrappy critters, the sense of reality sells this work of high fantasy.
Low on the serious quotient, but very, very high on the fun, mark my words: this is going to be the next big thing for 8 - 14 year olds (especially boys).
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