Welcome to another Warriors review. I believe it’s time to look at what lies beyond The Prophecies Begin. I've already posted my review of The New Prophecy on here, and I figured I'd look at the midquel between the two arcs that is Firestar's Quest as well.
I
honestly do not have fond memories of Firestar’s Quest and The New Prophecy,
but, who knows, maybe rereading it changes my mind, like with some of the other
Warriors books. Spoiler
warning, blah blah blah. Let’s dive right into Firestar’s Quest.
A while
after the battle with BloodClan at the end of The Prophecies Begin, Firestar is
still leader of ThunderClan. He begins to have strange dreams in which a
gray-and-white cat keeps appearing. It takes him a while to figure this out,
but Firestar eventually realizes that the cats he keeps seeing in these dreams
are of the fifth and lost Clan: SkyClan, and their message is this: He has to
go and rebuild SkyClan, after it fled the forest ages ago and fell apart.
So,
Firestar and his mate Sandstorm leave ThunderClan behind to find the
descendants of the SkyClan cats and rebuild the Clan. But this is not without
its troubles…
For what it
is, I think this book executed itself properly. It’s not the most exciting of
the Warriors books, but it does have its stakes, and you do grow attached to
modern SkyClan after a while. I also was glad to read that we didn’t spend too
long in the main forest in this book.
Unlike
Tallstar’s Revenge, for example, it took just too long to get to Tallstar’s
main mission that ended up getting him to leave the Clan. Here, while we do
spend the first hundred pages or so with ThunderClan in the woods, we don’t
linger there for too long and soon go on our main quest to rebuild SkyClan from
the cats that remain near the gorge.
Segwaying
into the pacing with this, yeah, the pacing is pretty good! Granted, it’s not
as fast-paced as some other Warriors books, especially in comparison to the
normal shorter arc books, but it’s still well done, and I wanted to keep
reading.
The
characters were varying. Firestar was enjoyable, and we actually got some
decent character development for him here, with him struggling to remain
faithful to StarClan after finding out what happened to old SkyClan. Sandstorm
is a good deuteragonist, but she doesn’t really have that much of an arc to go
through other than just accompanying Firestar and rightfully questioning about
his weird love for Spottedleaf.
Speaking of
her, yeah, Spottedleaf is in this book for... some reason. She has literally
nothing to do with the story other than appearing a few times as plot device
and being there to be another love interest for Firestar. I am just really
annoyed at her here, and the whole Sand-Fire-Spotted love triangle in general.
Spottedleaf was only a childhood crush of Firepaw, and even then it never
could’ve worked as Spottedleaf died way too soon, was too old and also a medicine cat. Why the Erins feel the pointless need to have her reappear everywhere
and still be a crush of Firestar’s is beyond me, but it sure is obnoxious as
hell.
Other
characters were pretty good. I enjoyed old, wise Skywatcher, power-hungry but
brave Sharpclaw and noble Leafdapple. The development of Cherrypaw and Sparrowpaw,
with them going from annoying kittypets that terrorize the local elder to good
warriors.
I also
think the concept of rebuilding a Clan pretty much from scratch is a really
interesting idea. It brings all sorts of challenges with it that are shown well
throughout Firestar’s Quest. It felt extremely satisfying to see that, when
Firestar finally left modern SkyClan behind, the Clan was once more thriving.
While not
the most exciting of Super Editions, I still think this book is a decent
addition to the Warriors series. You’ll have to look past a few dumb moments
with Spottedleaf, but other than that I thought this book did its job rather
well. I’d say: give this one a read if it speaks to you and/or you want to fill in the gap between the first two arcs.
Rating: 3/5
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