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Bamboo Kingdom #6
Fire and Ash
The Bamboo Kingdom faces its final test in this epic conclusion to the thrilling new series from bestselling Warriors author Erin Hunter, perfect for fans of the Wings of Fire and Endling series.
The three Dragon Speakers have one last chance to reunite the Great Dragon and bring peace to Bamboo Kingdom. But they face insurmountable odds.
After being betrayed by someone they called friend, Rain and Ghost know that the monkeys have more plans in store—especially now that Brawnshanks holds a Dragon Speaker stone.
Meanwhile, Leaf must find the strength to become a Dragon Speaker again and reunite with her siblings to stop Brawnshanks...before it's too late.
Yet an even greater enemy waits in the shadows—one that no one will see coming.
The three Dragon Speakers have one last chance to reunite the Great Dragon and bring peace to Bamboo Kingdom. But they face insurmountable odds.
After being betrayed by someone they called friend, Rain and Ghost know that the monkeys have more plans in store—especially now that Brawnshanks holds a Dragon Speaker stone.
Meanwhile, Leaf must find the strength to become a Dragon Speaker again and reunite with her siblings to stop Brawnshanks...before it's too late.
Yet an even greater enemy waits in the shadows—one that no one will see coming.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published March 25, 2025
12 people are currently reading
2350 people want to read
About the author
Erin Hunter
280 books10.8k followersErin Hunter is the pseudonym of five people: Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Tui T. Sutherland, Gillian Philip, and Inbali Iserles, as well as editor Victoria Holmes. Together, they write the Warriors series as well as the Seekers and Survivors series. Erin Hunter is working on a new series now called Bravelands.
Erin Hunter is inspired by a love of cats and a fascination with the ferocity of the natural world. As well as having a great respect for nature in all its forms, Erin enjoys creating rich mythical explanations for animal behavior, shaped by her interest in astronomy and standing stones.
Erin Hunter is inspired by a love of cats and a fascination with the ferocity of the natural world. As well as having a great respect for nature in all its forms, Erin enjoys creating rich mythical explanations for animal behavior, shaped by her interest in astronomy and standing stones.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 21, 2025
Solid wrap-up! This was a fun series.
Read
August 5, 20254.5 stars, read it for the sake of reading it but I was invested enough to care about the characters, I’m not super into this genre of books but ill read the new ones!
also I’m the first review???? :0
also I’m the first review???? :0
April 11, 2025
Actual rating 3.5/5
Bullet review:
+Shiver POV, let's go!
+I still really love Rain, and Leaf has grown a lot on me as well.
+Higher stakes than ever before.
+I liked the gibbons, they were interesting.
-I still don't like the monkeys as villains much, especially Brawnshanks. Something about them (especially him) just feels too over the top and too blandly written for me to really care. Especially with Brawnshanks pretty much going bonkers and trying to destroy the world in this book. Crookedclaw is a little better than him but still not by much. I still maintain that Dusk was the best villain of this arc.
-Ghost gets awfully sidelined in this book :( He's one of the main characters, I've no idea why they did him so dirty here. I'm glad we got a Shiver POV, don't get me wrong, but I didn't want that to mean that we got less Ghost.
Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/20...
Bullet review:
+Shiver POV, let's go!
+I still really love Rain, and Leaf has grown a lot on me as well.
+Higher stakes than ever before.
+I liked the gibbons, they were interesting.
-I still don't like the monkeys as villains much, especially Brawnshanks. Something about them (especially him) just feels too over the top and too blandly written for me to really care. Especially with Brawnshanks pretty much going bonkers and trying to destroy the world in this book. Crookedclaw is a little better than him but still not by much. I still maintain that Dusk was the best villain of this arc.
-Ghost gets awfully sidelined in this book :( He's one of the main characters, I've no idea why they did him so dirty here. I'm glad we got a Shiver POV, don't get me wrong, but I didn't want that to mean that we got less Ghost.
Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/20...
July 12, 2025
Low three stars. This book was so bland.
The Erins must have run out of motivation to write, because not only is this book barely 200 pages (again), it also was somehow simultaneously criminally rushed and painfully glossed over. This new Erin writing is seriously irking me. I really can’t figure out what it is that’s different or why it feels so weird to read, but I honestly think it’s contributing to how disjointed and forced their recent books have been. Another contributing factor is that they keep stretching plots to last six books when they really should only take up three (thank you, Bravelands, for finally fixing that issue, at least). And they keep adding new stories to series that should have ended 5 books ago.
But for once, that isn’t happening here, because Fire and Ash is the sixth and FINAL book in Bamboo Kingdom! Woo! The Erins finally figured out how to stop milking series! Yay! So what is the problem with this book? In terms of writing, aside from the general weirdness of this new Erin style, my critiques are mostly small. Environments are not described well, if at all. We completely dropped Ghost’s POV in favor of Shiver’s, even though Ghost’s story didn’t really seem finished and Shiver didn’t particularly need a POV. My willing suspension of disbelief is being stretched to the brink with the frankly dumb, uninspired solutions to pretty much every problem in this book (and most of the series, honestly). Also, as an aside, why do the Erins never have their map artists draw updated versions of the map? The characters spend most of this book in the Broken Forest, a place that is not even on the map at the start of the book. If it’s not going to help, why is it even still there? That really bothered me.
But yeah. The writing issues of this story mainly boil down to a mountain of small critiques that make the book feel lazy.
But the plot. Oh, the plot. What is happening in this book? The Dragon Speakers are trying to get their magical stones away from Brawnshanks, so Rain disguises herself as Lychee to try and get to them but then ignores like 4 chances to just take them, while Leaf walks home from doing nothing last book, and Ghost. . . Uh. . . Stands around? Seriously, what is happening? Why are the stakes so LOW? For a book with a surprising amount of content (stones missing, the whole gibbons plotline, Leaf returning, Rain pretending to be Lychee, Lychee dying, Crookedclaw’s plot and coup, whatever was happening with those weird rock formation things at the end, taking back the stones, reuniting the Dragons, etc.), this story is so monotone and boring it feels like a joke. Not to mention, almost everything I just mentioned takes up a disproportionate amount of time compared to what it should. Rain pretends to be Lychee for half the book, but there is no payoff to this whatsoever. She just needed to be around the monkeys so we could learn than Brawnshanks literally ate her stone (see what I mean about dumb problems and solutions?) and that the stakes are oh so high now. Same thing with Leaf. She is walking the ENTIRE book until the last 8 or so chapters. Then she spends 5 of those 8 chapters stuck on a rock with one of our other POV characters, Rain. What? Meanwhile, Crookedclaw taking over the monkeys and becoming the new big bad gets maybe three chapters. The pacing is just horrendous. Remember Lychee? The panda built up to be a new villain in this book? Yeah, he just dies after about 5/10-ish chapters wasted of him existing in the background. And nothing comes from his death. He just dies, and we move on to other plotpoints.
There are tons more examples of this strange plotting and poor pacing, but I don’t have the time or energy to list them all, so I’ll stop there.
Now time to rant about characters. Yay.
I said my piece about Leaf last book: I would be mad if she was doing anything important and we didn’t get her POV because the authors didn’t feel like writing it. And I would be mad if she disappeared, did nothing, then pathetically got sick and just came back after learning nothing. Unfortunately, the second option happened, so I do not like Leaf this book just because of that. Leaf contributes nothing unique to this story and was clearly only taken out of the last book in a contrived effort to raise the stakes. In this book, she goes right back to where she was at the beginning of book 4 and we just continue on like nothing happened. The only things I really appreciate about her are her (extremely under-focused on) friendship with Dasher, and the fact that she is a female Erin protagonist with not only no mate, but no love interest at all. She is a breath of fresh air in those regards, and disappointingly stale in the others.
Rain is also really boring. Her plot is much more interesting, but as I already mentioned, it suffers from poor pacing and planning. As a character, she feels the same as Leaf now; her personality is 10% more snappy, and that’s it. Unlike Leaf, she doesn’t even have mildly interesting connections with the other characters. It’s pretty sad, too, because I really liked the ‘newly found siblings,’ found family-esque vibe the triplets had in earlier books. But that’s pretty much gone now, which feels like a missed opportunity to me.
Ghost is literally forgotten in this one. He stands around for the first 15 chapters and does the same things as his siblings for the rest. It’s really sad to see how little agency he has now, especially when I think he could have still had a POV without much issue.
Nimbletail is like, REALLY forgotten. She appears for two chapters and has little impact on anything. Again, very disappointing, since this whole monkey business (pun intended) is very personal to her story. It feels like the Erins added in a bunch of side characters that they then didn’t know what to do with, so they awkwardly shoved them aside until the Final Battle^TM where they can all come together with the power of friendship. . . Which can be super cool if done well. But this was not done well, and Nimbletail was a nothing character as a result.
Shiver is the new POV character for this book, and while I like that she’s the one who got more focus, I don’t think her chapters were very well utilized. She again feels the same as our other leads have been, even though she’s a snow leopard and has a completely different backstory and motivations to all our other leads. This brings me back to an oft-repeated Erin critique I have: Erin characters almost always have backstory and motivation OR personality, never both. And they’re all weaker for it. Shiver is no exception. Also, she just doesn’t do much. There’s an attempt at her learning a lesson about her ancestors (I wouldn’t even call it development or an arc, but it’s something at least), but it feels very repetitive of both every Erin series ever and this series, since that’s basically the lesson Ghost learned earlier. Shiver functioned well for what she needed to, I guess, but once again she was underwhelming at best.
And Dasher is just kind of there. There’s not much to say on him when he doesn’t do anything other than exist as a plot device. I wish he’d had more anything.
I can’t even start with the villains. Brawnshanks going mad was such an uninspired, repetitive villain trope that I was frankly surprised it didn’t happen sooner. It would have been fine enough, I guess, if it didn’t ALSO predictably lead to his extremely underwhelming death. What would have worked better, aside from giving him an actual motivation and, I don’t know, a brain? Have Crookedclaw kill him. I know, that’s also a super cliche villain trope where the new villain kills the old one because they’re far more powerful, but at least that would have actually upped the stakes. I do appreciate that we got Crookedclaw as a villain at all, even though she was super stereotypical, because she’s a female and the Erins are very afraid of writing female villains for some reason. But she’s not exactly good. And she got to be the main threat for about three chapters, to that was also super disappointing. I just wish more had been done with her. More time for her coup, more demonstration of her being formidable rather than relying on the literal magic to get her followers, just something to make her feel like an actual threat rather than an ‘extend story for free’ card.
In conclusion, the cover is the best part of this book. Admire this person’s beautiful art for sure, but unless you’re a dedicated Erin Hunter fan or don’t mind reading pretty boring stories, I’d pass on reading this series.
SERIES RATINGS:
Creatures of the Flood: —
River of Secrets: —
Journey to the Dragon Mountain: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Dark Sun: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Lightning Path: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fire and Ash: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Erins must have run out of motivation to write, because not only is this book barely 200 pages (again), it also was somehow simultaneously criminally rushed and painfully glossed over. This new Erin writing is seriously irking me. I really can’t figure out what it is that’s different or why it feels so weird to read, but I honestly think it’s contributing to how disjointed and forced their recent books have been. Another contributing factor is that they keep stretching plots to last six books when they really should only take up three (thank you, Bravelands, for finally fixing that issue, at least). And they keep adding new stories to series that should have ended 5 books ago.
But for once, that isn’t happening here, because Fire and Ash is the sixth and FINAL book in Bamboo Kingdom! Woo! The Erins finally figured out how to stop milking series! Yay! So what is the problem with this book? In terms of writing, aside from the general weirdness of this new Erin style, my critiques are mostly small. Environments are not described well, if at all. We completely dropped Ghost’s POV in favor of Shiver’s, even though Ghost’s story didn’t really seem finished and Shiver didn’t particularly need a POV. My willing suspension of disbelief is being stretched to the brink with the frankly dumb, uninspired solutions to pretty much every problem in this book (and most of the series, honestly). Also, as an aside, why do the Erins never have their map artists draw updated versions of the map? The characters spend most of this book in the Broken Forest, a place that is not even on the map at the start of the book. If it’s not going to help, why is it even still there? That really bothered me.
But yeah. The writing issues of this story mainly boil down to a mountain of small critiques that make the book feel lazy.
But the plot. Oh, the plot. What is happening in this book? The Dragon Speakers are trying to get their magical stones away from Brawnshanks, so Rain disguises herself as Lychee to try and get to them but then ignores like 4 chances to just take them, while Leaf walks home from doing nothing last book, and Ghost. . . Uh. . . Stands around? Seriously, what is happening? Why are the stakes so LOW? For a book with a surprising amount of content (stones missing, the whole gibbons plotline, Leaf returning, Rain pretending to be Lychee, Lychee dying, Crookedclaw’s plot and coup, whatever was happening with those weird rock formation things at the end, taking back the stones, reuniting the Dragons, etc.), this story is so monotone and boring it feels like a joke. Not to mention, almost everything I just mentioned takes up a disproportionate amount of time compared to what it should. Rain pretends to be Lychee for half the book, but there is no payoff to this whatsoever. She just needed to be around the monkeys so we could learn than Brawnshanks literally ate her stone (see what I mean about dumb problems and solutions?) and that the stakes are oh so high now. Same thing with Leaf. She is walking the ENTIRE book until the last 8 or so chapters. Then she spends 5 of those 8 chapters stuck on a rock with one of our other POV characters, Rain. What? Meanwhile, Crookedclaw taking over the monkeys and becoming the new big bad gets maybe three chapters. The pacing is just horrendous. Remember Lychee? The panda built up to be a new villain in this book? Yeah, he just dies after about 5/10-ish chapters wasted of him existing in the background. And nothing comes from his death. He just dies, and we move on to other plotpoints.
There are tons more examples of this strange plotting and poor pacing, but I don’t have the time or energy to list them all, so I’ll stop there.
Now time to rant about characters. Yay.
I said my piece about Leaf last book: I would be mad if she was doing anything important and we didn’t get her POV because the authors didn’t feel like writing it. And I would be mad if she disappeared, did nothing, then pathetically got sick and just came back after learning nothing. Unfortunately, the second option happened, so I do not like Leaf this book just because of that. Leaf contributes nothing unique to this story and was clearly only taken out of the last book in a contrived effort to raise the stakes. In this book, she goes right back to where she was at the beginning of book 4 and we just continue on like nothing happened. The only things I really appreciate about her are her (extremely under-focused on) friendship with Dasher, and the fact that she is a female Erin protagonist with not only no mate, but no love interest at all. She is a breath of fresh air in those regards, and disappointingly stale in the others.
Rain is also really boring. Her plot is much more interesting, but as I already mentioned, it suffers from poor pacing and planning. As a character, she feels the same as Leaf now; her personality is 10% more snappy, and that’s it. Unlike Leaf, she doesn’t even have mildly interesting connections with the other characters. It’s pretty sad, too, because I really liked the ‘newly found siblings,’ found family-esque vibe the triplets had in earlier books. But that’s pretty much gone now, which feels like a missed opportunity to me.
Ghost is literally forgotten in this one. He stands around for the first 15 chapters and does the same things as his siblings for the rest. It’s really sad to see how little agency he has now, especially when I think he could have still had a POV without much issue.
Nimbletail is like, REALLY forgotten. She appears for two chapters and has little impact on anything. Again, very disappointing, since this whole monkey business (pun intended) is very personal to her story. It feels like the Erins added in a bunch of side characters that they then didn’t know what to do with, so they awkwardly shoved them aside until the Final Battle^TM where they can all come together with the power of friendship. . . Which can be super cool if done well. But this was not done well, and Nimbletail was a nothing character as a result.
Shiver is the new POV character for this book, and while I like that she’s the one who got more focus, I don’t think her chapters were very well utilized. She again feels the same as our other leads have been, even though she’s a snow leopard and has a completely different backstory and motivations to all our other leads. This brings me back to an oft-repeated Erin critique I have: Erin characters almost always have backstory and motivation OR personality, never both. And they’re all weaker for it. Shiver is no exception. Also, she just doesn’t do much. There’s an attempt at her learning a lesson about her ancestors (I wouldn’t even call it development or an arc, but it’s something at least), but it feels very repetitive of both every Erin series ever and this series, since that’s basically the lesson Ghost learned earlier. Shiver functioned well for what she needed to, I guess, but once again she was underwhelming at best.
And Dasher is just kind of there. There’s not much to say on him when he doesn’t do anything other than exist as a plot device. I wish he’d had more anything.
I can’t even start with the villains. Brawnshanks going mad was such an uninspired, repetitive villain trope that I was frankly surprised it didn’t happen sooner. It would have been fine enough, I guess, if it didn’t ALSO predictably lead to his extremely underwhelming death. What would have worked better, aside from giving him an actual motivation and, I don’t know, a brain? Have Crookedclaw kill him. I know, that’s also a super cliche villain trope where the new villain kills the old one because they’re far more powerful, but at least that would have actually upped the stakes. I do appreciate that we got Crookedclaw as a villain at all, even though she was super stereotypical, because she’s a female and the Erins are very afraid of writing female villains for some reason. But she’s not exactly good. And she got to be the main threat for about three chapters, to that was also super disappointing. I just wish more had been done with her. More time for her coup, more demonstration of her being formidable rather than relying on the literal magic to get her followers, just something to make her feel like an actual threat rather than an ‘extend story for free’ card.
In conclusion, the cover is the best part of this book. Admire this person’s beautiful art for sure, but unless you’re a dedicated Erin Hunter fan or don’t mind reading pretty boring stories, I’d pass on reading this series.
SERIES RATINGS:
Creatures of the Flood: —
River of Secrets: —
Journey to the Dragon Mountain: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Dark Sun: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Lightning Path: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fire and Ash: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 22, 2025
Bamboo Kingdom, Book 6 is the 5th book by Erin Hunter that I've read in just 2025 alone. The other 4 were Bamboo Kingdom, Book 4: The Dark Sun; Bamboo Kingdom, Book 5: The Lighting Path; Bravelands: Thunder on the Plains, Book 2: Breakers of the Code and Bravelands: Thunder on the Plains, Book 3: Realm of Lost Spirits. I didn't exactly plan to read so many of Erin's books this year. But, on the other hand, I had been wanting to get caught up on them. And I'm really glad I've done that now.
This book is the 6th and final book in the Bamboo Kingdom series. It was an awesome way to end everything. I loved it!
This book is the 6th and final book in the Bamboo Kingdom series. It was an awesome way to end everything. I loved it!
May 10, 2025
Nothing wrong with this book, just didn't really get into it. It's fine, and I don't regret reading the series, but it's really not the most memorable.
Definitely shipping Shiver and Nightwalker though lmao.
Definitely shipping Shiver and Nightwalker though lmao.
May 7, 2025
An incredibly exciting finale to the epic adventure the three Dragon Speakers were forced into.
May 18, 2025
i loved this arc, and i thought this finale was stupendous.
June 28, 2025
I have really enjoyed this series, but didn't love the religion that was laced throughout this one with light and dark splitting and melding.
August 21, 2025
Amazing rap up! Wondering if Erin Hunter will make another arc tho? Since each of her series has at least 2 arcs. But I do hope another arc will come out!
October 17, 2025
Solid ending.
December 11, 2025
Amazing end to the series. Great pacing, beautiful emotions. Deep storytelling at every turn.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews