Warriors: The Prophecies Begin
Author: Erin Hunter Genre: Animal Fantasy Years of Publication: 2003-2005 Pages: (per book) ~288
Writing: 6/10 Plot: 6/10 Characters: 6/10 Creativity: 7/10
Overall: 6.25/10
MY CHILDHOOD!
Warriors, aka Warrior Cats, is a huge series about four colonies (clans) of feral cats living in the forest. They hunt, fight each other, deal with natural disasters, worship the stars, whatever else. It’s a long and convoluted series. There are over 80 books in the franchise and about 40+ just in the main series. No, I have not read all of these and I don’t plan to (I have a life outside these cat books). I read the first two arcs (12 books in total) when I was about 11-13. I gave up after The Sight, the first book of the third arc The Power of Three because I hated it. Simple as that. Warriors is a huge influence to me and one day I’ll dig deep into that. Not too long ago I came across The Prophecies Begin and The New Prophecy, the first two arcs of Warriors. My journey with these books has been fun even though I have issues with them now.
The Plot: The Prophecies Begin follows a housecat named Rusty. He is invited to join ThunderClan, one of the four clans, by its leader Bluestar. There, he is granted the name Firepaw and is immediately greeted with the dead body of the old ThunderClan deputy Redtail, carried by a warrior named Tigerclaw. What follows is six books about adapting to Clan life, finding out a bunch of secrets, betrayals, kitty death, and edgelord deus ex machinas. The overarching plot of TPB is pretty solid. Each book has its own contained story and contributes to the main story. The characters are memorable and fun (for the most part) and they’re easy reads. My main issues are with the writing.
The Writing: This series was not planned out initially and you can tell. There are some retcons and logic jumps that really took me out of the story. For example (spoilers ahead for an almost 20-year-old book series), Bluestar in book two is down to fight RiverClan, a rival neighbor, for stealing prey (I think). She was right on the brink of sending over a patrol to beat them up. Luckily Fireheart (previously Firepaw) was able to stop her. However, in book three Bluestar is hesitant to fight RiverClan because we learn that she has half-Clan kittens living in that Clan. This bothered me because why was she so ready to slaughter them all when she knew that she had kits living there? Did she forget? Another thing. Firepaw (apprentice name) was left without a mentor for two whole months which is taboo in the Clans. Apprentices must have a mentor as soon as they receive their names. I guess Bluestar forgot. Eventually, Bluestar becomes Firepaw’s mentor and we get one scene of them training together in book one. In the next book, Fireheart reminisces about his time exploring the territory with Bluestar but that never happened in the first book! The first time Bluestar and Firepaw are seen together is during that fight training scene. After that, the plot continues on. There aren’t time jumps (from what I can remember) where Bluestar and Fireheart could have trained together. This bothers me because I wanted to see their relationship grow but we rarely see their closeness. We are told how close they are, but there are only a few times where that is shown. I really wish we saw more apprentice/mentor training and bonding.
One more thing and this one is pretty bad. So Tigerclaw killed Redtail. It’s not even a spoiler because it’s so obvious it hurts. When Tigerclaw brings Redtail’s body back, he says that Redtail was killed by RiverClan’s deputy Oakheart during a battle. Tigerclaw then killed Oakheart out of revenge. Fireheart later learns from Ravenpaw, Tigerclaw’s apprentice, that Tigerclaw killed Redtail after Redtail killed Oakheart. Fireheart tells Bluestar this and she’s like “Nah, that’s not right because it is unworthy for a deputy to kill another deputy. How dare you sully Redtail’s name!” But like… she readily believed Tigerclaw’s story! Tigerclaw said Oakheart, a deputy, killed Redtail. We learn in the third book that Bluestar and Oakheart were mates, so she knows that Oakheart would never kill another cat, let alone a deputy. So why is she so ready to believe Tigerclaw but is unwilling to believe Fireheart when they have the exact same story!? Fireheart later learns that Oakheart died in a rockslide, but still. All of these things are just a few issues that I had. These show that this book series was not planned out before writing. The authors (there was more than one person writing these books) were flying by the seat of their pants. I really like the idea of Bluestar but she looks like an idiot because of this jank writing. Graystripe, Fireheart’s best friend, suffers from the same jank writing. He’s supposed to be a loyal friend, but he’s not! He ditches his friend, clan, and apprentice (Brackenpaw/fur) for some girl (Silverstream) he knew for like two weeks. Wow, way to go Graystripe. You suck. And when Silverstream dies giving birth to their kits, he joins RiverClan, her birthclan, to be with his kits. Okay good. Responsible. But a few books later, he straight up betrays RiverClan during a battle and ditches his kits to be with his best bro Fireheart. No loyalty Graystripe! I don’t like Graystripe. Speaking of characters:
Characters: They range from great (Yellowfang, Cinderpaw/pelt, Cloudtail, Whitestorm, Brackenpaw/fur) to okay (Fireheart/star, Bluestar, Brokenstar) to could’ve been great (Sandstorm, Tigerclaw/star, Longtail, Darkstripe) to just straight bad (Graystripe, Scourge, Spottedleaf). Let me rant about Scourge for a bit because I’m sure there are some Warriors fans who are like “What? NO!”
I hate Scourge. I don’t know the circumstances around his creation, but it feels like he was introduced because they hit a roadblock. For five books, we have been led to believe that Fireheart and Tigerclaw were going to duke it out at the end. However, they made Tigerclaw leader of ShadowClan. Leaders in this world have nine lives (literally) so if Firestar wanted to defeat him, he would have to kill Tigerstar nine times. I don’t think Scourge was introduced for this reason, but it feels like he was. Scourge the leader of EdgyClan aka BloodClan, kills Tigerstar in one go. He’s a small black cat with icy blue eyes and wears a collar filled with dog and cat teeth, trophies of his many kills. His claws are reinforced with dogteeth, somehow, and he uses them to rip open Tigerstar’s stomach, tearing out his nine lives. It’s edgy and stupid. Scourge comes out of nowhere and defeats the main bad with little to no effort. Then there’s a final battle with all four clans (I forgot to mention WindClan. Whoops) versus BloodClan. They win and everything goes back to normal. I really dislike this ending. I wanted a Firestar vs. Tigerstar beat down, but what I got was some 13-year-old’s OC crashing the party. Not to mention, Scourge has no personality other than “I’m evil.” He does have a comic called Rise of Scourge, and it does flesh him out somewhat, but it’s still dumb as rocks. I’m sorry but I cannot take teeth collars and dog-teeth claws seriously. Teeth are not even sharp enough to rip flesh like that. Canine teeth are for clamping down, staying in place, and tearing flesh with force from the jaws. Claws are for ripping into flesh. Claws are sharp enough to penetrate flesh. If you touched a sharpened claw with your finger, you would bleed. Cat’s retractable claws are very sharp, but Scourge and his gang willingly hinder themselves by somehow attaching dog teeth to them. They mutilate their feet because it’s edgy and cool. Cringe.
The worldbuilding: This is the best thing about Warriors for me. The idea of four clans, each with their own unique lifestyles, living under a unified history, set of rules, and religion while still being rivals is really cool to me. While re-reading these books, they inspired me to make my own wild cat colony story. It’s not off the ground yet, but ideas are floating around in my head.
Overall, TPB is a solid first arc. It’s a formative part of my childhood and, despite my issues with it, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
Recommendation: If you like cats then you probably already read Warriors. If you haven’t and you can forgive mediocre writing, then give the first arc a shot. Especially, if you like animal fiction as I do. As for the rest of the series… eh. In my opinion, they just get worse and worse with each arc, so I say avoid them. But that’s up to you. I heard Dawn of the Clans is actually really good (for a Warrior Cats arc) so maybe check that one out.
