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For how much (rightful) criticism Dawn Of The Clans gets I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention the inaccurate characterizations that happen from The First Battle to The Blazing Star.
The First Battle ends with relegations of how bad Clear Sky is, how mislead he was, how much hes hurt everyone around him and then all the characters become aware of why he was acting the way he was and Thunder opens his heart to Clear Sky. He’s like ‘oh that’s why my dads like that. He’ll have to work hard to right the wrongs he’s done but I believe he can do it. It’ll take me a while to forgive him though’. But then The Blazing Star begins with them forgetting how they all were feeling about Clear Sky and creating conflict because they go back to being unsympathetic and that he’ll never change again.
I read these books back to back so it might be more noticeable just because there wasn’t a year between me reading the two (also I swear you can tell when a new Erin begins writing in the series), but my point still stands.
I think people hate Clear Sky because the books themselves didn’t properly justify his redemption. They needed conflict, they had understanding and acceptance of him too early and then they back tracked to prolong it. It’s like whiplash the way Thunder goes from hating his father to understanding him and having hope for him back to hating if him and then liking him at the end of the series.
That’s one thing that sucks about this Warrior Cat series (and i wouldn’t be surprised about the others once I get to them), the Erins don’t always create coherent stories and characters. And maybe it’s just this book but all the characters are very static as well and when they try to have dynamic characters it just seems forced for plot. Which really sucks because this is a great concept for a series and it wasn’t all terrible.