Not looking forward towards this one. Spottedleaf's Heart has the reputation of being the worst Warriors book, and for good reason. I was shocked that they actually got away with this, honestly.
Anywho,
here we go: Spottedleaf’s Heart by Erin Hunter.
I’d also
like to issue a trigger warning for this
review, as the book deals with the subjects of pedophilia and child grooming.
I’m also going into spoiler territory. You’ve been
warned.
Spottedleaf’s
Heart focuses on the to-be medicine cat of ThunderClan in her kithood.
Spottedpaw wants to become a warrior, and catches the eye of the older cat
Thistleclaw, who soon starts making romantic advances towards the young
she-cat. Spottedpaw first seems to think she falls for him, too, but gradually
starts to understand more and more how wrong Thistleclaw really is due to him training in the Dark Forest. In the end,
she realizes her heart truly lies with her Clan and becoming a medicine cat,
which is what she does after rejecting Thistleclaw.
Okay so I
know this is late since this book has been published a while ago but: what the
fuck, Erins? Who thought it was a decent idea to put the subject of child
grooming in a children’s book? And handle it like this?
Yes,
Spottedpaw does eventually realize that Thistleclaw is trouble and they can’t
be in a relationship, but that doesn’t happen because he’s an adult preying on
a child, but because he trains in the Dark Forest. It should’ve been made abundantly
clear that this hypothetical relationship would be 100% wrong, and for the
reason that Thistleclaw is an warrior grooming a cat old enough to be his own
child, not because he’s basically the cat version of a satanist.
Ugh, just
needed to get that off my chest. So, how does the rest of the book hold up?
Barely. Aside from the disgusting subject matter which is handled
less-than-gracefully, I didn’t enjoy reading this book. At all.
I’ll say
one thing, it did make me sympathize for Spottedpaw’s character, because it should
be known I don’t enjoy Spottedleaf in any of the other Warriors books I’ve
read, so that’s something, but I still didn’t enjoy it.
However, even in later books Spottedleaf still hits on Firepaw, when she's an adult and he's only an apprentice. This is still bad, but this was in The Prophecies Begin, before Bluestar's Prophecy confirmed that Spottedleaf is much older than Firepaw. It's just kind of yikes to have this book victimize Spottedleaf, but then move on for her to commit pretty much the same crime as Thistleclaw in the later one. The only thing I appreciate about Spottedleaf's part in this is that she knew her relationship with Fireheart couldn't be, and she didn't hit fully on him until he was an adult. Still, his crush on him was confirmed during the time she was still alive and he an apprentice, which is bad.
While
Spottedpaw’s character is flashed out, we don’t really get any reason why
Thistleclaw is like this. He’s never been described as a nonce in any of the
other Warriors books, so why he is here is beyond me. The closest to an answer
I can think of is maybe, because there were some Thistleclaw sympathizers after
Bluestar’s Prophecy, the Erins wanted to make him even more villainous to make
sure he deserves his place in the Dark Forest. I guess if they really wanted to
do that, fine, but don’t do it by having
a totally inappropriate subject in your book geared largely towards children and completely botching the message.
The pacing
was, aside from Spottedpaw’s character in this book, the only real positive I got out of
this book. It kept moving at the right pace and didn’t bore me, so that’s at
least a compliment I can give it.
But,
overall, I definitely recommend you give this lame excuse for a short story a
skip. The subject matter is handled with the grace of a two-legged goat, and
the story doesn’t really do anything to add to the overall plot of Warriors. I
feel dirty having paid money for this book to read it.
Rating: 0.25/5
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