Full thoughts on Crowfeather's Trial (spoilers)
Sept 4, 2018 6:17:29 GMT -5
whiteflight, Jaysnow, and 4 more like this
Post by Fernstep on Sept 4, 2018 6:17:29 GMT -5
Going all-out on this.
Okay. This book was actually better than I expected it to be! There was some quality stuff in there. And I will mention that later. But, honestly, this was not a good book. The most obvious reason why is that it basically just excused Breezepelt’s actions during the Dark Forest battle by pretending that they weren’t actually that bad, or that he was just being misled by the Dark Forest, and none of that is true. But there’s other really painful stuff in this book, mostly all revolving around how Crowfeather, Nightcloud, Onestar, and Breezepelt are all just generally unpleasant characters to read about. And, of course, there were several really dumb continuity errors as always. But I’ll get to that all in specifics later.
I'll do the stuff I liked first. So, there definitely were some really good character interactions here. Nightcloud and Breezepelt. Nightcloud and Crowfeather. Crowfeather and Lionblaze. These were all great and believable. Nightcloud and Breezepelt clearly have a strong bond as mother and son, and you can really feel Breezepelt's sadness when he believes she's been killed and that it might be kinda his fault. He's not lying here at all. Getting to see them actually interact for once was great. And Nightcloud and Crowfeather finally making amends was also a really good scene! In fact, I think this book made me gain a lot more respect for Nightcloud! We've kinda only heard bad things about her from the main series, so it was great to finally get to see her in a proper context in her own Clan, instead of just hearing Crowfeather say bad things about her. Her and Crowfeather making up and agreeing to be friends even if they can't be mates was a really necessary scene that I think was plausible for both of their characters and improved them both. On top of that, Crowfeather making up with Lionblaze in a similar we-can't-love-each-other-but-we-can-still-be-friendly manner was just as good. Crowfeather's platonic relationships, basically are the good stuff in this book. Pretty much anything involving Nightcloud, really, was usually good.
As usual, there were plenty of incidental moments that were funny in this book. Small stuff like the cats getting "attacked" by dogs before realizing that it's just puppies, or pretty much anything involving Hootpaw. And I really, really thought Yew was funny. There are so many things Crowfeather says to him that become hilarious when you remember that this guy's name is Yew. Crowfeather says "Thank you", and you can just imagine Yew hearing it as "Thank Yew" in a weird third-person form. It's great. Also, there's one scene where the cats hide from foxes in trees, and Gorsetail climbs up a beech tree, which... I really hope that was a deliberate reference, cause if so, it's hilarious.
And now we come to the less fun stuff. This book has plenty of it. Gah, where do I even begin...
Onestar is a complete jerk in this book. That's an incredibly mild word to describe it, but, you know, forum decorum. He's a jerk, he's a piece of fox dung, you get the idea. He's a lot of really bad things. And I don't think anyone wasn't expecting that, but still, it's really irritating to just read about all the utterly awful things he does. I know we're meant to hate him, but that doesn't make him any more enjoyable as a character. My list of the terrible things Onestar said or did in this book is very, very long. He's just not pleasant to be around, at all. Hypocritical, arrogant, selfish, stubborn. You name a negative trait, he's got it. Just, ugh.
Crowfeather is also not a super fun character to have as a PoV, but there's not many specifics there. He's a bit hypocritical, quite a bit angery, and just overall prickly. It's nothing we haven't seen before, and it's nowhere near as bad as Onestar. But still. It's just not the most fun thing to read. There are numerous scenes where everyone involved---Onestar, Crowfeather, Breezepelt, other random WindClan cats, whoever---is just being completely unreasonable, and you just want to tear your hair out because they're all so stupid. Crowfeather's character does improve somewhat over the course of the book, but mostly with regard to how he interacts with others like Nightcloud or Lionblaze. He's not the highlight of the book, really.
I'm gonna slowly ease into the Breezepelt stuff. First: His relationship with Heathertail. I do not get it at all. It's never really explained at any point in the book. She just kinda is into him from pretty early on, and he's apparently always had a crush on her. It's never truly set up, or fully justified, it's just kinda there. It's, like, it's not the worst thing ever, but I don't think it really fits Heathertail's character to forgive this guy so easily, and I think she can do much better. HeatherBreeze is a negative for me, but it's pretty mild as far as this book's negatives go.
Secondly: The way the rest of the Clan treats Breezepelt. This really rankles me, because the book basically presents the Clan as being unreasonable for not being able to forgive Breezepelt right away after the battle. That's just not fair. He literally attacked them and fought on the side of the Dark Forest warriors who were--- I don't need to explain this to you guys, lol. You know the story. Even if Breezepelt could be redeemed, it's not reasonable to expect his Clanmates to immediately forgive him before he's actually done that, and yet that's what the book does anyway. And then, even more irritatingly, later in the book, once Breezepelt actually has started to show some signs of being a better cat, several WindClan cats inexplicably keep assuming the worst of him, and it has a kind of Mapleshade's Vengeance-type feel, where, like... the book is forcing everyone else to be jerks just to make the villainous character sympathetic. I really don't like it. Characters like Gorsetail shouldn't be so unreasonable about it, but they are.
And, of course, the piece de resistance: Breezepelt's actual redemption itself. Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. It's not... it's not 100% awful. There are moments in the book where you can really start to see Breezepelt in a different light, like he really has tried to become a better cat. And as I mentioned above, his relationship with Nightcloud is a really good part of this book. To some extent, his relationship with Crowfeather is even decent. But... the big problem is how the book actually addresses his definably evil actions during the Great Battle. For the most part, it doesn't address them. During the bulk of the book, when Breezepelt is acting nicer, it really feels like this is a cat who never actually attacked his Clan, instead, he's maybe one of the Dark Forest trainees who didn't fight alongside the Dark Forest when the time came. It just shoves the issue of all his evil acts under the rug and focuses more on "But he's a good person now!" And I honestly might have even been fooled by that if not for how it does, eventually, address those actions, in the worst way possible: His big speech about how he wasn't really a traitor.
Okay. This book was actually better than I expected it to be! There was some quality stuff in there. And I will mention that later. But, honestly, this was not a good book. The most obvious reason why is that it basically just excused Breezepelt’s actions during the Dark Forest battle by pretending that they weren’t actually that bad, or that he was just being misled by the Dark Forest, and none of that is true. But there’s other really painful stuff in this book, mostly all revolving around how Crowfeather, Nightcloud, Onestar, and Breezepelt are all just generally unpleasant characters to read about. And, of course, there were several really dumb continuity errors as always. But I’ll get to that all in specifics later.
I'll do the stuff I liked first. So, there definitely were some really good character interactions here. Nightcloud and Breezepelt. Nightcloud and Crowfeather. Crowfeather and Lionblaze. These were all great and believable. Nightcloud and Breezepelt clearly have a strong bond as mother and son, and you can really feel Breezepelt's sadness when he believes she's been killed and that it might be kinda his fault. He's not lying here at all. Getting to see them actually interact for once was great. And Nightcloud and Crowfeather finally making amends was also a really good scene! In fact, I think this book made me gain a lot more respect for Nightcloud! We've kinda only heard bad things about her from the main series, so it was great to finally get to see her in a proper context in her own Clan, instead of just hearing Crowfeather say bad things about her. Her and Crowfeather making up and agreeing to be friends even if they can't be mates was a really necessary scene that I think was plausible for both of their characters and improved them both. On top of that, Crowfeather making up with Lionblaze in a similar we-can't-love-each-other-but-we-can-still-be-friendly manner was just as good. Crowfeather's platonic relationships, basically are the good stuff in this book. Pretty much anything involving Nightcloud, really, was usually good.
As usual, there were plenty of incidental moments that were funny in this book. Small stuff like the cats getting "attacked" by dogs before realizing that it's just puppies, or pretty much anything involving Hootpaw. And I really, really thought Yew was funny. There are so many things Crowfeather says to him that become hilarious when you remember that this guy's name is Yew. Crowfeather says "Thank you", and you can just imagine Yew hearing it as "Thank Yew" in a weird third-person form. It's great. Also, there's one scene where the cats hide from foxes in trees, and Gorsetail climbs up a beech tree, which... I really hope that was a deliberate reference, cause if so, it's hilarious.
And now we come to the less fun stuff. This book has plenty of it. Gah, where do I even begin...
Onestar is a complete jerk in this book. That's an incredibly mild word to describe it, but, you know, forum decorum. He's a jerk, he's a piece of fox dung, you get the idea. He's a lot of really bad things. And I don't think anyone wasn't expecting that, but still, it's really irritating to just read about all the utterly awful things he does. I know we're meant to hate him, but that doesn't make him any more enjoyable as a character. My list of the terrible things Onestar said or did in this book is very, very long. He's just not pleasant to be around, at all. Hypocritical, arrogant, selfish, stubborn. You name a negative trait, he's got it. Just, ugh.
Crowfeather is also not a super fun character to have as a PoV, but there's not many specifics there. He's a bit hypocritical, quite a bit angery, and just overall prickly. It's nothing we haven't seen before, and it's nowhere near as bad as Onestar. But still. It's just not the most fun thing to read. There are numerous scenes where everyone involved---Onestar, Crowfeather, Breezepelt, other random WindClan cats, whoever---is just being completely unreasonable, and you just want to tear your hair out because they're all so stupid. Crowfeather's character does improve somewhat over the course of the book, but mostly with regard to how he interacts with others like Nightcloud or Lionblaze. He's not the highlight of the book, really.
I'm gonna slowly ease into the Breezepelt stuff. First: His relationship with Heathertail. I do not get it at all. It's never really explained at any point in the book. She just kinda is into him from pretty early on, and he's apparently always had a crush on her. It's never truly set up, or fully justified, it's just kinda there. It's, like, it's not the worst thing ever, but I don't think it really fits Heathertail's character to forgive this guy so easily, and I think she can do much better. HeatherBreeze is a negative for me, but it's pretty mild as far as this book's negatives go.
Secondly: The way the rest of the Clan treats Breezepelt. This really rankles me, because the book basically presents the Clan as being unreasonable for not being able to forgive Breezepelt right away after the battle. That's just not fair. He literally attacked them and fought on the side of the Dark Forest warriors who were--- I don't need to explain this to you guys, lol. You know the story. Even if Breezepelt could be redeemed, it's not reasonable to expect his Clanmates to immediately forgive him before he's actually done that, and yet that's what the book does anyway. And then, even more irritatingly, later in the book, once Breezepelt actually has started to show some signs of being a better cat, several WindClan cats inexplicably keep assuming the worst of him, and it has a kind of Mapleshade's Vengeance-type feel, where, like... the book is forcing everyone else to be jerks just to make the villainous character sympathetic. I really don't like it. Characters like Gorsetail shouldn't be so unreasonable about it, but they are.
And, of course, the piece de resistance: Breezepelt's actual redemption itself. Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. It's not... it's not 100% awful. There are moments in the book where you can really start to see Breezepelt in a different light, like he really has tried to become a better cat. And as I mentioned above, his relationship with Nightcloud is a really good part of this book. To some extent, his relationship with Crowfeather is even decent. But... the big problem is how the book actually addresses his definably evil actions during the Great Battle. For the most part, it doesn't address them. During the bulk of the book, when Breezepelt is acting nicer, it really feels like this is a cat who never actually attacked his Clan, instead, he's maybe one of the Dark Forest trainees who didn't fight alongside the Dark Forest when the time came. It just shoves the issue of all his evil acts under the rug and focuses more on "But he's a good person now!" And I honestly might have even been fooled by that if not for how it does, eventually, address those actions, in the worst way possible: His big speech about how he wasn't really a traitor.
- “I trained with the Dark Forest cats to become a stronger warrior.” No, you didn’t, you wanted to kill Crowfeather, kill your half-siblings, destroy the Clans, and burn down the warrior code.
- “But I wasn’t fighting against the Clans.” Yes you absolutely were. You attacked WindClan cats and tried to kill Lionblaze. These are things that literally happened.
- Crowfeather’s internal monologue: “That hadn’t been the action of a traitor, he realized now, but of a cat driven to desperation by his sense of failure and isolation.” No, it was literally the action of a traitor, you moron.
Yeah, it just... it just doesn't work at all. Even later, when he "apologizes" to Lionblaze for trying to kill him, he doesn't say he regrets his actions. Instead, he says that he shouldn't have listened to the Dark Forest cats, as if they were the ones who drove him to hate his entire family for actions beyond their control. The book thinks it has redeemed Breezepelt, but really what it's done is just... pretend that his evil actions weren't actually evil. That's it.
And what's so weird is, Jayfeather, in the book, actually points out everything wrong with this! He gives an amazing speech about it! “Breezepelt tried to kill my brother. He said he was glad that Hollyleaf was dead, and that none of us should ever have been born. Lionblaze might have forgiven Breezepelt, but Lionblaze is a nicer cat than I am. Or a more stupid one. I can’t forgive Breezepelt. I can’t forgive you. And I don’t have any burdock root to spare.” I clapped when I read this. He's 1000% right. It really confuses me that the writers had a character point out the massive flaws with their character redemption arc, and then went ahead with that arc anyway.
So, yeah, at the end of the day, while the book wasn't totally worthless, I don't think it succeeded at redeeming Breezepelt at all, not by any adequate measure.
Oh, and there was one hilarious recurring error that I feel is worth pointing out. It's almost on the level of "my daughter Mistystar." During a Gathering, Lionblaze claims that Breezepelt "almost killed me in the Dark Forest!" Then, later, while taunting Bramblestar about his father, Onestar says that "Tigerstar killed Firestar in the Dark Forest." I'd write this off as a typo if it only happened once, but it's pretty firmly in there on purpose, so... apparently Cherith or one of the editors somehow thinks that the Great Battle happened in the Dark Forest. Go figure.
And what's so weird is, Jayfeather, in the book, actually points out everything wrong with this! He gives an amazing speech about it! “Breezepelt tried to kill my brother. He said he was glad that Hollyleaf was dead, and that none of us should ever have been born. Lionblaze might have forgiven Breezepelt, but Lionblaze is a nicer cat than I am. Or a more stupid one. I can’t forgive Breezepelt. I can’t forgive you. And I don’t have any burdock root to spare.” I clapped when I read this. He's 1000% right. It really confuses me that the writers had a character point out the massive flaws with their character redemption arc, and then went ahead with that arc anyway.
So, yeah, at the end of the day, while the book wasn't totally worthless, I don't think it succeeded at redeeming Breezepelt at all, not by any adequate measure.
Oh, and there was one hilarious recurring error that I feel is worth pointing out. It's almost on the level of "my daughter Mistystar." During a Gathering, Lionblaze claims that Breezepelt "almost killed me in the Dark Forest!" Then, later, while taunting Bramblestar about his father, Onestar says that "Tigerstar killed Firestar in the Dark Forest." I'd write this off as a typo if it only happened once, but it's pretty firmly in there on purpose, so... apparently Cherith or one of the editors somehow thinks that the Great Battle happened in the Dark Forest. Go figure.