This week’s Warriors Roundup: Omen of the Stars.  Once my copies of the books finally showed up in the mail, Zippy and I tore through this arc in record time, and boy oh boy do we have some thoughts on it. For ease of reading I’ve divided this roundup into sections:

Brief Plot Summary

Omen of the Stars picks up where Power of Three left off: Lionblaze and Jayfeather are looking for the third cat that fits the prophecy.  There are two candidates: Dovewing and Ivypool who qualify as “kin of [Firestar’s] kin” because they’re the granddaughters of his nephew.  Within like 30 pages they and the reader realize it’s Dovewing, and her magic power is super senses (like, can hear/smell things from literal miles away super senses.) Said super senses kick off yet another boring, barely relevant quest where she starts an obligatory Forbidden Romance with Tigerheart, who is the grandson of his dead evil granddad Tigerstar through arc 2 token ShadowClan cat Tawnypelt.  Ivypool gets jealous that Dovewing has superpowers and gets to go on a quest, so when Arc 2 villain Hawkfrost shows up Ivypool’s dreams and offers to show her some new hunting moves she agrees, and the next thing you know she’s in the Dark Forest (aka the Place of No Stars, aka Cat Hell) with her sister’s beau Tigerheart and several other Clan cats being groomed by a veritable rogues’ gallery of villains from prior arcs including her dead evil great-granddad’s brother-in-law (not joking) himself, Tigerstar.  The Dark Forest cats get Ivypool to convince ThunderClan to attack ShadowClan for no reason, which they do.  Ivypool realizes the Dark Forest cats are bad news and begins to spy on them for Jayfeather and Lionblaze. 

Jayfeather goes on another boring, barely relevant quest into the mountains with Dovewing where he resolves a tribal succession crisis by using time travel and gets an addendum to the prophecy: there are four important cats, actually.  Both Hollyleaf and Sol, the cult leader from the previous arc show back up, and Sol instigates a battle between WindClan and ThunderClan.  Then, in the final book, the Dark Forest launches its attack against the Clans, StarClan comes down to fight on the side of the Clans, and a great battle ensues.  Hollyleaf dies (for real this time,) Brambleclaw kills Hawkfrost (again,) and Firestar kills Tigerstar only to die from his wounds immediately afterwards – Firestar was apparently the fourth cat in the prophecy.  ThunderClan acclaims Brambleclaw (now Bramblestar) as their new leader, and peace reigns in the forest once again.

They Ruined the Dark Forest

The Dark Forest was established as the afterlife for evil cats all the way back in the second arc, the New Prophecy.  Prior to Omen of the Stars, the Dark Forest was primarily utilized narratively as a place where living cats could train under dead cats in their dreams (Hawkfrost and Brambleclaw under Tigerstar in the New Prophecy, then Lionblaze under Hawkfrost and Tigerstar in Power of Three.)  I like this – StarClan can communicate with living cats, so it makes sense that dead cats too evil for StarClan would be able to do so as well.  To paraphrase the Bard, “The evil that [cats] do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” I like the Dark Forest as a physical manifestation of this principle; as a place where the evils of past generations live on in a very real way; as a metaphor for how the influence of someone Obviously Evil can spread even past their death.

The first few books of Omen of the Stars expand on the rules and lore of the Dark Forest in ways that I think are good: a dreaming cat must choose to enter the Dark Forest for the first time, but after that they can be pulled in against their will any time they’re asleep. Injuries experienced in the Dark Forest carry over to the waking world. If you die in the Dark Forest, your soul is destroyed, and your physical body just disappears.  Cool, I can get behind all of this.  Then, they ruin it by making Dark Forest cats able to enter and interact with the corporeal world.  I hate this.  What’s the downside of being dead and in Cat Hell if you can just leave?  Could Tigerstar have just come back at any time and killed Firestar in his sleep?  I don’t see why not – there’s nothing to indicate that being able to travel to the corporeal world is some new discovery for the Dark Forest cats.  Also, when Dark Forest cats materialize into the corporeal world, living cats in the Dark Forest in their dreams appear with them – what happens to their sleeping bodies?  Is it just their projected souls re-materializing separate from their bodies, or can the Dark Forest be used as a form of dream-based teleportation?   And worst of all?  StarClan can do this too.  As much as I like the idea of the dead heroes of ages past coming to aid of the good guys, the idea that it’s just a thing that the dead heroes can choose do – that they don’t have to be specifically called – really, really rubs me the wrong way.  Genuinely super disappointed that this is the direction the authors went.

Omen of the Stars (Directed by J.J. Abrams)

I’m gonna say it: this arc is the “Rise of Skywalker” of Warriors.  It had a lot of interesting things going on, both on its own and inherited from the previous installment in the series, and it totally failed to capitalize on most of them, some by just completely ignoring them and others by resolving them too neatly out of nowhere.  I liked the malaise, the lack of resolution in the Power of Three!  Not every plotline needs to be wrapped up in a neat little bow!  Ugh. Let me run through some of the worst ones:

• Cinderheart x Lionblaze: After recovering from his Forbidden Romance last arc, Lionblaze falls for Cinderheart (who is the reincarnation of a cat who died in the second arc but that’s not important.)  Cinderheart loves him, too, but she thinks they can’t be together because he has such an important destiny.  This drags on for half the arc before Lionblaze convinces Cinderheart she’s being stupid and that’s not how destiny works.  Totally pointless.
• Dovewing’s Aborted Love Triangle: After a falling out with her Forbidden Romance partner Tigerheart, Dovewing starts returning the affections of her non-forbidden admirer Bumblestripe.  This lasts for all of book 5.  Then in book 6, suddenly Dovewing is super into Tigerheart again and spurns Bumblestripe.  What changed?  Nothing, other than (surprise surprise) the ghostwriter. (You’re not sneaking your glorified slashfic past me, Kate)
• Somehow Hollyleaf Returned: After being presumed dead at the end of the last arc, messy queen and little miss “I tried to make my mom kill herself” Hollyleaf shows back up.  She contributes virtually nothing to the plot, makes up with her mother, then dies.  I’m honestly totally baffled by this one – the only thing I can think is that she was brought back as a red herring for the 4^th cat in the prophecy but that is barely a plot point.
• Somehow Sol Returned: After just kinda disappearing near the end of the last arc, messy king and mister “I turned ShadowClan into my personal cult” Sol shows back up.  He contributes virtually noth-hey, wait a minute, didn’t we already do this one?
• I’m Not a Murderer, I’m Just Related to One: At the end of Book 3, ShadowClan medicine apprentice Flametail drowns under the frozen lake despite Jayfeather’s attempts to save him.  Flametail’s sister accuses Jayfeather of having murdered Flametail.  This plot goes nowhere and is resolved incredibly anticlimactically.
• StarClan Is a Concept by Which We Measure Our Pain: Faith has been a recurring theme in Warriors.  There are two non-villainous cats I know of who are canonically atheist (as in, do not believe in StarClan) – Cloudtail (Firestar’s nephew) and Mothwing (RiverClan’s medicine cat.) One of the main debuffs of not believing in StarClan is that, in dreams, you cannot travel to StarClan, nor can cats from StarClan visit you.  Presumably this also applies to the Dark Forest.  In an arc where one of the main tensions is not knowing who is secretly visiting the Dark Forest in their dreams, I figured that the two characters who _for sure_ cannot be visiting the Dark Forest would play a major role.  Sadly, I was completely wrong – it’s never even mentioned except once, in passing.  Completely missed opportunity.    
• Mountainous Terrain, -2 to Giving a Shit: So ever since the second arc there’s been one book per arc focused on the Tribe of Rushing Water, which is a group of cats who live in the mountains near the Clans.  They have weird names, a different societal structure than the clans, and the books focused on them are (so far) universally the worst of their arcs.  This arc’s Tribe of Rushing Water book had to do with a succession crisis, which white savior Jayfeather solves using his time travel powers (yes, Jayfeather has time travel powers.)  This would probably upset me if I gave a shit about the Tribe of Rushing Water.

Stuff I Actually Liked

I know I’ve been trashing this arc pretty hard so far but there was some stuff I liked. 

• The Dark Forest before they ruined it (see above)
• I still like Jayfeather as a character; he’s endearingly abrasive and he will not hesitate to call StarClan out on their bullshit, of which there is plenty this arc.
• I like Ivypool’s storyline, going from jealous younger sister to dark rival to spy in the Dark Forest is a solid storyline. 
• Briarlight’s character arc was good, despite her name being obnoxiously like Brightheart’s given how often they share scenes.
• I know I made fun of Sol somehow returning, but I do like his character this arc – last arc he was largely a pseudo-mystic saying faux-profound things, but this arc he’s more of an obvious charlatan which is a character type I appreciate. 
• I like the Dark Forest cat Mapleshade – out of all the rogues’ gallery she is the only one to have not appeared in a prior book. I suspect she was written 1. as the token girlboss villain and 2. So the rogues’ gallery wouldn’t be entirely characters we’ve seen before.  Despite the somewhat contrived nature of her existence, I like Mapleshade.  She doesn’t seem to hold a grudge against any living cat in particular, but she’s down with the Dark Forest’s plot anyway because she just loves being evil.  And unlike most of the other major Dark Forest cats (Tigerstar/Hawkfrost/Brokenstar) she survived.  I hope to see more of Mapleshade in the future.

An Answer in ShadowClan

When I started reading Warriors, it was with one goal in mind: figure out why the hell the official “Which Clan do you belong to?” quiz on www.warriors.com put me in ShadowClan.  I think I finally have an answer.  Book three of this arc, Night Whispers, contains our second ever non-ThunderClan PoV cat and our first ever ShadowClan PoV cat, Flametail.  Flametail (who is Tigerheart’s brother and therefore Tawnypelt’s son) is an apprentice medicine cat for ShadowClan – his main narrative role is to die tragically at the end of the book (see above) but that’s not relevant to this discussion.  Anyway, in Chapter 6, ShadowClan is back in their camp after losing the pointless battle against ThunderClan at the end of the last book – everyone’s sad that they lost, then ShadowClan’s clan leader Blackstar walks out of his den, calls a clan meeting, and holds a post-mortem discussion with his warriors about the battle.  What tactics did ThunderClan use?  How can we counter them? And BlackStar listens to them – he praises them for their good ideas and takes their advice. This would never happen in ThunderClan – ThunderClan is more likely to just shrug and say “well I guess StarClan didn’t want us to win that battle” than seriously analyze why they might have lost.  In a later scene, when someone comments that something may have been unavoidable, Blackstar says that nothing is unavoidable.  Again, ThunderClan would never.  We don’t get to see a lot of ShadowClan’s culture in this book, but what we do see along with some of their actions in earlier books (like expelling their StarClan-approved leader way back in the first book of the first arc and falling under the sway of a cult leader in Power of Three) has led me to the conclusion that, of all the Clans, ShadowClan is the most resilient, least authoritarian, and least dogmatic.  This, I choose to believe, is why the quiz put me in ShadowClan, and totally not because I said I wasn’t afraid of the dark.

Conclusion

These are dark times for the Clans.  After three solid arcs, Omen of the Stars was…not great.  I’d rate Omen of the Stars below the Prophecies Begin and Power of Three.  I’d put it on the same level as the New Prophecy, with the caveat that New Prophecy had a bad first half and a good second half whereas Omen of the Stars was consistently meh throughout.  Is this a fluke, or the beginning of a downward spiral for Warriors?  Stay tuned to find out.  Next up, I’m going to catch up on Super Editions, and after that, the prequel arc: Dawn of the Clans….

Originally posted 5/17/2025