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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
one star for onestar
seriously, though, i was so excited at the idea of a windclan centered book. this was why reading the book was such a disappointment - every two pages something completely ridiculous happened and royally pissed me off. heck, every single damn thing thunderclan did pissed me off
seriously, though, i was so excited at the idea of a windclan centered book. this was why reading the book was such a disappointment - every two pages something completely ridiculous happened and royally pissed me off. heck, every single damn thing thunderclan did pissed me off
In which Crowfeather finally decides to be a decent person for once.
Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2021/05/book-review-warriors-super-edition-11.html
Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2021/05/book-review-warriors-super-edition-11.html
Not great.
There were quite a few moments sprinkled throughout that were good, or even great, but the reason for the low rating is the crux of the book.
And thy name is Breezepelt.
I'll dance around it for a bit though; I really enjoyed Crowfeather's relationships with older-Leafpool, Kestrelflight, Yew even, and Nightcloud once she got rescued. Heathertail... ehhh maybe I'll talk about her a bit more later. The Dark Forest warriors redeeming themselves would've been interesting (if we hadn't done the exact same thing in Dovewing's Silence) and...? It was nice seeing some background characters like Emberfoot and Whiskernose have moments of actual characterization? I also enjoyed Crowfeather calling Leaftail a sanctimonious cleanpaw, even though I'm gonna talk about how Leaftail was the most relatable character in the book in a minute.
My experience reading this book can really be summed up by me pulling out an imaginary megaphone every few paragraphs and shouting "So are we gonna address the attempted murder, or what?"
Let me just... paint a picture. In Omen of the Stars, there were three kinds of cats in the Dark Forest. The first was The Baddies (Hawkfrost, Brokenstar, Mapleshade +). It was obvious that their destiny was just to go out in an awesome fight. The second was The Manipulees (Hollowflight, Thornclaw, Harespring +) who had been convinced by the Baddies that they were just training them in order to help out their Clans. And the final category is the Heroes (Tigerheart, Ivypool, Beetlewhisker) who recognized that the Baddies were up to no good and either stood up to them or began feeding their Clanmates information as spies.
Now, where does Breezepelt fit in? Good question, me. He is a Baddie. It is unquestionable. All throughout Omen of the Stars, we are consistently shown Breezepelt's violent nature, his eagerness to go along with even the most nakedly-Kill-Your-Clan parts of the DF's ideology, and his repeated attempts to kill Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf for daring to exist. He is NOT a Manipulee. He is on their side, start to finish, and even in Dovewing's Silence we get Dovewing remarking that because Onestar and the other leaders want to forgive ALL the Dark Forest trainees, cats like Breezepelt who fully wanted to kill their Clanmates are now being welcomed back into the fold.
I'm not against this in principal. This could turn into a very cool Breezepelt-attacks-from-within storyline. But we did not get that. Instead, we got a hasty retcon that "Oh, Breezepelt never actually wanted to hurt his Clanmates! Poor baby was just uhhhh angry! for Reasons!" and it is swept under the rug as much as possible. Attempted murder is handwaved as 'made some mistakes'.
StarClan's sake, Crowfeather even compares Breezepelt's injuries to when Lionblaze's life was in danger. He conveniently leaves out why Lionblaze's life was in danger. (HINT IT WAS BECAUSE BREEZEPELT WAS TRYING TO RIP HIS PELT OFF) So please forgive me if I don't actually believe Crowfeather's all anxious about the well-being of his sons; he seems like he's in a hurry to forget who the real threat to their safety was.
He even has a dream about Hawkfrost killing Hollyleaf and then imagines how he would get his violent revenge on Hawkfrost. This was in the same battle where Breezepelt tried to kill Lionblaze, but instead of Crowfeather thinking 'huh if Breezepelt had managed to do what he wanted, my son would be dead just like my daughter', he spends 300 so pages thinking about what a bad father he's been.
It is going to take a lot more than what we got to make me think Breezepelt has changed. This book fundamentally fails to show Breezepelt's growth because it refuses to engage with Breezepelt's actual character. We are not shown the angry, violent, ruthless young tom growing into a mature warrior of WindClan. It is stated in the actual text that Breezepelt never wanted to hurt his Clan, and that is just NONSENSE. HE DID. Maybe he would've made sure Nightcloud got special treatment or whatever once he took over as a deputy of DarkForestClan, but he 1000000% wanted to murder the leaders, slaughter anyone who got in the way, and toss the warrior code into the fire. But the Breezepelt that appears in Crowfeather's Trial is not that Breezepelt.
He's Manipulee Breezepelt, who didn't know what the Dark Forest was up to and was just angry at the world. It's Crowfeather's fault! He was a bad father, right? And Breezepelt didn't actually manage to murder Lionblaze, it was just ATTEMPTED murder, so it's totes okay.
The few moments of sanity were delivered to me by Leaftail, Lionblaze, and Jayfeather, none of whom are too hasty to forget Breezepelt's war crimes.Lionblaze of course reverses it right at the end for seemingly no reason and Crowfeather's internal monologue tries to convince me that Lionblaze does in fact possess character traits, and Leaftail just... slides into the background, I guess. Jayfeather doesn't forgive Breezepelt, which is a breath of fresh air, but it's undercut by Crowfeather attributing that choice to Jayfeather's 'ornery' and not Jayfeather's 'lack of trust in the supposed reform of the man who tried to slaughter me and a defenseless pregnant woman'
Let's also touch on Heathertail briefly. I was grimacing often throughout the book because Heathertail's interest in Breezepelt is used to excuse the fact that she has to mother Breezepelt (AND Crowfeather on occasion), constantly make excuses for his/their terrible behaviour, make him apologize or say certain things, and generally acts more like his mother or life coach than his girlfriend. And that makes me mad, because shitty-man's-girlfriend-has-to-drag-him-to-self-improvement is a tale as old as time, rooted in misogyny and the idea that women should 'fix' the men in their life.
I'd like to say that, divorced from all of Breezepelt's canon actions, this book would probably be about a three star read. It's not very good, but it's not offensively bad either. The conflict with the stoats is kind of dry, but Onestar being a complete tool does make for a bit of drama.
HOWEVER. In the context of Omen of the Stars, this is a one-star piece of hot garbage. They took a fun anger prickle-man antagonist and threw out everything that made him interesting to be replaced with the most generic "My attempted murder doesn't matter, actually, because I was sad once" morality ever. Also can I just say...? Crowfeather didn't need a Super Edition. He doesn't have any more stories to tell. He's been a major character for three entire arcs, and the only way I could've seen this working is if Breezepelt had died in the Great Battle and it was about him and Nightcloud reconnecting after finding out their son was a genocidal maniac. But nope. Instead we got 500 odd pages of spooky ranch-flavoured stoats, a character assassination in reverse, and me praying to StarClan that Crowfeather doesn't become Crowstar because I've HAD ENOUGH.
There were quite a few moments sprinkled throughout that were good, or even great, but the reason for the low rating is the crux of the book.
And thy name is Breezepelt.
I'll dance around it for a bit though; I really enjoyed Crowfeather's relationships with older-Leafpool, Kestrelflight, Yew even, and Nightcloud once she got rescued. Heathertail... ehhh maybe I'll talk about her a bit more later. The Dark Forest warriors redeeming themselves would've been interesting (if we hadn't done the exact same thing in Dovewing's Silence) and...? It was nice seeing some background characters like Emberfoot and Whiskernose have moments of actual characterization? I also enjoyed Crowfeather calling Leaftail a sanctimonious cleanpaw, even though I'm gonna talk about how Leaftail was the most relatable character in the book in a minute.
My experience reading this book can really be summed up by me pulling out an imaginary megaphone every few paragraphs and shouting "So are we gonna address the attempted murder, or what?"
Let me just... paint a picture. In Omen of the Stars, there were three kinds of cats in the Dark Forest. The first was The Baddies (Hawkfrost, Brokenstar, Mapleshade +). It was obvious that their destiny was just to go out in an awesome fight. The second was The Manipulees (Hollowflight, Thornclaw, Harespring +) who had been convinced by the Baddies that they were just training them in order to help out their Clans. And the final category is the Heroes (Tigerheart, Ivypool, Beetlewhisker) who recognized that the Baddies were up to no good and either stood up to them or began feeding their Clanmates information as spies.
Now, where does Breezepelt fit in? Good question, me. He is a Baddie. It is unquestionable. All throughout Omen of the Stars, we are consistently shown Breezepelt's violent nature, his eagerness to go along with even the most nakedly-Kill-Your-Clan parts of the DF's ideology, and his repeated attempts to kill Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf for daring to exist. He is NOT a Manipulee. He is on their side, start to finish, and even in Dovewing's Silence we get Dovewing remarking that because Onestar and the other leaders want to forgive ALL the Dark Forest trainees, cats like Breezepelt who fully wanted to kill their Clanmates are now being welcomed back into the fold.
I'm not against this in principal. This could turn into a very cool Breezepelt-attacks-from-within storyline. But we did not get that. Instead, we got a hasty retcon that "Oh, Breezepelt never actually wanted to hurt his Clanmates! Poor baby was just uhhhh angry! for Reasons!" and it is swept under the rug as much as possible. Attempted murder is handwaved as 'made some mistakes'.
StarClan's sake, Crowfeather even compares Breezepelt's injuries to when Lionblaze's life was in danger. He conveniently leaves out why Lionblaze's life was in danger. (HINT IT WAS BECAUSE BREEZEPELT WAS TRYING TO RIP HIS PELT OFF) So please forgive me if I don't actually believe Crowfeather's all anxious about the well-being of his sons; he seems like he's in a hurry to forget who the real threat to their safety was.
He even has a dream about Hawkfrost killing Hollyleaf and then imagines how he would get his violent revenge on Hawkfrost. This was in the same battle where Breezepelt tried to kill Lionblaze, but instead of Crowfeather thinking 'huh if Breezepelt had managed to do what he wanted, my son would be dead just like my daughter', he spends 300 so pages thinking about what a bad father he's been.
It is going to take a lot more than what we got to make me think Breezepelt has changed. This book fundamentally fails to show Breezepelt's growth because it refuses to engage with Breezepelt's actual character. We are not shown the angry, violent, ruthless young tom growing into a mature warrior of WindClan. It is stated in the actual text that Breezepelt never wanted to hurt his Clan, and that is just NONSENSE. HE DID. Maybe he would've made sure Nightcloud got special treatment or whatever once he took over as a deputy of DarkForestClan, but he 1000000% wanted to murder the leaders, slaughter anyone who got in the way, and toss the warrior code into the fire. But the Breezepelt that appears in Crowfeather's Trial is not that Breezepelt.
He's Manipulee Breezepelt, who didn't know what the Dark Forest was up to and was just angry at the world. It's Crowfeather's fault! He was a bad father, right? And Breezepelt didn't actually manage to murder Lionblaze, it was just ATTEMPTED murder, so it's totes okay.
The few moments of sanity were delivered to me by Leaftail, Lionblaze, and Jayfeather, none of whom are too hasty to forget Breezepelt's war crimes.
Let's also touch on Heathertail briefly. I was grimacing often throughout the book because Heathertail's interest in Breezepelt is used to excuse the fact that she has to mother Breezepelt (AND Crowfeather on occasion), constantly make excuses for his/their terrible behaviour, make him apologize or say certain things, and generally acts more like his mother or life coach than his girlfriend. And that makes me mad, because shitty-man's-girlfriend-has-to-drag-him-to-self-improvement is a tale as old as time, rooted in misogyny and the idea that women should 'fix' the men in their life.
I'd like to say that, divorced from all of Breezepelt's canon actions, this book would probably be about a three star read. It's not very good, but it's not offensively bad either. The conflict with the stoats is kind of dry, but Onestar being a complete tool does make for a bit of drama.
HOWEVER. In the context of Omen of the Stars, this is a one-star piece of hot garbage. They took a fun anger prickle-man antagonist and threw out everything that made him interesting to be replaced with the most generic "My attempted murder doesn't matter, actually, because I was sad once" morality ever. Also can I just say...? Crowfeather didn't need a Super Edition. He doesn't have any more stories to tell. He's been a major character for three entire arcs, and the only way I could've seen this working is if Breezepelt had died in the Great Battle and it was about him and Nightcloud reconnecting after finding out their son was a genocidal maniac. But nope. Instead we got 500 odd pages of spooky ranch-flavoured stoats, a character assassination in reverse, and me praying to StarClan that Crowfeather doesn't become Crowstar because I've HAD ENOUGH.
I loved this book! It expanded upon Crowfeather's personality and his true feelings in the inside than always being angry and hard to deal with on the outside. The bond he was building and fixing between his son was so heartwarming and captivating. This book had a wonderful message and amazing author's craft. As I said before I really enjoy these super editions because there is more variety. It is fun to get to know other cats and clans better, and see a new point of view on things. I recommend reading this one right after the 4th arc, Omen of the Stars, it doesn't matter in you read it after Dawn of the Clans, but I would recommend reading it before A Vision of Shadows, which takes place after Crowfeather's Trial.
I'm pretty biased, but I've always been intrigued by Crowfeather and his relationships, and this is really what this book is all about.
The main conflict of the book was a little boring and not very climactic, to be honest. The book's main focus was on Crowfeather and how he needed to fix his attitude and his relationships with his kin.
Not the most exciting super edition, but not the worst either.
The main conflict of the book was a little boring and not very climactic, to be honest. The book's main focus was on Crowfeather and how he needed to fix his attitude and his relationships with his kin.
Not the most exciting super edition, but not the worst either.