Lissea Complains About The Warriors Series (Largely The Broken Code) *Spoilers*

I was, or is it am into, I'm not sure, but never mind. Warriors. Great. Until recently. Or not so recently. But if you're reading, chances are you know stuff already because you know, spoilers in the title. 

Warriors turned into a mess, and seems set on challenging itself to become a much worse mess at the moment. Gone on to long, completely different writers from when started? Possibly a partial explanation. But here's some stuff I got frustrated while reading it. 

Warriors takes place in Britain. There are no turtles in Britain. No cat would know what a turtle was, therefore Turtletail’s name is actually impossible. Tortoisetail, maybe, but not Turtletail. British people also always call tortoises tortoises, never turtles, so there’s no get out there either. Pretty sure no character has ever used the word turtle either, but if they had, that would be a mistake as well. There are also no chipmunks in Britain, yet one is mentioned in one of the books. As far as my reading goes, this is the only chipmunk ever mentioned, and again, it is impossible. I can’t help but suspect that these mistakes were made by the same Erin.

A lot of content feels incomplete in Warriors, especially when it comes to relationships. There is constant retconning, and bits being added in all hiddledy-piguldy, often drastically changing the stance on the subject matter, even when it is from of being said by the same character in a different book. Not only are things mentioned almost like a fun fact - like mentioning someone is particularly upset after a character has died because they were their sibling when such information should have come up books ago – but many things come out of nowhere. Bristlefrost comes out and says she likes Rootspring, despite no evidence of this before (and much to the contrary arguably) – and we’ve been reading her POV all this time. 

If you read Ashfur and Squirrelflight in the beginning, you actually wonder if the whole thing is a misunderstanding, and that Ashfur simply has it wrong thinking Squirrelflight sees him as anything but a friend. In a completely different book, Leafpool mentions Squirrelflight having finally chosen between Brambleclaw and Ashfur, as if everyone in the clan knew about this all along and it was very clearly in these terms previously. On top of this many fans were split over Ashfur to begin with, some feeling bad for him and almost seeing Squirrelflight as the bad guy, while others saw it more as Ashfur throwing a tantrum. 

Ashfur, like Thistleclaw before him, is later retconned to make him into a much bigger Big Bad character, but Squirrelflight saying that Ashfur was obsessed with her is a bit of a stench when there isn’t any evidence before the fire incident of any such feelings. Possessive, maybe, but not Obsessive, not in the way it is being expressed now. Again, if Squirrelflight had come to this conclusion, it’s unrealistic she hadn’t said something about this in book before. I might also add that in both cases, this is main characters. It makes all the retconning even less convincing as well. I mean, even if it were written better I think a lot of us would still find it hard to believe Ashfur was clever enough to do what he does in The Broken Code, no matter his motivation. 

Speaking of which, I know that I knew in advance that it was Ashfur in Bramblestar but the whole thing makes everyone look so stupid, especially Squirrelflight. It was so incredibly obvious. I could write a complete analysis on the matter but I’ll settle for these few points. Squirrelflight had all that time in exile to realise it was Ashfur for a start. Surely she’d be thinking about little else. Not to mention all her interactions with him before that point. Even without all that he’s the only potential bad cat in Starclan (not to mention all the Big Bads who are now gone from the Dark Forest meaning there can’t be many options), surely that makes him the most likely suspect. Squirrelflight is so clearly important to him there is only one cat it really can be. 

Why did Bristlefrost never ask Squirrelflight about this? Not knowing the history, it was the biggest clue they had to the imposter’s identity. If you’re going to write something like this, you need a red herring so the characters have a reason not to come the obvious conclusion, and preferably to mislead the readers as well. 

Even if the reader does see through the ruse, it still feels like something is happening. Here, on the other hand, I was just going “Come on, come on!” into the book with increasing frustration wishing they’d hurry up and get on with working it out. It really didn’t help that I had a similar feeling about Rootpaw ignoring Bramblestar’s ghost. It just felt like he was holding up the plot.