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The fantasy stories by Brian Jaques take place in a Tolkien-like environment of swords, sorcery and daring deeds. The stories are known as the "Redwall" series, because they centre around Redwall Abbey. The heroes are peace-loving mice, moles, shrews, squirrels, and their friends who exhibit human characteristics in a medieval setting. They face the dark side of the animal world, represented by rats, weasels, stoats, foxes, and their villain allies, in the day-to-day struggle of good versus evil, life versus death. "Guosim" is the name of an indivual shrew, and also the name of a group of shrews in the Redwall Books: "Guosim" stands for Guerrilla Union of Shrews in Mossflower. In the story "Redwall", Redwall Abbey is located in Mossflower Woods.

As the mouse character Matthias points out: "Careful what you say: (The Guosim) can be very touchy and argumentative, and everything they do is governed by their own union rules and laws."

One of the leaders of the Guosim is Log-A-Log, who comes from a long line of shrews named Log-A-Log, named because they ran a ferry that crossed a river and they could be reached by banging on a log with a club and shouting "Logalogalogalogalogalog!"

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The Shofixti resemble large marsupial carnivores; they are sort of like killer shrews who exhibit furious aggressive behavior contained within a strong, ethical framework. When the Yehat first found them in 2075, the Shofixti were living in fortified mud castles in a feudal society similar to medieval Japan on Earth. The Yehat had such admiration for these feisty little warriors that they immediately "adopted" them and took responsibility for their advancement. The Yehat swore that no "peace-loving" race would be allowed to dilute the Shofixti's noble warlike tendencies. During the War, the primary responsibility of the Shofixti starships was to act as advanced scouts, establishing mines, colonies, and fortifications throughout the stars. When the Kzer-Za entered the Delta Gorno star system, the Shofixti detonated a huge bomb in their sun, destroying much of the Kzer-Za armada as well as their own planet. The Shofixti were believed extinct until we encountered one patrolling his destroyed system. Soon after, we traded a beast to the VUX Admiral Zex for some Shofixti Females he had in stasis and brought them back to Delta Gorno to join the male we encountered there.

Once again, the Shofixti are plentiful, but with their old homeworld, Kyabetsu, destroyed, they live with the Yehat and the Pkunk on Gamma Serpentis 1. The Shofixti are believed to be surveying nearby star systems in search of a new homeworld of their own.

"A fiction book which I think is called "Voices in the Meadow", had a shrew character who played a Wizard-of-Oz-esque role among the animals of the meadow. Playing on the fearsome reputation of shrews, and possessed of the knowledge that speaking into a certain hole in a rock at the end of the meadow caused his voice to reverberate and become terrible and loud, the shrew lived a double life - he was known to the other denizens of the meadow as a an unassuming, odd-looking mouse, but daily he would sneak behind the echoing rock and (as the Great and Terrible Shrew) deliver edicts about how life in the meadow should be conducted...."

Information from: Kathy Walker