Redwall turns 40 this October, and the series is marking the anniversary with the one thing longtime fans stopped expecting to ever see: a new book. The Redwall Wiki has confirmed, through a listing on the publishing platform Edelweiss, that Orphans of Mossflower, the 23rd novel in Brian Jacques’ saga, will be published September 7, 2027, alongside the series’ first-ever boxed set and a full repackaging of the backlist with new cover art.
For anyone who didn’t grow up with these books, this is such a delightful fantasy series geared toward all ages. Redwall, published in 1986, is set in the fantastical world of Mossflower Woods, populated entirely by talking animals, mice, squirrels, badgers, otters, and the vermin hordes of rats, stoats, and weasels who threaten them. The first book follows Matthias, a young mouse living at Redwall Abbey who dreams of living up to the legend of Martin the Warrior, the Abbey’s legendary founder, when a warlord named Cluny the Scourge lays siege to their home. Jacques never told the story in strict chronological order. Instead, he jumped across eras, following different generations of heroes as they each faced their own threats, often walking in the footsteps of the ancestors readers had already met in earlier books. Over 22 novels published in his lifetime, Jacques built something genuinely rare in children’s fantasy: real stakes, real loss, real courage, wrapped in a world gentle enough for young readers but never condescending to them. It’s a series that shaped an entire generation of fantasy readers the same way Narnia and The Hobbit did for the generations before it.
Jacques died of a heart attack in 2011 at age 71. The Rogue Crew, published that same year, was long assumed to be his final word on Mossflower. But the Wiki has tracked a real mystery in the years since. Back in 2010, Penguin Random House ran a contest letting a reader name a character for an upcoming Redwall novel. A fan named a haremaiden character, Reisa Kartwell, a cartographer for Salamandastron. That character never appeared in The Rogue Crew, which meant either the contest result got scrapped, or there was another book still coming that nobody had officially confirmed. Fifteen years later, Orphans of Mossflower’s appearance on Edelweiss looks like the answer.
What isn’t clear yet, and what fans are right to be curious about, is exactly how complete the manuscript was when Jacques died. The Rogue Crew was already the one Redwall book published posthumously; Orphans of Mossflower will be the second. Nothing has been confirmed about how far along Jacques got before his death, whether editors added material to finish it, or whether Reisa Kartwell, the character from that decade-old contest, actually appears in it. Beyond the title and the release date, Penguin Random House hasn’t said anything else publicly. That’s genuinely unusual for a publisher this close to a release still sixteen years in the making, and it’s exactly the kind of silence that tends to mean there’s a real story behind how this book came together.
The news lands as a bright spot after a disappointing year for the franchise otherwise. Netflix announced an animated Redwall series back in 2021, generating real excitement for a franchise whose only prior screen adaptation was a beloved but limited animated series that ran from 1999 to 2002, covering just Redwall, Mattimeo, and Martin the Warrior before ending. Earlier this year, Netflix quietly confirmed it wasn’t moving forward with the project at all, a real loss for a story that would have introduced an entirely new generation of younger viewers to Mossflower Woods the way the books did for readers in the late ‘80s and ‘90s.
That makes Orphans of Mossflower land with more weight than it might have otherwise. This marks the last new piece of Brian Jacques’ voice the world is ever going to get, arriving at the exact moment the franchise needed some good news. Redwall earned its reputation the hard way, through genuine craft, real emotional stakes, and a level of respect for young readers that a lot of children’s fantasy still doesn’t bother with. Here’s hoping whatever made it into Orphans of Mossflower, whether it’s Jacques’ finished vision or work completed with real care by people who understood what made these books matter, does right by everything the series built over 40 years.
Six books. One unforgettable world. The Adventures of Baron Von Monocle is steampunk adventure with the kind of worldbuilding and heart that made you fall in love with fantasy in the first place. Start the series on Amazon.
I can't wait to read Redwall to my children....I may have had one or two stuffed animals named after Redwall characters. I hope this final book is good because I want the set!
Hopefully this is more Christopher Tolkien taking years and years to coallate unfinished material and release something like, but not quite what the original author intended.
And less August Derleth wearing the skin suit of his dead friend and mentor to pass off something inferior.
Now, to be fair, August Derleth, more than any other person, more than everyone else combined, is why HP Lovecraft's work survived and became a cult legend. And his imprint, Arkham House, was a sorely needed publisher for weird and pulp tales.
And I personally like his "Lovecraft" stories, but they added things that were never intended (other "good" forces/gods), aren't as well written as the master's, and shouldn't have been portrayed as such.
Oh, and honestly, it's far, far, FAR better that Netflix cancelled this project. We don't need another Witcher like adaptation urinating on the source material.