The Mousehunter
Bridges are like miracles. They connect people’s spirits and hearts. And we wouldn’t have them without MICE…
Today’s book to review is The Mousehunter, published in 2008. This book was written and illustrated by Alex Milway— if I’m right, this is the first book I’ve reviewed to have one person as both author and illustrator.
This children’s novel is about a 12-year-old girl named Emiline, who goes on nautical adventures in a world obsessed with mice. I will be laying out the plot below. There is also discussion of some serious violence against children.
Before I go further, I want to give a huge shoutout to my friend who found this for me at a used book sale. I said “let me know about any rodent-y books you see” and they did not disappoint.
Anyway. This setting is basically the best thing ever, because it’s Pokémon except mice. The richest man alive got his fortune trading in mice. He also amassed power with the publication of his almanac on breeds of mice. The distinguished folk of society have their portraits painted alongside their dearest mice, and the most feared pirate is Mousebeard, who steals mice. The macguffin of this book is a pair of mice.
They use mice for everything— lighting up the darkness, listening at night on the sea, carrying powder and condiments, powering machines (running on wheels), fueling machines (with their poop), sending messages, finding north, and tying rigging on ships. Everybody’s gotta have a pet mouse at their side.
Just check out this description of Merchants’ Square in Emmiline’s hometown:
“This was the historical heart of Old Town, playing host to the world-famous Mousetrading Hall […] Alongside stood the stately Town Hall, where the first Mousetrading laws were passed, and then at the far corner of the square stood Old Rodent’s Academy — the greatest school of mouse learning in the whole of Midena”.
Then, there’s the dangerous streets near the docks:
“Illegal mouse traders walked the streets, selling stolen mice and dealing in banned species. Any innocents who witnessed their activities would often never speak of it again, for illegal traders had the awful habit of setting Red-necked Chomper Mice — who have a particular liking for human tongue — loose on their victims.”
Mice are life-and-death.
There’s even an eccentric inventor who shows Emmiline a high-powered telescope. It has a special mouse setting. “You could look at buildings or stars if you’d rather,” he says, “but who’d want to do that?”
This is some real Yu-Gi-Oh why-cure-cancer-when-I-could-advance-Duel-Monsters-technology stuff.
There’s some really excellent hyperdiegesis in this book, by which I mean, listing off something without explaining what it means. For instance, the privateer Captain Drewshank talks about his ship:
“This amazing vessel has sailed the Seventeen Seas, fought among the Espedrills at the War of Angry Neck, and even raced the Diver Mice around Cape Kopper. No finer craft has ever sailed!”
I eat that stuff up.
For better and worse, Milway doesn’t shy away from including bizarre details in the setting. There’s all this mouse stuff, but then we run into a grak: a sea serpent with a skeletal head and mouth full of tentacles. That gets a pass because we learn graks are born when a long-eared mouse touches salt water. But there are other details completely unrelated to the premise. There are curses, super-inventions, and giants. Plus a kid who forecasts weather using a special salted fish.
I really got the sense that the author wanted to write this book. It’s a passion project. Milway’s author biography even says he “finally managed to finish a book”. This guy wanted a sea serpent with a tentacle mouth, because he thought it would be cool!
As I was reading I wrote in my notes that I could picture a version of this book that received more writing-101 advice, like “don’t use adverbs”. And it would be duller and less fun.
After finishing the book, I’m a little less sure. I wouldn’t mind a little editing down.
I liked Emiline fine, but she wasn’t the strongest protagonist. She amorphously wants to go on adventures, without really giving us any idea why. She’s treated like an underdog, but she’s also the best Mousekeeper in Old Town. She wants to be a Mousehunter, and everyone says “that’s unbelievable”. I wasn’t clear at all on the distinction between a Mousehunter and a Mousekeeper.
The tone, setting/themeing and illustrations reminded me a lot of the How to Train Your Dragon books. I think it’s sweet that Milway was both author and illustrator. Some of the characters were hard to tell apart, even with faces to put to the names. Some of them could have been trimmed. But I am immensely happy that we got little pages from the Mousehunting almanac. Some of the mouse varieties never showed up in the story, but some of them were actually important and could even be a form of foreshadowing. (The converse of that is when I’d learn about a mouse variety and think “wow, can’t wait for this to show up”. And then it just didn’t.)
A note on rats: once again, rats are “just mice but worse”. The cadaver mouse is “often mistaken for a rat”.
A note on violence: it’s present. Not just violence, but also death. Sailors die, and not just in an offscreen “our crew is reduced after that shipwreck” way. People shoot mice and kill them. The very end of the book is, in fact, a reveal that Mousebeard’s second-in-command was hung up in a gibbet. And it’s meant as kind of a positive note.
There’s even violence against children. Emiline’s friend Scratcher is not only beaten up, he’s brought into an execution. They put a noose around him, then drop a trapdoor, and he almost dies.
And one small note I’ll make is about Portly’s tail. Portly is Emiline’s mouse. Another girl from Mousebeard’s crew threatens to cut off his limbs one by one, starting at the tail. She holds up her knife “as if to peel an apple” — yeesh, degloving is no joke. And ultimately he does get his tail-tip cut off in a fight. This is not the only time a rodent’s tail is threatened or gets cut off. We will see more of this in future book reviews.
If you want to see some of the illustrations from the Mousehunter, Alex Milway’s website has some downloadable resources. https://www.alexmilway.com/free-books/ This book is highly amateur. I mean that in the sense that it’s a labor of love. I’m not dying to read the sequel, but I would check out future books by this author. I imagine he’s only improved since this publication. I really like this book because I can tell how it was made. I can see the seams. It feels like something I could achieve some day.
My personal rating: 3.5 My overall rating: 2.5