A series of Talking Animal children's books by Garry Kilworth, which has been compared favourably to Redwall and is often read by the same audience.
The series originally consisted of a trilogy, showcasing the adventures of the outlaw weasel Sylver and his band of followers as they battled against the unjust rule of the villainous stoat Prince Poynt and his corrupt sheriff Falshed, in a generically medieval milieu. Kilworth later wrote a second trilogy, set in a Victorian-inspired era, about the descendants of four of the original band and some of their enemies.
The most obvious trope demonstrated in the books is the Shout-Out. Many, many references to popular culture are made, including movies, books, poems and Real Life English history.
The books of the series are:
- Thunder Oak (1997)
- Castle Storm (1998)
- Windjammer Run (1999)
- Gaslight Geezers (2001)
- Vampire Voles (2002)
- Heastward Ho! (2003)
This series provides examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: Of many, many things.
- And I Must Scream: The fate of Rosencrass and Guildenswine; after their cruel slaughter of an innocent bird for annoying them and the attempted murder of Sylver's gang under Torca Marda's orders, the two ferrets received their karmic fate when the sentient trees of the Wood of the Lost Birds ensnare them and turn them into sentient, grimacing trees — even including a sly wink to the source material when describing their frozen figures.
- Ambiguously Gay: Foppington in Castle Storm. He not only speakth with a thlight lithp, but he also dresses flamboyantly. And though this is het, he also refers to a fellow grey squirrel (female) knight as "his little thauthage".
- Maudlin has the odd hint as well. On top of the way he interacts with Scruff, he spouts elaborate flowery poetry at the slightest provocation and is envious of the Wholesome Crossdresser. Also, while the original Dracula only attacked attractive young women, Flistagga is only seen to attack young males.
- Artistic Licence – Biology: Rats are portrayed as being incredibly stupid and filthy creatures. In reality rats are highly intelligent and obsessively clean animals; certainly a lot more intelligent and clean than weasels! Flipped back with the sewer rats, who turn out to actually be very well-spoken and fastidious, albeit a century or so behind the times.
- Butt-Monkey: Poor Sheriff Falshed can’t catch a break.
- Clock Punk/Steampunk: William Jott, the steam-machine inventor, and Thomas Tempus Fugit, the clockwork inventor, are bitter rivals who constantly try to outdo each other, and their machines are all over the place.
- Clock Tower: Maudlin and Scruff crash a hot air balloon into the clock tower Ringing Roger and end up dangling from the hands.
- "Day of the Week" Name: Spindrick's anarchist group use weekdays as code names, as a Shout-Out to The Man Who Was Thursday.
- Dirty Coward: Mawk swings between this and Lovable Coward.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hare and Berk are built up to be hard-as-nails ruffians who will give our heroes a hard time when they catch up with them. Falshed’s ship makes a stop at an island, Hare and Berk get off and are promptly turned to glass and shattered.
- Evil Counterpart: Downplayed with Spindrick; he's more chaotic than actually evil.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture
- Far East (Far Kathay.)
- The Dung Ages (The first trilogy.)
- The Wild West (Spindrick's journey in Heastward Ho!)
- Victorian London (The second trilogy.)
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Animated golem statues and sheep witches are the least of the oddball concepts incorporated into this series.
- Fridge Horror: A rare in-universe example: After discovering the cursed island that turns people into glass statues, and seeing those said statues smashed and ground into shining sand, Sheriff Falshed remarks that at some point in the future others will come to the island and bottle this pretty sand without realising what it once was.
- Furry Confusion: Mustelids and rats are sapient, mice and voles are not. Though weirdly lemmings, gerbils and hamsters are sentient. Birds seem to vary.
- Hachimaki: Maudlin borrows one for the fight with the pirate junk.
- Hall of Mirrors: The ghost-hunter's magic box.
- Hell Hotel: Invoked - Scruff convinces Maudlin they're staying in one as a prank.
- Hellish Horse: The dreaded manless horsehead of Sleepless Hallow.
- High-Class Glass: Lord Hannover Haukin's monocle.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Magellan, Count Flistagga.
- Inept Mage: Wodehed. Not that he doesn't actually have magical abilities, but he can't use them with any consistency. He does get a great moment in the third book by calling the Kraken.
- Minion Shipping: Rosencrass and Guildenswine are married.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Torca Marda - a Shout-Out to Tomas de Torquemarda.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After stopping their ridiculous civil war, Sylver and the crew order the dodos to destroy their weapons and threaten terrible magical deaths for any dodo who carries a weapon. It obviously never occurred to Sylver that the dodos may need to defend themselves from any kind of external threat. Such as, say, the rampaging ship of big cats they encountered earlier that admit to attacking settlements and eating the locals. No wonder the poor birds are extinct!
- Only Smart People May Pass: The clues the human children left behind.
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Ghouls are corpses brought to life by mages to do their bidding. They're naturally obedient but do have opinions of their own they can act on instead. Being turned into a ghoul does not affect the rotting process and the more damaged the ghoul's body is, the less it can accomplish despite its persistence. Ghouls may or may not need to eat, and what they eat may or may not be living bodies, but in any case they do have a nose for sniffing out "meat". One of the few things that can end a ghoul is for its heart to be pierced with a talon from the left claw of a dead killer, though the body can be revived as a ghoul again thereafter. In Castle Storm, Grand Inquisitor Torca Marda revives a maggot-infested badger corpse as his ghoul to go after Sylver and his band. The targeted group, however, witness the ritual and on the advice of the alchemist Kloog end the ghoul with a claw-of-glory. Then they set the corpse on fire so Torca Marda cannot turn it into a ghoul a second time.
- Our Vampires Are Different: But quite close to the standard movie depiction. As a bonus, there seem to be were-variations on all the mammals.
- Our Werewolves Are Different
- Our Zombies Are Different
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: Spinfer "smools" into a room. The narrator notes that "this is not a real word, but it describes the action perfectly."
- Pet the Dog: Mayor Poynt is responsible for the refurbishment and reorganisation of Bedlam House, after he's accidentally left to wake up there after an operation and sees what it's really like.
- Queer Flowers: It's implied that Maudlin and Scruff have a romantic interest in one another. They share beds in the second book — with Maudlin's cowardice being pretext — and there is reference to them perching on the front rail of a ship reminiscent of a similar romantic scene in Titanic (1997). Maudlin is Ambiguously Gay, and at one point he asks about "Lillie" Longtree's female-impersonator career "with a touch of envy in his voice."
- Recycled IN SPACE!: Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes WITH FURRIES, not made by Disney!
- Sdrawkcab Name: Spindrick Sylver's pseudonym "Drickspin Revsly".
- Sidetracked by the Analogy: One of the anarchists ruins his threat to blow the city to Kingdom Come by pointing out that "Kingdom Go" would be more accurate, since "things aren't coming, they're going, right up in the air".
- Shout-Out: By the third book, they're coming at the rate of about two per page. Most obviously, the original Sylver is Robin Hood and his descendant is Sherlock Holmes.
- The Cameo: In Windjammer Run quite a lot of characters from the previous books in the trilogy make a guest appearance.
- The Scrappy: A weird in-universe example, in Windjammer Run the crew are joined by a gerbil. Sylver hates the guy, but everyone else thinks he's fantastic.
- Totem Pole Trench: In Thunder Oak, the trick was used unsuccessfully by nine ferrets in a human-sized suit of armor.
- Viewers Are Geniuses: How many of the preteen target audience are going to get references to Hamlet, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Gnosticism, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: Averted - there's a psychotic cult of hedgehogs, a brigand gang of moles, an evil zombie badger, and a murderous lemming. And the heroes are weasels, and there's a friendly and very civilised society of sewer rats.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: "Lillie" Longtree.
- Who's on First?: The unfortunate result of Spindrick's "Day of the Week" Name code-naming.
- Wicked Weasel: Both played straight and averted; weasels are good, their close biological relatives stoats are bad.
- World of Pun: Puns nonstop.
- Your Vampires Suck: Directed at other vampires within the same world; it's noted that most of them can't cross running water, but Flistagga has trained himself out of that.
