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adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
For me, Sky was the book I liked the least of the Warriors series, excluding Spottedleaf’s Heart. I still gave it 1,5 stars, mainly because of nostalgia reasons – let’s be real, Warriors became a nostalgia bait and nothing more. The development of the series is so similar to the Pokémon games: The creators just don’t have any ambitions anymore and produce the media only for the sake of making money and not because they want to tell an interesting story.
The story of this arc has two main problems until now: There’s barely any overarching plot and the characters are mostly passive in it. Already at the beginning with the unnecessary prologue that told us nothing and was just there because these books start with a prologue, I knew I wouldn’t like this book. Nightheart still deals with his legacy that at least half of the Clan shares, and Sunbeam is angsty over Blazefire and Lightleap. Especially those two POVs barely have any relevant plot and spend their time with random sidequesting. Only in RiverClan and in Frostpaw’s POV, sometimes relevant things happen but this arc is progressing so, so slowly. Only after the half of the book, they decide who the new leader should be, but nothing is resolved in the end. Owlnose doesn’t get his lives , and we don’t learn what happened to Curlfeather or StarClan. By the way, StarClan not helping the Clans was already the plot point of the whole previous arc. I don’t know how long the RiverClan thing will drag; I hope it’ll be resolved in the next novel. Like I’ve mentioned, it’s also so annoying how passive the protagonists are which can be for example seen in the fact that they often listen in secret to important conversations but are never part of it.
Additionally, there are so many scenes and plot points in this novel that we’ve seen in previous books, like cats getting green cough, falling from trees, meeting kittypets and thinking about how much their life sucks, or crossing streets dramatically. We furthermore have a travel, a cross-Clan romance, Clans not wanting help from other Clans, or leaders not getting their lives or some cat baiting dogs with prey which are also quite specific events from the first arc. It sometimes seems to me that the authors have a checklist of things that need to happen in a Warriors book. Even though the series is about battle cats, there’s only one (1) battle taking place at the end that is also written quite clumsy.
The lack of ambition from the writing team can also be seen in the writing itself. I have the feeling that it doesn’t get better and even worse; there are sometimes more than one rhetorical(?) question on one page (like “Why does character X do thing Y?” or “Does character X behave this way because they want to do Y?”) instead of describing the characters itself. Things that twolegs do are described but they get so specific that I didn’t even know what was meant by it. Furthermore, the xenophobia in this novel was so bad and I could see the parallels in xenophobic arguments today, like claiming that outsiders brought in a sickness. I wish this would’ve been criticized more by the narrator, but Sunbeam instead thinks, “yeah, that’s possible”. Also, Nightheart is angry with his mom because she didn’t feed him as a child, wtf? Not every woman is able/wants to breastfeed their children, no need to shame them for it.
I have the same problems with the characters that I have with all modern <i>Warriors</i> books. With the story taking place in three Clans, it’s so hard to not mix up the different cats, especially since many of them barely have any character, just like our protagonists. All three protagonists are unlikable and again only focus on one thing like in The Broken Code. Sunbeam focusses, at least in the first half of this novel, only on Blazefire and Lightleap. She hates everything Lightleap does because, of course, she’s the only other relevant female character. I also don’t like Nightheart; he’s just try-hard edgy aka rude and whiny. Other characters just don’t behave like they normally do, like Jayfeather. Besides this, Bramblestar is still annoying and argues with Squilf so much. Honestly, Leafstar is the only competent leader we currently have since Tigerstar II acts stupid and inconsiderate as well.
The main “”romance”” is annoying and has no basis as always. After only spending like a few days with each other, Nightheart says about Sunbeam that she feels like family to him, even though we never see this. Towards the end, he even talks about maybe being mates with her; there was just no development between them. Besides them, Frostpaw talks to a man like once (and an adult, urgh) and say that she’s in love with him.
After Sky, I will still continue with this arc but mainly because I get the books from the library. It’s so frustrating that the next arc was already announced while it’s obvious that at least for the last three arcs, there are no ambitions to tell a deeper story with compelling characters. But as long as people will buy the books, the series will go on and get progressively worse which is very unfortunate.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Xenophobia
Moderate: Animal death, Toxic relationship, Violence, Death of parent
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Blood