Hello everyone! It’s been a good while since I have made any updates to my site, oh wow looking at my last blog date it has certainly been a while! :( I don’t really want to get into it too much in this blog, I will probably make an blog about it in the future but basically I have had a lot of shit happen in my personal life. I haven’t really been in the right mindspace to be working on my site WHICH SUCKS! I love this place, its my little guy…
That’s not the main thing I want to talk about, I wanted to do movie reviews since the start of this place and I have been very lazy about it, just got a godzilla 1954 review and thats it, I was going to do one for the minecraft movie but I forgot… maybe I will still make one but I don’t know. The main thing I do want to talk about is that the autism wheel of hyperfixations has spun once more and it has landed onto Warrior cats, which is crazy not gonna lie. I have not been hyperfixated on warrior cats ( the books themselves ) since like 2016? I have some warrior fanart on my old amino account ( shudders ) from around 2021 so I must’ve been into them then. It’s hard to know really but warrior cats is a really big part of my life. It is what initially got me into digital art, I was one of those annoying 9 year old kids running around on amino gatekeeping my totally original warrior cat name. Wishing and hoping that one day that my posts would get featured, sadly a lot of my art from that time is lost. I might have one piece kicking around and that’s it, 13 year old me was obsessed with people who had clean aesthetic accounts and it prompted me to delete a lot of my old art. But yeah, I could go on for a very long time about how much warriors means to me I think over the next couple reviews I will drop pieces here and there about my experiences. You know something to break up the book reviews themselves.
So yeah, I decided to reread warriors. Autism commanded it and so it be so, I actually had to rebuy the first set since I was missing the first half of it. I bought my new set off someone on vinted. I excitedly drove into a familiar but enjoyable story once more. Ladies, gentlemen and enbies I introduce to you
This book means a lot to me, I remeber getting it for christmas and I use to have to it laying loose in my bag, I don’t know how exactly but it got covered in like pencil shavings so the cover of the book had a grey fog over it that you could remove with a rubber.
ALSO this review is written in mind of someone who has already read the book! So there will be spoilers.
Rereading the book, the first thing that strikes me is the battle with RiverClan prologue, I do think it is a great starter to the world. This is a book series about cats fighting and what better way to start that by showing cats fighting? The ending with Spotttedleaf’s devleiry of the prophecy “Fire alone will save our clan” is iconic, this prologue sets up an important mystery about what this prophecy can mean and how it affects our main character.
Our main character being a young kitten named Rusty, he dreams of going outside into the wild ( har har ). He eventually does so and encounters another kitten and they get into a fight. ( also something brief that I wanted to mention here, but before Rusty runs into Graypaw he sees a red tail in the bush and he later realises it was a fox? Odd thing to have and something I completely forgot about ). During this fight Rusty instead of running away he turns to fight Graypaw. The two have a short conversation before Bluestar and Lionheart are introduced. I also like how the conversation between Rusty and the forest cats goes, Rusty doesn’t know how their world works and operates and is asking them questions. Bluestar invites him to join Thunderclan. Rusty’s natural nack for fighting and his hunting abilities are likely the reason Bluestar even invited him to Thunderclan, she seen potential in the young cat. Rusty asks to think about this offer and the next night he leaves to join them. Traveling to Thunderclan for the first time with Whitestorm and Lionheart and entering into camp, I enjoy how Rusty’s perspective from trying to keep up with the older cats is framed. For something so mudane but so important to our character as this is his first time it feels like a struggle for the young cat to keep up but he is so determined to seek out what he believes will be a better life that he powers through.
As Rusty arrives into Thunderclan, Bluestar calls upon a meeting and during this meeting Longtail shouts out from the crowd about his distain of having a kittypet in the clan, prompted from Lionheart Rusty jumps up and attacks him! I forgot how this encounter went, Rusty being the one to physically defend his honour. The fight between Rusty and Longtail is short but fiercely remeberable, it is the moment where Rusty proves himself as a valuable asset to Thundrclan by defeating Longtail in battle, which ends in Longtail trying to strangle Rusty with his collar and resulting in it breaking. Freeing him from his twoleg owners. Longtail also suffers from a ear nick in this battle, a visible reminder of this encounter where he was beaten by a kittypet. A form of humiliation of when he was humbled. Rusty is renamed to Firepaw, likely after the Prophecy that Bluestar received the night before? Actually that’s something to think about, Bluestar learned about the prophecy the night before, since thats when the riverclan attack was. Whenever Bluestar invited Rusty to the clan she didn’t know of the prophecy and just invited him to join cause she genuinely needed more warriors.
Longtail as a character isn’t expanded much here in this book, not really doing all too much after this encounter besides being a friend of Tigerclaw alongside Darkstripe. He is an anagotisic character who doesn’t fully accept Firepaw as a member of the clan.
The start of the book introduces to this world and then it kinda just slows down for a bit before beginning to start going again, I am not saying that book need to be constantly GO GO GO! But here is where I see a lot of readers might be dropping off in the story. It’s just a tad boring, this could just be from the perspective of someone who is familiar about the world and its systems already and having them explained to me isn’t interesting at all.
Firepaw begins his training under Lionheart and Tigerclaw. They bring him around the territory and we get to see their contrasting characters, Lionheart is wise and noble and Tigerclaw is harsh and strict. Lionheart as a character himself is a mentor figure to Firepaw, he is someone he looks up to and respects him a lot, Firepaw takes a lot of consideration of what he says. He truly takes his advices and compliments to heart and uses them to improve and push himself further. Tigerclaw on the other paw is someone who makes Firepaw doubt himself , he propusefully sends Firepaw to the twolegplace as a way to test his loyalty. He tells Bluestar about Firepaw’s encounter with Smudge which prompts Bluestar to question him about his place in the clan. Firepaw is uneasy about Tigerclaw. Lionheart as a character is honestly not very interesting, he is the character equivalent to eating a piece of wafer. He is only interesting as a contrast to Tigerclaw in the ways he influences Firepaw.
When Firepaw is hunting he comes across a stray cat of the name Yellowfang, after defeating her in battle instead of taking her life he feeds her and whenever Bluestar’s patrol find them she the old she-cat home and ‘punishes’ Firepaw by making him take care of her. She also decies to mentor Firepaw. Whenever she announces this Graypaw makes mention that Bluestar only mentors the deputies kittens, ( which was notable to me since there is a popular theory that Redtail is Sandpaw’s father ). Bluestar is nervous about an impending attack from Shadowclan so she decides to go to the Moonstone to speak with Starclan. Bluestar has dreams of Shadowclan attacking Thunderclan and she rushes back to Thunderclan to fight of the invading Shadowclan. On her way back they get attacked by rats and Bluestar loses a life, this is our intro to the fact that leaders of clans have 9 lives. Something that is important to the lore of the series. You can feel the worry that Firepaw feels in this situation, he is truly concerned about the life of Bluestar. Bluestar comes back to life and still wounded they rush back to the camp
The battle to defend camp against Shadowclan in on, overall I really love how the fight scenes in this book is written. They are exciting and snappy, Firepaw’s quick thinking when fighting really matches the intense suitations. In this battle Lionheart and Rosetail are killed. Rosetail being an elder that wasn’t included in allegeinces, her death is meaningless. A victim to make the suitation dramatic and tragic, but we don’t know anything about Rosetail. This is the first time she mentioned and its only after she is dead, murdered by Blackfoot trying to get to the kittens. The main thing going on in this scene being Yellowfang proving her with her loyalty to Thunderclan by defending the kittens. You could remove Rosetail entirely from the story and it wouldn’t change! They don’t even siti vigil for her, she isn’t brought up after she is confirmed to be dead. Lionheart’s death is anti-climatic, he is just shown to be lying still dead and Graypaw moruns his mentor’s death. His death doesn’t even affect him too long as a few days later he is shown to be getting over it. Lionheart later is shown to be such an important character who appears in Starclan quite often and when his inclusion in the books as alive is so brief and he is held to such high importance and having such a wafer like personilatly of being good and noble.
Speaking of, Spottedleaf. She receives the prophecy of “Fire alone will save our clan” and it is very clear by Firepaw’s actions around her that he has a crush on her. Firepaw doesn’t see much of her nor does he have much of a relationship with her besides him going to get herbs for Yellowfang. From my understanding of her character she is kind and shy. She seems kind of reserved but passionate in her work as a medicine cat. She is compassionate, she is friendly to Firepaw. She tells Firepaw about the prophecy which confuses him and has thinking about what it could possibility mean. It sets up a mystery about what this could possibility mean. When she dies Firepaw is heartbroken and whenever he is fighting Shadowclan in their camp he attempts to do a killing strike on Clawface to avenge her death. Whitestorm stops him, it does seems quite out of character for Firepaw to attempt to kill another cat, but prehaps overcome with greif that he is pushed over the edge.
Bluestar is an interesting character, she is well respected and is someone that Firepaw looks up to, his mentor and apprentice relationship with Bluestar is brief. They have one single training session with Bluestar that happens after the Shadowclan attack but before the kittens are stolen. Most of the time that Firepaw is Bluestar’s apprentice he is in punishment of taking care of Yellowfang. Bluestar overall is odd, she is tells Firepaw unprompted about how many life’s she really has left.
Ravenpaw as a character is definitely one of my favourites, I kinda wishes he would of stuck around longer just so that he could see more of his anxious and jumpy personality. I really enjoyed the recurring moments in the book of Tigerclaw intentionally puting Ravenpaw in dangerous suitations. Like senidng him to snakerocks to hunt and trying to get him to cross the thunderpath first when he never had before. Something that I had completely forgotten was that Tigerclaw was spreading rumours about Ravenpaw being a traitor working with Shadowclan. Which from a perspective of a cat living in the forest I don’t know why they so willing believe? Like what reason would Ravenpaw have to be a traitor. >.> I don’t know, well this esclates to a point where Frostfur hisses and nips Ravenpaw which causes him to slump in his next afterwards like a wet mop. This moment being the tipping point that Firepaw wants Ravenpaw to leave the clans.
This moment comes during the storm, one of my favourite scenes in the book to be honest, its just so cinematic? I just don’t know what to say other than that. Our trio runs out under the guise of some phoney excuse to get herbs and Firepaw convinces Ravenpaw to go live with Barley in order to keep his friend safe. It is raining and storming down on them and after Ravenpaw runs off with the idea that Firepaw will report to the others are dead they are on the hunt to find Yellowfang before its too late. This is a tense moment as you wonder if they are gonna make it in time to save her from Tigerclaw who will kill her on sight. Thankfull our characters find her and she clarifies the situation with what happened. She gets the Shadowclan elders who want to overthrow Brokenstar and meet up with the Thunderclan patrol who were sent to return the kittens. They plan their attack and it is successful in retriving the kittens and exiling Brokenstar.
Brokenstar, I know this is pointed out a bunch but his plans don’t really make much sense. From my perspective of what he is doing is that he is training kittens early cause he is impatient and wants more territory to feed his already struggling clan. Shadowclan is suffering pre and post Brokenstar, it is something that is mentioned by Ashfur(?) that humans have been polluting their home more and more every year. This is an issue that is only getting worse, Brokenstar wants Shadowclan to have more power be the best it can, maybe he sees that by not training kittens early that his clan is only suffering for longer. I could be wrong on this, Brokenstar as a character with his motives are quite flawed, trying to understand who he is as a character and why he does the things he does is quite flat and one-note. I suppose he serves the role he needs to in this story, he is doing something obviously wrong by training kittens and drives Windclan out of their home and threatens the others that if they don’t give him what he wants he will do the same to them. He is driven out by Thunderclan and the Shadowclan elders at the end in a fight where Frostfur’s kittens are recovered
Once the patrol returns home with the kittens and Yellowfang they clear her name and Bluestar makes them warriors. Naming them Fireheart and Graystripe. Noting how Ravenpaw should've been a warrior alongside them.
This book does something else really well, it sets up a goal for the main character. Rusty wanting to live out in the wild and become a warrior. Sets up a conflict, that being brokenstar and resovles them both in the book. The book itself, into the wild is a good standalone book. This book is also great setup for the rest of the books in the series, it introduces multiple plot threads that are going to be relevant later; Tigerstar and the murder of Redtail and the mystery of windclan. It does a really damn good job of this, as soon as you put down the book you just want to know what happens next which prompts you into reading the next book in the series.
Overall this was enjoyable, there are some odd first book stuff going on and other aspects that are quite odd but it is a good easy read. Something that is important to me especially, cause I can have a hard time reading something if I am not overly invested in a story and if something is a hard read I just lose interest. VERY ODD comparison is the book Dracula by Bram Stroker, that book threads you in with an amazing intro and keeps you in wanting to know what happes next, it’s a great fucking book. I feel like that same great narrative structure is present in Into the wild as well. Great intro, slowish mid section and exciting finale.
ALSO my boy runningwind got like 2 or 3 lines of dialogue, shoutout to him
Okay holy moly, that is a lot of writing. I did not think I would have that much to say about this book. Hope you enjoyed reading my rambled thoughts, thanks for being here :3c