Well, I can understand what you mean about it being the same old thing, and it's a shame he didn't branch out a bit more with Redwall, at least for my taste as a reader.

That said, though, I don't know if I'd agree with you about the legacy aspect. I mean, yeah, maybe we would have liked him to do something different, but honestly, from what I can tell, he wrote what he wanted to write, the way he wanted to write it, was very successful doing so, brought pleasure to a lot of readers of all ages, and influenced a good number of writers of all ages. All in all, I'd take that legacy any day, even if some people wind up feeling like what I wrote wasn't as complex or varied as they would have liked. I guess in this case, I tend to think of an artist's legacy as being more than just the end product of a body of work -- and even then, I think maybe there are divisions that could be made between issues of quality and issues of taste. >^_^<

I'm more bitter over the whole formulaicity of it all, I guess. :/ You're right that I'd much rather go out known like him than languishing in artistic obscurity.