Warriors by Erin Hunter

I remember Erin Hunter's Warriors series from when I was a kid. It was one of those series that the school library kept in a bin like they did with The Magic Treehouse because there were so many of them. I was always intrigued by the series because it was about cats and I didn't really need to know anything else about it to know I wanted to read it. I also remember that I only made it through the first one because I didn't actually like it that much, but for some reason I still decided it was a good idea to reread it as an adult.

Now I'm going to say some stuff about what that was like, because that's how this blog works.

So first of all, when I was in Half Price Books looking at Young Reader books, the Warriors series I had a very hard time figuring out which one was the first one. I mean these books do have numbers on them, but there were three different books with a number 1 on them. So there I was in the back corner of the store trying to Google how this children's series about warrior cats is structured so I can make sure I read the first one first. 

It turns out there are actually 6 series of 6 books each, and a bunch of additional companion standalone books and a manga series apparently within the Warriors universe. Into the Wild, which is the one I read, was the first book published in the original series. There is also a more recent series, Dawn of the Clans, which is a prequel to the original one, but I decided to go in the order they were published. Like Star Wars. 

I also learned that the most recent series in the Warriors universe, A Vision of Shadows, is still in progress. I mean, they're still releasing more books in this series. The 5th book in the series, River of Fire, comes out on April 10th, 2018. 

The very first thing I found when I opened the book was a three page list of all of the cats who are mentioned in book, which of the four clans they're in, they're role within the clan, and a physical description of each one. 

Basically how it works is that there are four clans: ThunderClan (Gryffindor), ShadowClan (Slytherin), WindClan (Hufflepuff), and RiverClan (Ravenclaw). Each clan has a leader, a deputy, a medicine cat... I mean this universe is incredibly well developed. The next four pages contain maps of the land where the clans live. 

This was a lot of information to take in before I had even gotten to the prologue, but I powered through. 

The first few chapters I was skeptical. I mean this is a universe where house cats are called "kittypets" and humans are called "twolegs" (which I pronounced incorrectly in my head for longer than I would like to admit) and they kept throwing around the idea of "kittypets going to see the Cutter", and it was just a lot to take in. 

But then all of a sudden my skepticism turned into fascination and in the end I was actually pleasantly surprised. I definitely enjoyed it way more this time around than I ever did when I was a kid. I had no idea there was so much drama in the cat world! As a friend of mine so gracefully put it, "it's like Game of Thrones but with cats."

AND THEN, I read the "about the author" blurb in the back of the book, which reads:

"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 forms, Erin enjoys creating rich mythical explanations for animal behavior, shaped by her interest in astrology and standing stones."

Yes. This seemed obvious. Though the "astrology and standing stones" bit threw me off a little. I thought this "Erin Hunter" figure sounded like a fascinating individual, so I made the obvious decision to Google her.

It turns out, "Erin Hunter" is just a pseudonym. This piece of information on its own wasn't particularly surprising, because books like this often use pseudonyms, and also what are the chances that you'd have the last name "Hunter" and write a book about warrior cats whose main concern is hunting mice? What surprised me is that "Erin Hunter" is actually a team of at least four authors who collectively wrote an extended book series about warrior cats, and also apparently have a collective interest in astrology and standing stones.

In the end, I think Publishers Weekly puts it best:

"Action-packed adventure. Certain to please any reader who has ever wondered what dreams of grandeur may haunt the family cat."