Warriors: Into the Wild

Warriors is about four wild cat clans that seem more like societies to me. A human-pet cat named Rusty joins one of them which is called Thunderclan and takes the name Firepaw.

Let me explain something about the clans: the names of them are Thunderclan, with a leader named Bluestar (all leaders are given the name 'star' when they become leader). Thunderclan is perhaps my favorite one, just to tell you. The evil Shadowclan, which is really just evil because they have an evil leader who I think is pretty stupid--all he wants is power. His name is Brokenstar (broken the promise of being a good leader of course :\). Shadowclan is across a street from Thunderclan (they call the street the Thunder Path because they think the cars are monsters). Riverclan lives across a river from Thunderclan's forest; their leader is Crookedstar (because of his crooked jaw). And finally Windclan which is pretty much separate from all the other clans on a plateau near the Thunder Path and a farm. Their leader is Tallstar. Shadowclan drove them out so they aren't heard about much in this book.

There's also something called Star Clan, but that's basically the heaven for the cats.

Anyway, Rusty gets turned into Firepaw in Thunderclan and he becomes a warrior apprentice. The clans of cats have warriors which basically are the fighters. The book is about him training to be a warrior and all that happens within his training. First he quickly becomes friends with a cat named Greypaw (all of the apprentices are named 'something'paw--Firepaw got his name from his fiery red fur.)

Suddenly some warrior or warrior's apprentice says that Bluestar's deputy (Redtail) is dead. This is very disappointing moment as Redtail was Bluestar's deputy for many moons (they call months 'moons') and by warrior tradition Bluestar must choose a new deputy before the next full moon (moon-high). Bluestar chose a warrior named Lionheart.

The thing I enjoyed most in this book was the most exciting part when Thunderclan defeated Shadowclan's sinister leader. There was a huge war between the two clans--some Shadowclan cats hated their leader so much that they helped Thunderclan.

By the end of the book, Firepaw becomes a warrior and his name changed to Fireheart. That's basically the end of the book--of course that's just the first book!

I read this book faster than I usually read a chapter book because of how much it excited me and interested me. I think the author, whose name is Erin Hunter, is probably really good at putting excitement into her stories. This was perhaps the most exciting chapter book I've read ever! And as a result of that I've quickly tried to find the next Warriors book (which we have since my Dad and Fiona read both this book and are somewhere in the next book) and I've already started reading it. So stay tuned for that--coming up pretty soon!