That 4.5 star average review you see if you clicked that link is a lie. Lies written by 10 and 11 year old boys and girls who don't know any better. Please trust me on this
Well, I decided to pick up the series again, because damn it all, I like cats.
I just finished this book. So here it is, my opinion on...
Welcome back to Warriors. Peace has settled across the forest and all the Clans are living in harmony (mostly- old grudges die hard, I suppose. All the older cats of the Clans still fight over the same stupid shit.)
Warrior Brambleclaw, son of the treacherous (and recently deceased) Tigerstar, has been troubled with visions from StarClan. He has been selected as one of four warriors (one from each Clan) to fulfill a mysterious new prophecy. But his heritage seems to hold him back. Cats don't know if they can trust Tigerstar's son... especially not with Firestar's daughter Squirrelpaw.
PROS
---- Everyone stays mostly in character.
With a few weird outbursts from Firestar aside, everyone remains the same character they were in the past Warriors series. It's a good thing that this new series doesn't even focus on Firestar anyway, 'cause he kind of became a whiny paranoid little shit after his incident with magical ghost cats (Firestar's Quest)
---- Teaching good morals
The series continues to emphasize morals such as loyalty, respect for elders, teamwork, and unification.
---- Everybody is included
I like the idea that other cats can now receive visions from StarClan besides the medicine cats and omgFirestar. I also like that this spans over all the Clans and not just ThunderClan. It's nice to see all the different outlooks from all the different cats in the forests.
CONS
----- Editing errors
I don't know if Harper Collins thinks their audience for this book is stupid or what, but I promise, it is mentioned at least three times in the book how Cinderpelt got injured again, how Firestar got rid of the dog pack in the first series, and how Ravenpaw, the loner, helped ThunderClan. It's really annoying to be reading over a passage and be like "wait, haven't we gone over this already?"
----- How does this all work together?
The StarClan prophecies are always pretty vague and not well laid out, but the ending to this one takes the cake. Without spoiling too much, why do Brambleclaw and the gang have to travel all the way to the ocean to talk to the forest cat natural enemy- a badger- who tells them what they must do for StarClan? I ask, what the fuck does the badger care about cats that hate it? Once again, the Hunters have laid this out poorly. I'm hoping that this will be cleared up in a later book.
Overall.... 6/10
This book was a refreshing return to Warriors after the horrible Firestar super stupid edition, but it's not as wowwie zowwie as the first book to the first series was. This is primarily because it's a lot of the same old story except with different cats. The second book should prove to be better now that mandatory introduction and recap episode is finished.
***REVISED: 13 JULY 2011 2:47PM Central
As an afterthought, it was mildly irritating throughout the books to have all of the cats relying so heavily on StarClan - the pseudo-religion within the series. Yes, the cats all seem to do things on their own without divine interventions but it seems like their minds are so controlled by it that they act upon things in ways that they shouldn't - this makes up for the out-of-character Firestar. It is an interesting thing to insert into a children's novel that these cats are spiritual/religious in some way, and that they all can act foolishly because of how they interpret their StarClan's will.
I confess that this theme - questioning your religious beliefs and doctrine - was the only part I liked about Firestar's Quest, but while the Hunters asked this question of Firestar, the question remained unanswered. And Firestar, like in the Crusades, blindly boldly followed and there we have a useless adventure....
The only really sensible cat in the book is Cloudtail who at first showed a disregard/distrust of the Warrior Code and of the StarClan rituals; they had to prove worthy to him to follow, and even now he takes everything everyone says about StarClan with a grain of salt (to the point of laughing about the old ceremonies) I can't say that he is an atheist view, but he is certainly an agnostic. It's a shame that he gets a lot less page-time now, but hopefully he will question and test the new prophecized cats in the same ways he tested Firestar.
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