Warriors (Super Edition) 7 – Bramblestar’s Storm

Erin Hunter's Bramblestar's Storm is a Warriors adventure for 10 year olds about a new leader trying to hold a thin, grieving Clan together.

What happens

It opens in StarClan, where the dead cats live. Firestar is up a tree after a squirrel when Bluestar calls him down, and the two of them talk about everything ThunderClan has been through. A great battle. Then greencough on top of it.

Then a leader from a Clan Firestar helped rebuild arrives with a prophecy. When water meets blood, blood will rise. Firestar asks what it means and is told, more or less, not to worry about it.

Down in the forest it's dawn and the first green is showing on the twigs. Bramblestar stands at the entrance to the hollow and decides that nothing will destroy ThunderClan.

The ordinary stuff is the good stuff here. A border patrol along the WindClan stream. An apprentice called Amberpaw who will not stop talking and gets told to walk like she's stalking a mouse, then falls straight in the water. Leafpool picking coltsfoot before the dew burns off. Warriors with their ribs showing.

If your reader is already in this world, they'll settle in immediately and the thin patrol will mean something to them.

If they aren't, be careful, because this one sits a long way in. The prologue says plainly who is dead, who leads now, and which cats the sickness took. It also carries the weight of a battle that happened in earlier books without re-explaining any of it.

The first pages of the series proper are a much better door.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Cats die here and nobody softens it. Firestar calls the battle slaughter, remembers "the stench of blood and the shrieks of dying cats", and gave his last life watching his Clanmates die. Three named warriors are dead of greencough before this book starts, and one young she-cat has lost the use of her back legs under a fallen tree. It's grief and injury rather than gore, and it sits over everything.

What to read next

For a reader who wants to start at the beginning, Into the Wild opens with a night raid on the Sunningrocks and a kittypet called Rusty who has no idea what he's about to walk into.