Judah's Reviews > River

listen. is warrior cats a good series? no. was this even a particularly good example of a warrior cats book? not really! but by god was this a fun and wild ride. the last solid third of the book had me so hyped up to know what happens next!

All in all, a solid beginning to an arc. Not as compelling as the first books of AVOS or TBC imo, but I still had a good time! I still want to know what happens next!

The good:
+ The POVs are all... okay. Frostpaw and Flamepaw (whose warrior name will not be used here to prevent spoilers) clearly have more going for them than Sunbeam, but I like all three and can't complain yet! And I think there's the potential for Sunbeam to have interesting stuff going on in her POVs too, so I'm holding out.
+ Finally! A RiverClan pov!!! Literally every single Frostpaw chapter had me agape. I hadn't even dreamt of what happened in this book being a viable possibility because it seemed too good to be true. Everything that happened in Frostpaw's pov was so so good. I am so invested in this, way more than I expected to be. RiverClan POV, don't fail me now!
+ Flame is cute and I kind of like what they're doing with this character! Feels a little bit like a Rootspring redux but you know what, I'll roll with it. I rolled my eyes a bit when I saw the blurb about how his character arc revolved around being descended from Firestar, when he is so distantly related to him (and so are half of the other characters in this Clan), but I feel like it was handled alright in the end. It still feels a bit overblown in my opinion but I felt like it was tied in in ways that felt not too outlandish; for example, (view spoiler)[him resenting the warrior name Flameheart because it connected him to Fireheart/Firestar. I thought that was a decent train of thought and didn't feel too out of left wing. (hide spoiler)]
+ Sunbeam actually has friends?? That aren't related to her? Incredible!
+ Small, and I have a feeling this will end up causing me more grief than joy in the long run, but it was interesting to see a character actually choose to break a promise and talk to a position of authority, and then that action actually have consequences (referring to (view spoiler)[sunbeam telling shadowsight about how lightleap hurt her (hide spoiler)])! It's never fun when the characters choose to keep secrets for literally no reason, but at least this time, Sunbeam... kind of has a reason?
+ The writing quality could have been worse. It wasn't as good as some of the other books I've read, but I think it held up alright. There were a few punctuation errors that tripped me up, but that might have just been my less-than-legally-procured pdf. (Though I wish they would stop writing "medicine cat" as "medicine-cat". literally all they need to do is find and replace all in their manuscript, but I guess that's expecting too much of harper collins luls.)
+ Carrying over consequences from the last arc. I had kind of expected this since it seemed like these were meant to be more connected than some of the other arcs we've gotten, but it was still good to see that they're not just brushing aside the whole "changes to the code" thing and it's actually a plot point here. (I think these changes could/should have been properly addressed and set aside in TBC, allowing this arc to be about not from the changes themselves but the aftershock of these changes, but I digress.) It's also interesting to see how these changes affected Flamepaw personally, especially with his relationship to his family.
+ It was small, but there was a moment when Rootspring said hi to Ivypool at a gathering and I was really touched that he's staying friendly with his SO's parents. ;o;

The bad:
(view spoiler)[- POV characters talk to each other challenge!! We got a cute Flame/Sun interaction towards the end, which I'm guessing is foreshadowing their soon-to-blossom romance, but I would have liked more. It's fun when the POV characters are friends! It's enjoyable to see how different characters deal with the same issues! This is basically three entirely different plots/stories meshed into one book, and so taking time on any one POV takes away from other potentially interesting story lines. (IMO tbc suffered from this a lot as well but I digress)
- The way Curlfeather was written made her sound SO SUSPICIOUS. I was so convinced that she was manipulating Frostpaw and forcing her to take up more power than felt comfortable, so that Curlfeather could claim more power in her shadow or manipulate herself into becoming leader. And I felt entirely vindicated in this gut feeling until the last few chapters?? I was so convinced she had killed Reedwhisker and planted the dock leaf star... it just all felt so sus and I was honestly kind of excited at the thought of evil Curlstar. :( I'm hoping we might get evil starclan!curlfeather manipulating her daughter from beyond, but considering how she went out I'm not sure that's what the erins are planning. I think they more likely just failed at writing a supportive and encouraging mom, lol.
- Compared to Frostpaw, both like Flamepaw/Nightheart and Sunbeam didn't really have much going on in their POVs. I expect/hope this will change going forward but it was a shame, because I like Sunbeam as a character but I don't really care about her run-of-the-mill love triangle issues, lol. It seems like her mom may be plotting a coup(??) and Lightleap is up to nefarious deeds, so I'm hoping she has more to do in future books than be Nightheart's Forbidden Love Interest or whatever.
- Shadowsight's character arc felt incomplete at the end of ALITM and I'm sad they don't seem to be exploring that further here. He's just the herbs guy! He does herbs! The fact that his connection to StarClan has been untimely ripped from him (because it never existed at all) means nothing to him or anyone else now! /s (hide spoiler)]