First, for the necessary background information (if you’ve read the books I give you permission to skip this part). “Warriors” is a series of books about four groups of cats - though the number changes throughout the series - living in a forest and facing a multitude of problems. The first series concentrates on a cat who starts out as the “kittypet” Rusty but who soon runs away to the forest to assume the life of a ThunderClan cat and becomes, in time, Fireheart. The first part of the series chronicles his adventures and his rise to power, finally telling of how he became Firestar, leader of ThunderClan, and made the forest safe again. The other parts of the series are, to skip over intricate details, pretty much the same, different only in that they no longer center on Fireheart or Firestar or whatever you want to call him.

First off, I would like to say that I don’t like these books at all. In my opinion, they’re very juvenile and not well-written, interesting, original, intriguing or otherwise “good” at all. I have no problem with children younger than, say, 11 reading them, but to hear teens declaring their love of the series somewhat saddens me, to tell the truth. Can’t the youth of today read something better?

I really don’t have a “problem” with people reading this series, I just think it’s rather sad that many teens gush about it when it’s so undeserving. To anyone who has sense, saying, “There’s a very popular series of books about four groups of cats who live in the forest and fight each other,” would sound ridiculous, juvenile and uninteresting.

To attack the plot and writing, Firepaw/heart/star is a sickening character; he’s virtually perfect and just extremely frustrating to read about. On top of that, the idea for the series is not at all original, and the execution is very, very poor. Of course, it could be called a good children’s book, but how could it manage to interest so many teens and people above the age of 10?

I know this may have sounded very harsh and I apologize to those who love this series, but I needed to get this off my chest and send out a warning to anyone who hasn’t read the series that they shouldn’t bother.