I don't know who in the fandom has been clamoring for a Leopardstar Super Edition, but I guess we got one. Spoilers ahead.
We follow our titular protagonist during events preceding and during the original arc of Warrior Cats. We see how she grows from apprentice to warrior, pretty soon becomes deputy, then leader, and ends up allying herself with the deadly Tigerstar.
Full disclosure: I don't like Leopardstar. Didn't before this book, and don't after reading it. While there were some arc one villains I always wanted more context for (e.g. Blackfoot), for Leopardstar I just never felt the need for it. She was a pretty one-note character for the most part and I just didn't care about her whatsoever, even when she ended up biting the dust in later arcs. And as you can tell, this book didn't change my mind on her.
While I appreciate what it's trying to do-showing her POV on the happenings and the motives behind her actions-it in no way justifies them to me. Leopardstar is rash and always hungry for a battle. She makes hasty decisions even when others very clearly try to warn her against doing so. She also became deputy way too early in my opinion, she didn't really do anything at that point that made her deserve the position.
I just don't care about her character and having to read 500+ pages of her consistently trying to justify her putting others in danger (or even just her actions that are flat out war crimes) isn't great. The only parts that really had me engaged was the ones that showed that her actions had consequences. Allying herself with Tigerstar obviously went awry, and she makes a few other mistakes that ends up getting her Clanmates in trouble.
But I just don't care. This could've been honestly just a novella dealing with her perspective on her alliance with Tigerstar. We didn't need the 300+ preceding pages as they were boring for the most part. The book also ends pretty quickly after the whole Tigerstar debacle.
There's also an annoying amount of mistakes in this book. Don't get me wrong, it's a Warriors book, and most if not all Warriors books have quite a few mistakes in them, but there were a lot in here even by those standards. Typos, blatantly wrong names or character descriptions, continuity errors left and right; it's a mess.
So while I do appreciate some aspects of this book, it just overall didn't keep my interest mainly because of the main character. Even the concept could've worked if they had made Leopardstar interesting, but aside from her character development of acting less hasty and harsh there isn't that much to her. I guess her relationship to Whiteclaw was kinda wholesome, but that's really the biggest compliment I can give it.
Rating: 3/5
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