Warriors: Into the Wild
(Warriors series, Book 1)
Erin Hunter
Avon
Fiction, YA Fantasy
****
DESCRIPTION: In the woods at the fringes of Twolegger lands, four Clans of cats have lived for countless generations, meeting every full moon to renew the truces
between their kind. Lately, the long-held territory borders have been shifting. ThunderClan is feeling pressure from all sides. The RiverClan hunts on the edges of their
land, against the ancient warrior code. The WindClan of the open plateaus seems to have vanished altogether. The dark ShadowClan is becoming more and more aggressive, and it's
not long before ThunderClan warriors start dying. If the Clan cannot defend its home, it will fall.
Rusty, a housecat, lives a peaceful life with his Twolegger family. Dreams of forests and wild prey haunt him, and he's becoming increasingly restless with his belled collar
and kibble food. One night, he ventures beyond his yard into the woods, seeking adventure. He finds an apprentice of the ThunderClan, and, after a scuffle in which he acquits
himself quite honorably, receives a most unusual offer to join the wild cats. Rusty jumps at the chance to live his dream, but the other Clan cats don't think much of this
"kittypet" from the Twolegger nests who thinks himself their equal. Rusty soon finds himself faced with the dual challenges of learning to survive among the wild Clan cats and
facing the growing dangers to his new home. Will a pampered housepet ever make it as a ThunderClan warrior? Even if he does, will there still be a ThunderClan around to grant
him full warrior status?
REVIEW: War-ri-ors, come out and pla-ay... Sorry, had to get that out of my system. One look at this book, and I can guess that Hunter has probably read Tailchaser's Song, The Wild Road, and other animal fantasy stories a time or two. Fortunately, she takes the concept of feline culture in her own direction, and resemblance to other works fades as the story progresses. She earns marks for not having all animals able to talk to each other. Cats only know cat speech, and aren't trading words with dogs or foxes. She fails, however, in a way that pretty much every feline story author fails: tortoiseshell and calico cats are almost invariably female, and those very few which are male are usually sterile. You are more likely to find a human female with a belt-length beard than a tortoiseshell or calico tomcat. Tortie/calico toms are therefore very unlikely creatures, and yet every single book-length cat story I've ever read has at least one virile, impossible tom in these colors. This information is found in even basic children's books on cats. Why do no authors pick up on this very simple cat fact, when they go on to wow us with much more obscure cat and breed details? Rusty and his apprentice pals also suffer from a common ailment of not connecting dots until the climatic final moments, but that trouble is hardly restricted to talking-animal stories. I wasn't particularly shocked by the revelations that Rusty finally came to, but his companions were. Predictability aside, this was a fairly good story, nicely paced. Younger readers will be much more absorbed than I was, I expect. I'll admit I rated it with the target age in mind. If I had read this when I was at the target age, I think it would've ousted Tailchaser's Song as my favorite cat story. Even now, I found it neat. Many adults will be less willing to suspend disbelief and accept cats who use cobwebs and basic herb lore to treat wounds, or look to the "StarClan" in the night sky for guidance. There are more books in the series (many, many more books), and if I find the next one cheap enough I might consider picking it up. Just to see what happens...
You might also enjoy:
Eyewitness Handbooks: Cats (David Alderton, Fiction - A guide to cats of the world)
Heart of a Tiger (Marsha Diane Arnold, YA Picture Book - A shy gray kitten wants a tiger's name on Naming Day)
Lionboy (Zizou Corder, YA Fiction - A boy who can speak Cat sets out to find his abducted parents)
Dragoncharm (Graham Edwards, Fiction - Before the rise of Man, two dragons begin a quest to save their kind)
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (T. S. Eliot, Poetry - The poems that inspired the musical Cats)
Cats in Space (Brian Fawcett, editor, Fiction - Sci-fi stories about cats)
Redwall (Brian Jacques, YA? Fiction - The animals of Redwall Abbey face an army of evil rats)
The Wild Road (Gabriel King, Fiction - A housecat is called to protect the King and Queen of Cats from an ancient enemy)
Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria (Rahma Krambo, YA Fiction - A housecat must help defend a powerful book from evil forces)
The Call of the Wild and White Fang (Jack London, Fiction - In two stories, a dog abducted to the Alaskan Gold Rush learns the savage ways of the wolf, and a wolf with a half-Husky mother learns the civilized ways of Man)
Catfantastic I - IV (Andre Norton and Martin H. Greenberg, editors, Fiction - Sci-fi and fantasy tales of cats)
A Catland Companion (John Silvester & Anne Mobbs, Art - A look at "Catland," the turn-of-the-century world of anthropomorphic cats popularized by Louis Wain)
The King of Cats and Other Feline Fairy Tales (John Richard Stephens, Nonfiction - A collection of feline fairy tales)
Three Bags Full (Leonie Swann, Fiction - A flock of Irish sheep investigate the suspicious death of their shepherd)
Tailchaser's Song (Tad Williams, Fiction - A young tomcat searches for a lost cat-friend and finds a terrible danger stalking his world)
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