Read Warriors (The Broken Code) 1 – Lost Stars free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Erin Hunter's Lost Stars is a Warriors adventure for 10 year olds about the bitterest leaf-bare the Clans can remember, and the night their ancestors stop answering.
The five Clans of wild cats live around a lake, and every half-moon their medicine cats meet at the Moonpool to share dreams with StarClan, the spirits of the warriors who came before them.
This time the Moonpool is starting to freeze. When the medicine cats touch their noses to the water, nothing comes back. Just misty shapes in the sky and faraway voices crying out words nobody can make out.
You see it all through Shadowpaw, a young ShadowClan medicine cat in training. He has seizures that bring strange visions, and he quietly wonders if StarClan's silence is somehow his fault.
He's one of three young cats the story follows in turns. Rootpaw is a brand-new SkyClan apprentice who is mortified by his father, a cat who says he can see the dead. And Bristlepaw is a ThunderClan apprentice with a big crush on a young warrior called Stemleaf.
Their paths cross in a very dramatic way. Goaded by two older apprentices, Rootpaw charges down to the frozen lake, skids out onto the ice and goes straight through it. Bristlepaw spreads herself flat on the ice to reach him. It's a properly gripping scene.
What makes these books so moreish is the world. Leaf-bare, fresh-kill, warrior names and Clan rules. Your reader picks up the language as they go and is soon using it at the dinner table.
This isn't a gentle start. Rootpaw nearly drowns. A she-cat lost two of her kits before the story begins, and Rootpaw's father upsets the surviving kit by telling her they're still near her. A much-loved medicine cat has died and the others are still grieving. The cold and hunger hang over everything too.
Most readers who love animal adventures will take that in their stride. One who finds animals in danger upsetting might want to read the first few chapters with you.
Lost Stars is book one of The Broken Code, but it isn't the start of Warriors. It expects you to know who Tigerstar, Bramblestar and the medicine cats are, and why SkyClan has only just come back to the lake.
For a brand-new reader, go right back to Into the Wild. A pet cat called Rusty keeps dreaming about the forest beyond his garden fence, and the book opens on two Clans of wild cats fighting over a stretch of rock by the river.
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