Why I will NOT be reading Changing Skies by Rosefern

Rosefern shares why they will not be reading the newly announced Warrior Cats arc, Changing Skies.

Hello, lovely BlogClanners! It is I, the great Rosefern, with another awesome article 4 y’all! I’m gonna be ranting about my first impression of Changing Skies and why I’ll most likely not read it.
First let’s start with some background. Anyone who has been keeping track of Warriors for a while knows that the whole series is long. Really long. 8 arcs, + super editions, novellas, field guides, mangas, and even a few plays, adding up to over 70 books in total. That’s a lot! Heck, I thought there’d be only the first four arcs, it makes sense, considering Power of Three and Omen Of The Stars were basically about the same thing, and everything in those series kind of added up to the Great Battle.
Reading all these books, especially after the aformentioned great battle big finish, I’ve noticed, and I’m sure many others have too, that the books have been declining in quality. Plots are becoming unrealistic and far-fetched, to the point that the Warrior Code had to be changed, forbidden relationships and other things which are supposed to be special and fun are becoming commonplace and boring, and even many months of editing can’t seem to root out all the mistakes (some of them quite bizarre- such as Barkface being in the Riverstar’s Home allegiances) that find their way in.
The most significant downfall I’ll be focusing on is something that seems to be coming up more and more in the unreleased books. Yes, folks, it is the Erins tendency to fixate on characters.
You may have seen me being annoying about this around the site, but I’ve never really thought of putting it into an article. I’m putting it here now because I am at the end of my rope with it after reading the changing skies blurb.
One glance at the ThunderClan allegiances in Wind is enough to make anyone wonder about this: how can so many characters be using in one book? The answer to this question is simple: they’re not. Some of these characters haven’t had meaningful appearances since TBC, and some haven’t even been mentioned (Cough cough, Whitewing and Birchfall). And some characters have appearances but are becoming boring, like Cinderheart and Poppyfrost. There’s just this refusal to remove characters that aren’t worth it, maybe to make ThunderClan look all awesome (when really just makes it looked overcrowded), or just in a denial that some characters just aren’t worth it anymore.
But it’s not just that. Recently, in the case of Ivypool’s Heart,, the Erins have been started to reuse characters. I like Ivypool. I love her, she’s one of my favorite characters, to this day! She’s one of the only background characters worth keeping, who hasn’t totally lost her personality. But… Ivypool is done. She’s had her moment in the spotlight, and there are so many characters who haven’t. Cinderheart. Stonefur. Some of the horribly underused Leopardstar’s Honor characters. Old DF characters like Silverhawk and Maggottail. Yet she’s the one who has a super edition written about her.
I was like, ok whatever just this once, but… Changing Skies is worse.
I’m not gonna paste the whole loooong blurb here bc I don’t feel like it. But I’ll summarize it.
⊂b>Leafstar is getting old and can’t lead her Clan. Well, boohoo, but that’s kind of obvious, and I have better things to do, than read about her getting pushback, I’d much rather learn about a new character. It’ll probably have a plus side to it, but it gets worse.
Tawnypelt is noticing that twolegs are destroying the territory and poisoning the stream. Hello, that is a literal repeat of TNP, right down to the POV character.
Moonpaw is having a voice in her head and thinks she’s having visions Same exact thing that happened to poor Shadowpaw. In THE BROKEN CODE!!!!! If it’s Ashfur who has risen from the eternal dead to attack the Clans again, I will not touch a Warriors book again, I’m not even joking. Or maybe I am. But the point is, it’d better not be.
Meanwhile, the Moonpool is going to get destroyed that sounds like close enough to what happened in TBC, but, it could be ok if enough new details are added.
My main issue is the overlaying idea of twoleg construction. Again, that’s the exact same thing that happened in series 2 (AKA The New Prophecy). I didn’t necessarily like series 2, but it was generally interesting, but it won’t be interesting anymore if it keeps on repeating itself. Which leads to the fact that the twolegs are destroying the Moonpool (The second time the Moonpool is put in danger) and a character who sorta seem like Shadowpaw is having someone sus trying to communicate with her. That’s basically what happens in The Broken Code all over again.
So this series is basically a repeat of previous arcs.
And what about WindClan?
This has been a much-discussed topic in the Warriors fandom, the neglection of WindClan. There have been about 4 WindClan POVs in the series: Tallstar, Onestar, MothFlight and Crowfeather. They were all in super editions. I might be forgetting one but I don’t think I did. Yet, how many POVs have their been in SkyClan? At least 6, and most of them (Twigbranch, Violetshine, Rootspring, and now Leafstar again) are from the main series. And what is SkyClan but a plot device. Something that the Erins made because Firestar needed to go on some big heroic mission outside his main books. Something so that A Vision Of Shadows could happen. Maybe even a place to get rid of the weird name ideas like Kitescratch and Billystorm. How is that fair? How does that even make the slightest of sense? The answer is, again, it does not. In A Starless Clan, a RiverClan POV was introduced, so I thought that in Changing Skies there would be a WindClan POV. It doesn’t say in the blurb what clan Moonpaw is from but there’s approximately a 33% chance that it will be WindClan, and I’m not very optimistic. Meanwhile, ShadowClan and SkyClan, two of the most used Clans, get a guarantee of POV, of characters that we’ve already seen so much of, no less.
In conclusion, although I had never had the highest expectations about this arc, the release of the blurb has me at the end of my rope, with the thought of this new arc and the general state of the Warriors series at the moment. This description is for one book, and may not determine the rest of the series, so I would like to remain open minded, but based on what I know now, despite my excited snagging of all Warriors books the day they come out, I will not be touching Warriors arc 9: Changing Skies. Thank you for reading my rant. *Renda out*