Book Review: Yellowfang's Secret by Erin Hunter (Warriors Super Editions #5)

Welcome to another review and stuff. I’m… not looking forward towards this one. Yellowfang’s Secret by Erin Hunter. Spoilers below the break. Let’s go. 

Yellowkit is a kitten in ShadowClan who dreams of becoming a warrior. She grows up and eventually becomes one, but she has a special power that makes being a fighter difficult. Will she give up her position as a warrior, or will she just push through it? Read it to find out. Or just read the much-better The Prophecies Begin, really. Much, much more recommended.

I just didn’t find the plot in this book all that interesting. There isn’t even a main goal, like becoming a leader or defeating another cat is for the leaders in the other Super Editions I’ve reviewed this far. It’s just the life and times of Yellowfang prior to and slightly during the events of Into The Wild. It just came off as rather boring.

From now on I’m going to be talking spoilers, but in short, I don’t recommend this book, even to Warriors fans, and even if you like Yellowfang’s character from the first arc.

The pacing overall was rather slow, especially at first. It just kept dragging on and on and not a lot of interesting things happened, making things feel extra-slow. I only got into this book in the final few chapters, where the pacing was faster and at least some more interesting things were happening.

The characters weren’t too great now either. Yellowfang was one of my favourite characters when I first read The Prophecies Begin, but in this book she hardly feels like the same character. She was such a pushover and didn’t even get her more grumpy attitude until near the end. She didn’t partake in many fights prior to becoming a medicine cat, while it’s implied she was actually in a lot before. She felt like a very boring character here, too, so, even if I were to read this without comparing her to her other characterization, she still feels like a lackluster lead. This book did somewhat ruin Yellowfang for me, if I’m being honest.

There are other characters, but they aren’t much better, generally speaking. Raggedstar was awful. He was built up to be a noble cat during the first arc, but he acts like such a whiny brat here, to the point that I have no idea what positive Yellowfang possibly sees in him.

Sagewhisker is probably one of the most insufferable medicine cat characters I’ve had to read this far, as she pretty much forced Yellowfang into her medicine cat role.

Brokenstar was the villain, and he wasn’t very interesting in my opinion. He had a foster mother who didn’t like him, oh no. That’s no reason to become a tyrant and murder babies.

I also don’t see how Yellowfang’s special ability helps her as a medicine cat. Cats can also just show or tell her where they’re hurt. Instead, wouldn’t she just be in even more pain because she’ll be constantly surrounded by sick cats or Clanmates that are in pain?

And when she does finally have control over her power, can’t she just go back to her warrior role? I don’t see anything wrong with taking a break from warrior duties just to learn how to control your gift, but she doesn’t even consider returning to her warrior role, even after learning how to control it. The gift is also never explained. It’s just... there. No reason given.

There's also obviously the question how a brachycephalic cat like Yellowfang and her mother can survive in the wild. They are literally described as having Persian faces in here, so brachycephalic Yellowfang is canon. It actually would've been an interesting reason not to make her a warrior: her shortness of breath. But nope, it's never even addressed outside of aesthetic descriptions. It never hinders her in any way. Just lazy. If you want to somehow have a flat-faced cat in the wild, go ahead, but don't just pretend they are just as functional as normal-faced cats. 

There's also the matter of Brokenstar having the same short muzzle as her. He also isn't limited by it, but what bothers me more about this is the fact that the short face only runs in Yellowfang's family line. Yet no one puts one and two together, when the flat-faced feature is one of the most outstanding ones Yellowfang's family line has. This could've been fixed by simply having him be normal-muzzled, but they didn't bother with that. 

I also tend to not bring up continuity issues, as I know there’s so much of these books and so many events shown from so many perspectives that there’s bound to be some, but man, this book seemed to be riddled with them. From Shrewpaw to Mudfur to all the Bluestar’s Prophecy inconsistencies, it’s just a mess and definitely needed some revising.

So, yeah, overall, this is a book I recommend you skip. It doesn’t enrich Yellowfang’s character at all for me. Instead it makes it worse and is just an overall unpleasant read that doesn’t even get really interesting until all of the babies, I mean, kittens, start dying. I enjoy some of the Super Editions, but this one I do not recommend.

Rating: 2/5