Reviews with content warning for Animal death - River

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

River by Erin Hunter

7 reviews

rinku's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

River is your average first book in a new Warriors arc since there’s not much happening besides introducing the new protagonists and spelling out their conflicts in a predictable way.

One of the characters we follow is Frostpaw from RiverClan. The main conflict in RiverClan that

both Mistystar and Reedwhisker

was already spoiled to me. The idea is not too creative; when I was ten or so, I had a similar idea for a Warriors fanfiction. Nevertheless, the conflict could be interesting – I say could, because it barely progresses in this novel. It was still the most interesting conflict of the three. Sunbeam’s POV mostly deals with personal drama of hers. I found her conflict with Lightleap a bit silly, and it was so predictable that

Blazefire would leave her for Lightleap

. Flamepaw’s POV is occupied with describing what a failure he is in the eyes of his clan. His whole arc is so predictable, especially the fact that he

would fail his exam a second time

. Other people have talked about this before, but there are so many cats related to Firestar in ThunderClan and none is held to the same standards as Flamepaw.

Another big thing in this novel are the changes to the warrior code that are quite interesting; there’s a democratic element introduced to the Clans and the cats can now change Clans after finishing some silly tasks – and not all cats like these new changes. Besides those things, nothing happens in this novel and the only POV I was truly interested in was Frostpaw’s since I’m curious how she will deal with all the responsibility she has. But her story was also in parts sadly very predictable.

I have very different opinions when it comes to our new protagonists. I don’t have much to say about Sunbeam, she’s okay. I probably like Frostpaw the most since her role in RiverClan is interesting, just like her dynamic with Mothwing. Talking about Mothwing, I kinda hate what the writers have done to her character, but oh well. The character that annoyed me the most though was Flamepaw. He complains all the time, and everyone is without a real reason mean to him, just like they treated Shadowsight which then justified his corruption arc. I have the fear that Flamepaw will have a similar character development.

On a similar note, the character constellations felt quite similar to the ones in The Broken Code. We have a medicine cat apprentice that is not totally sure if she’s fitting for the role, an edgy apprentice that hates everyone, and a warrior who’s in love with someone unrequitedly. Besides them, I don’t have too much to say about the characters. I hope that ThunderClan will find its old strength again, but I doubt that this will happen with Bramblestar who annoys me like always and honestly can just die. All of the other side characters remain quite one-dimensional and with the focus now on three Clans, I struggled to remember all of them and their role in the various conflicts.

All in all, River delivers not much new to the Warriors series besides new changes in the Warrior code which consequences are not properly explored yet. Furthermore, I’m wondering if this arc will be the last one since the titles feel so final to me – or maybe the authors just don’t have any ideas for compelling titles anymore lmao.

Content Warnings