Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Warriors: The Ultimate Guide by Erin Hunter, Wayne McLoughlin

1 review

rinku's review against another edition

informative fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.5

 The Ultimate Guide is the most recent publication in the Field Guides of the Warriors series – and this is almost ten years ago! I doubt that they’ll ever publish a more recent version, but I would love to see it, since this one is clearly outdated. It was still a 3.5-star-read for me. 

In this book, there are character artworks – some from the other Field Guides - and one-to-three-page descriptions of the most important cats and animals of the Warriors universe. This includes finally the Dawn of the Clan cats. Additionally, there are two short stories about the leader ceremonies of Tigerstar and Bramblestar. I bought this book used and I was lucky that I got a first edition which has a poster of all the events of the books until 2013 as well. 

I love the design of the book so much and especially the artworks are so beautiful. They are not always correct though. Some cats have the wrong eye or fur colour, but I don’t think this is the fault of the artist but rather the editor not telling him how the cats should look like. The only artwork I didn’t like was the one of Brightheart – why couldn’t they request. an artwork where she looks nicer and not as aggressive? 

Sadly, the texts are not as great as the art. Retcons are nothing new to the series and they not even surprise me anymore, but I’m nevertheless sad every time how little effort is put into Warriors books. The first retcon was already on page six(!) where it’s mentioned that

Bluestar told everyone that her kits were killed by a badger, when in reality she said that it was a fox

. There’s still this obnoxious tale that Ashfur just loved too much and Jayfeather is treated ableist as sadly always (“despite being born blind”, urgh). But some of the information is new and was at least interesting; for example, Sandstorm wanted to have more kits than just Squilf and Leafpool or that Tallstar realized that Firestar was Jake’s son when he saw him for the first time. It’s so terrible though that Badgerfang gives one life to Tigerstar. 

While reading The Ultimate Guide, I noticed how many cats I miss in modern Warriors and how the characters were so much better in the past. Once there were so many interesting ShadowClan cats and the Clans were different from each other. They now feel all so shallow and 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal death