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aiiria17 · 2 months ago

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I read Moonrise (Warriors: The New Prophecy)

Hey, I'm Ari and I just finished the second book of The New Prophecy. It's easily the book I feel most conflicted about in the main series, so much so that even after writing this fairly long post I still feel conflicted about parts of it. That being said I feel like I at least understand what the aim of the authors was and I promise that there's more here than just Tribe hate. There is a little bit of Tribe hate though. Okay a good bit but honestly that's not my fault.

Well, most of my analysis today is about the tribe section because that's where most of the actual narrative of Moonrise takes place. Without any more stalling, what's up with Moonrise?

The Tribe of Stalling Plotlines

Pretty early on in Moonrise, the traveling group of 6 cats goes and meets the Tribe of Rushing Water, who are an extremely clan-esque group just living in the mountains. They are really, really uninteresting. The main problem with the segment of the book where they are in the Tribe is simply just that the Tribe isn't particularly interesting.

The group most similar to them in terms of function (though not similar at all socially) is Bloodclan, just in the terms of both being a variation on Warrior lifestyle. Bloodclan, however, has the intrigue of being very violent and inhospitable. They're mentioned to basically throw out anyone unfit to fight which makes them, in spite of their minimally time actually existing within the story, interesting as a contrast to the caring and stable clans. The Tribe, however, is really just a clan with different terms and living in the mountains. Learning their culture isn't interesting because it's barely different besides just fusing leader/medicine cats and having warriors trained for two specific functions.

So the Tribe really only takes about 10 seconds to actually explain, which means there's not much narrative value in just watching them do normal tribe things. Because of this, we immediately transition into the conflict for the Tribe being that there's a big scary like mountain lion or whatever that's eating them. Good enough conflict. It has a lot of solid elements that make a decent little villain: seems difficult to conquer, shows clear harm to group, etc. The problem is that Sharptooth is not a character but instead just a force of nature, basically. There's just nothing actually interesting about prolonging the conflict, and oh boy do they prolong Sharptooth. Chapter 9 is the first time Sharptooth is alluded to, not counting the prologue (the Tribe refuses to say he exists for a while for no particular reason). Sharptooth does not attack until Chapter 15. Finally, in Chapter 23, it dies. Even acknowledging the amount of Leafpaw chapters there are, the book just feels so long because nothing happens in most of the chapters when the Fellowship of the Badger are in the cave. Mostly it's just arguing "hey we need to go home give us Stormfur" and the Tribe says "no." Riveting stuff, truly. You see, in the prologue, Stoneteller (the leader/medicine cat) is told that a silver cat will beat up Sharptooth. He decides that cat is Stormfur.

Stormfur is sure there and arguably not even silver

In the allegiances, Stormfur is listed as dark gray, which is, famously, not really silver and more so dark gray.

I just want to toss that out there but I'll get back to it later.

So the other problem with the Tribe sections is that, for the majority of them, Stormfur is the pov character and he really isn't that interesting. Before getting to the Tribe, his mind is split between being mad that Feathertail and Crowpaw love each other and having some kind of weird attraction to Squirrelpaw that comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. Eventually, the cats do meet the Tribe where Stormfur has his entire character arc as a speedrun within the first day of getting there, and, to be fair, it is actually fairly good.

I've been overly negative so far, mostly just because I don't particularly care for Moonrise especially after Midnight, which was actually pretty good. And while I don't like Stormfur, his character arc while staying with the Tribe is actually really nice. As a reminder, Stormfur was not chosen to go on the journey as part of the Sundown Crusaders; he went because his sister, Feathertail, was going and he's glued to her as she really the only person in Riverclan he feels a close bond to. The journey is weird for Stormfur because he doesn't belong, which is a running theme with his character. The reason that he's so snappy about Feathertail and Crowpaw getting along, to me, is because of that fear of isolation. Essentially, the more time Feathertail spends with Crowpaw, the less time she'll spend with him, and nobody else is spending time with him beyond beyond her. That's really what gives Stormfur complexity is the fact that he doesn't seem to really recognize why he resents their relationship and defaults to "my sister will not be having a half clan relationship." Don't get me wrong though, Stormfur is not in the right for trying to dictate Feathertail's life. She is not just "his sister" she is also a fully independent character, but he doesn't really see it this way.

Well, upon arriving at the tribe and being misinterpreted as the silver cat (spoilers- it's definitely his sister who is actually silver), he actually is treated fairly well. The cats like him pretty well, especially Brook. A key aspect about his relationship with Brook is that she's really the only cat who Stormfur feels a bond to beyond Feathertail, who doesn't interact with him as much now that she has a Crowpaw. It's directly stated that Stormfur softens on her relationship whenever he meets Brook; while the text blatantly states it being because of him relating to loving someone not from their clan, meaning he's softer on half-clan relationships overall, if we continue reading into Stormfur's possible subconscious reasoning, he's probably relaxed just as much because he doesn't have only Feathertail to talk to anymore.

Jumping ahead to Dawn (I already finished it cause I had to toss out and redo this post. The original was super bad), Stormfur ends up deciding to stay with the Tribe because he finally finds a place where he actually belongs. He specifically pulls Squirrelpaw aside to tell her this and, going back to hating, there's really no reason for him to besides being able to explain it to the pov character so the readers know his actual motivations. Weird scene honestly, Squirrelpaw was as confused as the rest of us.

So yeah, I hate Stormfur cause he's boring but I'll admit that his character arc is really good. If only I didn't have to actually read his perspective to see it.

Feathertail dies and that's pretty much it

I know I titled the last section "Stormfur is sure there" but Feathertail is actually just kind of there. She's also a pov character though I couldn't tell you what her pov actually shows beyond "Tribe taking Stormfur bad" if you held me at gunpoint. So please do not do that.

Feathertail is honestly just an extremely disappointing character for plenty of reasons but I'll start off with the most eye-catching: Feathertail is a female character who is only really relevant because of the views of male characters surrounding her. Why does she get with Crowpaw? Romantic chemistry? Nope, there's less chemistry happening there than when mixing oil and water. Any level of her having some interest in him? Not really, she just doesn't hate him and then suddenly they love each other. The first time I saw their relationship referenced, I genuinely thought I accidentally skipped a scene or something but no they just suddenly love each other. I guess Brambleclaw just didn't notice or something. Could they get together so Crowpaw can be sad and so Stormfur can be insecure? Almost certainly. If you asked me why Feathertail is relevant, I would bring up all the stuff I just said about Stormfur and reaction Crowpaw has to her death. She is definitely the most notable example to this point in the series of a female character being written in a way that could be called not super cool. I don't want to say sexist because I don't think that's what this is and I, as a not a woman, don't feel 100% comfortable saying that about a book written predominately by women (entirely? I'm not sure but I know many writers involved were women). I do think it's kind of annoying to see a character that is mostly relevant in regards to the men in her life and serves very little narrative purpose otherwise. But hey, she is Silverstream's daughter after all.

The only other thing she does is kill Sharptooth, which is done so suddenly that it feels out of nowhere. Within like one page, Feathertail just suddenly goes "this is my purpose" and then kamikazes herself into Sharptooth and gets them both stabbed with a rock. I'd consider this a major character point but it's very sudden and hard to dissect as a reader. While it is absolutely raw as hell, she just kind of dies and that's it, she's just dead and now Crowpaw is sad and Stormfur is lonely when not with the tribe. The tribe proceeds to have the most tone deaf celebration of all time.

To put it bluntly- Feathertail is more so a plot device than a character. She hardly does anything to distinguish herself besides be in love with Crowpaw, and even that is predominately to advance his character and Stormfur's. She's such a let down to what could have been an actually interesting character.

The Tribe never explains why they didn't think it was Feathertail. The whole plot of Moonrise is entirely dependent on Stoneteller not knowing what silver is. Brilliant.

The one good thing about the Tribe is how they accidentally build narrative tension

I have now talked (typed?) quite a lot about how the tribe, professionally speaking, blows. They're not interesting and the whole plot with them is drawn out and illogical. There is only one way that the plot being dragged out works and it's because of the chapters not spent with the tribe.

Back in the Leafpaw chapters, she is effectively documenting for the readers the destruction done to the forest while Brambleclaw and the Heartbreakers go off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. There's a feeling of helplessness with the clans that makes it so captivating to read. Seeing Windclan being pushed to be unable to hunt the rabbits they've hunted for years and needing to steal prey from other clans (though never bothering to go to Ravenpaw and Barley's barn for some reason, despite it bordering their territory). Dappletail dies out of desperation making her decide to eat poison. And at the end of it all, Leafpaw gets captured while on an search for the also captured Brightheart and Cloudtail (assisted with her Thunderclan best bud Sorreltail). While she still definitely makes time to assert how pretty some of the cats around her are and how nice Spottedleaf smells (very important to the plot), Leafpaw is basically allowing the reader to witness the fear that comes with the destruction of the forest while it happens.

It's because of the tension in the forest that the stacked tension of Brambleclaw's merry band of misfits getting effectively held prisoner by the tribe so interesting. While the conflict of the Tribe is boring on it's own, the tension of knowing they need to get out of there as soon as they can gives some basic level of narrative interest that is desperately needed. Really Moonrise is a 300 page long build of tension to Dawn, where the clans are finally enabled to leave the forest (after a lot of bickering). I can't argue that it's ineffective. I think part of my frustration with the tribe is because I wanted to see them return to the clans and help them out as is desperately needed. It's hard not to get invested into the safety of the clans I've been made to love being 9 (I read Tallstar's Revenge) books deep into the series at this point.

There's a weird issue though I've run into with my analysis here. I want to give a definitive "Tribe part good" or "Tribe part bad" but I can't. In isolation, the section with the Tribe is super boring. The villain is done in a really weak way, none of the characters present or introduced do anything especially interesting, and the cherry on top is that all of that is portrayed through a Stormfur pov. However, the plotline isn't made in isolation. The split in perspectives makes it work slightly. While it's still annoying to read filler, the filler is a narrative tool to make the tension of the Washington Brambleclaw Team needing, desperately, to get out feel as long as it probably did for the cats involved. So I can't really say "it was good/bad" because it was both. Though, obviously, it could have been done in a more interesting way, the end result is still effective as a narrative tool.

Conclusion!

As I said I already finished Dawn because I was stalling with how to write this post for a while. The main problem was that a lot of Leafpaw's sections don't have any finished conflicts yet (because it's a series). For example, originally I had a section about Hawkfrost, but there's little to say beyond he's clearly evil and looks like Tigerstar, which is incredibly surface level. Dawn kind of continues that because not much happens for the first 200ish pages but I think I can squeeze out a section about Mothwing and Tallstar so it'll be all good.

Thank you so much for reading, I'll probably get the Dawn post out in a day or two. If you think I said something dumb or just wanna ask for clarification feel free. I don't exactly have anything better going on and will respond.

bye bye

#wc #warrior cats #warriors #the new prophecy #stormfur #feathertail #crowfeather #leafpool #tribe of rushing water #sharptooth #hello all 1 people in the sharptooth tag I'll be your post of the month #it'll be like runningwind in tpb where I was the 3 most recent posts in his tag at one point. poor background character

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