My kids adore these novels, so I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to read them too. I figured I'd like them. After all, I like middle grade and YA fiction, and cats are cool, and Watership Down was one of my favorite novels of all time. So how could a book about warrior housecats go wrong?
If you're one of those people that hate cilantro, than any salsa with cilantro in it is going to hit your "ick, soapy" button and displease you. This novel hit a lot of my ick buttons. For one, it has a lot of exclamation points in it, which I generally interpret as a crutch for weak writing. Also, Hunter rarely uses "he said" or "she said" preferring instead "meowed, responded, purred, snapped, suggested, answered, called, growled" etc. Also, the names drove me batty. Young cats have -paw as a suffix, leaders have -star as a suffix, and the others have a different suffix. so you have nothing but compound names. Firepaw, Ravenpaw, Brokenstar, Bluestar, Tigerclaw, Lionheart.
Once I'd already had my pet peeves hit,I started looking for reasons to explain why I didn't want to finish it. I think part of it is that the cats don't act like cats. That's probably not fair, because I read Tad Williams' Tailchaser's Song and liked it, but for some reason I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief here. Housecats are not social in the way that dogs, rabbits, deer, wolves, sea lions, and other animals are. To have them forming clans, and caring about such things as group cohesion and honor (honor? Cats?) made them feel more like dogs, or like aliens that I didn't understand. I also don't think that cats cache kills for later. I know for certain that cats have no herblore whatsoever, but I'm a big reader of fantasy, so I'm not sure why I wasn't able to swallow it here.
That's not to say that I don't recommend this book. Both my daughters (ages 8 and 10) adore these books, though the younger one is not a strong reader and prefers the graphic novel version. My niece (9) also adores these novels, as do her friends. So clearly, there's something here they're taking out if it (a story about kitties). They probably also are responding to the tried-and-true plot of "boy from humble origins learns from his elders, grows, and eventually surpasses those who taught him to become the greatest of all." The plotting isn't terrible, and I did care about what happened, I just wasn't willing to wade through the irritating prose to get there. So I cheated. A hundred pages from the end, I gave up and asked my kid what happened. Spoiler alert: nothing you haven't predicted by chapter four.