Chapter 2 and Chapter 3"Well?" hissed Bluestar."Well" what? You didn't ask him a question. You just said that he threatens the Clan by stealing prey. I'm not sure what you're asking here.
I like how she gets referred to as a "warrior queen" - without context, it sounds awesome, but she's not exactly a queen, she's a molly. Or a she-cat, apparently, because Erin Hunter didn't bother looking up the actual terms for female cats.
All of a sudden she stops being angry and starts showering praise on Rusty again, which is...weird, but, as we'll see, this sets up for a massive trainwreck of a character. I'll go more into depth with this later as well.
I forgot to mention this before, but the first few scenes in the book take place at night, which is great - cats are inherently nocturnal, so they should be going around their business at night (much like how the
Guardians of Ga'Hoole series had the owls working primarily at night). So far, there's a faint sense of realism here that I like. Let's see if it sticks around.
So Bluestar decides that Rusty is a worthwhile investment and invites him into the Clan, and after a morning of thinking about it, he decides to join them. He meets Whitestorm and Lionheart in the daytime-
Wait a second, didn't two scenes take place at night? Why did we suddenly switch to daytime? If the cats move around at night, why were ThunderClan cats sleeping, and if they're active during the day, why was there a battle and patrol going on at night? I mean, it's implied for the most part that they work best during the day, but what about that battle and patrol? That's weirdly inconsistent.
Prepare for me to say that a
lot. Anywho, I would make note of how Rusty is oddly more energetic and "feral" than his fellow kittypets, and how there should be at least some of them who are interested in the going-ons outside, but this is a common thing to happen in the real world - some cats just feel their instincts a lot more than others. The fact that he manages to keep up with the two adult warriors makes it clear that he's either got some feral blood, or that he's one of those anomalies.
So then Bluestar announces to the Clan that they're taking in a new cat because they've "never had so few apprentices". Really? Four/five apprentices is considered too little of a number? That's interesting, because that number stays pretty much the same the entire series, bumping up to six by the time
Rising Storm rolls around. In some cases, there's actually a smaller amount of apprentices in the Clan in other books, and it's never mentioned that they're at a dangerously low number of future warriors. Isn't that weird...
Oh, fun fact: in
Bluestar's Prophecy, there's a grand total of 3 apprentices in the allegiances. And yet, they've never had so few.
One cat, at least, gets vocal and starts giving Rusty crap. Honestly, I'm surprised that he's the only one speaking up. If my Clan were in a situation with little food and a lot of fighting, I would be quite mad if my leader just showed up with a kittypet and said "here you go, train him up and don't let him eat all the food". Spottedleaf even points out in the prologue that they have kittens, and those kittens will become apprentices eventually, but Bluestar gets all impatient and just sweeps in a new cat without any warning.
Can I just say what an odd name Longtail is? I mean, kittens are generally short and stubby when they're born, with long tails developing afterwards (speaking from experience, I raised a kitten from scratch and his tail only grew to lemur-length when he got old enough to eat solid food). And I don't think that it's ever mentioned that he's got a long tail.
Like...ever.
It's not even in his description, or anywhere on the wiki-page. So why on earth is he named Longtail?
After Rusty dukes it out with Wrongname and becomes Firepaw, Graypaw leads him around camp and mentions that Spottedleaf is a very pretty, young cat. Even without noting that he's awfully young to be saying that himself, he really shouldn't be making comments about the attractiveness of a
medicine cat. He knows that's against the rules, why would he say it?
But we get interrupted by Ravenpaw bolting in and announcing that the deputy is dead. Oh snap! I wonder how and why?
Next up: Chapter 4. Word CountYowl: 6
Meow/Mew: 17
Growl: 4
Hiss: 7
Murmur: 4
Purr: 3
Caterwaul: 3
