Sure Midnight may have started a new story arc  and introduced multiple point of view characters,  

but this book expands the world itself. Prior to  Moonrise, the only organized group of cats outside  

the clans was Bloodclan, who by their name and  proximity to the forest was implied to already be  

an offshoot off of or even parody of the clans.  This new group, The Tribe of Rushing Water,  

is entirely independent and shows that the clans  are not the only way for cats to live together.  

So, with no other judgements based on knowledge  of the future, let us explore this book.

Moonrise came out on August 1st of 2005, a little  less than three months after Midnight's release.  

This is already a startlingly short turnaround  time, but it's even more impressive considering  

that both Midnight and Moonrise were written by  Cherith Baldry. She probably would have had to  

write both books at once for the time between  releases to be that short. Another fun note is  

that around the time of this book's release, the  first version of the Warriors Website came out!  

Thanks to the death of Flash it isn't available  to look at anymore, but it was pretty bare bones,  

with just a few character profiles from  the first arc, Into the Wild Allegiances  

for each of the four clans, a map of the forest  territories, author profiles for Kate and Cherith,  

and advertisements for both existing arcs. Still,  even this was a sign that Warriors was being taken  

seriously as a more long lasting series, rather  than one that would be forgotten only a year or  

two after it finished publishing. They had  the go ahead to keep producing these books,  

so let's see what they did with that freedom,  beginning, as always, with the allegiances.

Thunderclan has 12 warriors now instead of 11 and  5 apprentices instead of 6 since Sorreltail was  

promoted at the beginning of Midnight...and that's  it. That is literally the only change across  

any of the clans, or even outside them. Okay, well that was ridiculously short.  

I guess we can just say this time that the  statistics in this book was an improvement  

even on the last book, with 46% of the characters  being she-cats making up 48% of the lines and  

miraculously only 68% of the lines going to the  top 10 characters, with a significantly larger  

and genuinely important cast between the new Tribe  cats and the important players back in the clans. 

In a first for the series, the top 10 characters  don't manage to cover every cat with more than 50  

lines, and some really important characters  like Stoneteller, Tawnypelt, Hawkfrost,  

Talon of Swooping Eagle, and Brook Where Small  Fish Swim were all left out of the top 10 count. 

And one final interesting detail is that  Brambleclaw does not have the most lines  

this time around. Both Leafpaw and Stormfur, the  two main point of view characters for this book,  

beat him. Feathertail falls short of his  line count by quite a lot, but since she only  

gets 2 chapters to herself in this book, it's  understandable. Now let's get into the story.

We begin with a prologue within a strange new  society, the Tribe of Rushing Water. Their leader,  

Stoneteller, shares with his tribe a promise from  The Tribe of Endless Hunting, their equivalent of  

Starclan, that says a silver cat will come from  outside the tribe to save them from something  

known as “Sharptooth.” Stoneteller assigns he/him  pronouns to the cat whose fur he saw in the water,  

but it is at this point unclear if that was an  assumption or something the Tribe of Endless  

Hunting Shared with him. We then move to catch  up with Midnight and the traveling cats. Stormfur  

cares about Feathertail. Feathertail cares about  Crowpaw. Stormfur is dismayed and mildly annoyed  

by this and wonders how she could consider a  half-clan relationship after what happened to  

their parents, and then proceeds to justify his  own practically identical crush on Squirrelpaw.  

Back in the forest, Leafpaw and Sorreltail are  being friends and Thunderclan is learning that  

the twolegs are tearing up the forest, something  they are understandably terrified of. Midnight  

saves the traveling cats, plus Purdy, from some  foxes by talking them down, and directs the group  

to go home through the mountains instead of  the twolegplace. Despite Purdy's objections,  

the group decides to go with Midnight's suggestion  and head for the hills. Leafpaw Graystripe and  

Firestar go to check how Shadowclan is handling  the twoleg invasion, but Blackstar is defensive  

and refuses to see a long-term problem, sending  them away and increasing border patrols. Leafpaw  

then sneaks off to Windclan with Sorreltail to  speak with Tallstar, but they are attacked and  

driven away before they have a chance to, and  saved by the ever-beautiful Mothwing. Sorreltail  

comments that Mothwing isn't following the code  properly, possibly because her mother is a rogue,  

and Leafpaw gets upset with her. Mothwing does let  them know that Riverclan hasn't seen the monsters  

at all, though they have caught wind of Windclan's  fear. Stormfur, immediately after admiring  

Squirrelpaw, tries to confront Feathertail about  Crowpaw and is shot down. Leafpaw goes on a date  

with Mothwing and meets Hawkfrost, who doesn't  seem to mind the idea of imitating Tigerstar,  

or arguing with his sister. Leafpaw at this point  gets an inkling based on his similar appearance to  

Brambleclaw that Tigerstar is their father. Over  in the mountains, the group meets their first  

Tribe cats, Brook Where Small Fish Swim and Crag  Where Eagles nest, who take them into the Tribe  

of Rushing Water to meet Teller of the Pointed  Stones. That is also probably the last time I will  

use any of their full names because goodness those  become a mouthful with any more than one. Leafpaw  

and Cinderpelt share a sweet bonding moment after  she is scolded for meeting Mothwing and then we're  

back to the Tribe. Stoneteller explains that  he is the healer, essentially both the Tribe's  

leader and medicine cat, and everyone starts  crowding around Stormfur, calling him “the one.”  

The Tribe has many different terms for things,  to-be's for apprentices for example, and a couple  

different customs like sharing food bite by bite  and separating into cave-guards and prey-hunters,  

but on the whole they aren't that different from  the clans, other than being entirely alone with  

no other groups of cats around. Firestar and  Cinderpelt ease the tension between Thunderclan  

and Windclan and the traveling cats debate  how long they should stay with the Tribe,  

given Tawnypelt's still-injured shoulder, and  Stormfur starts to get acquainted with Brook.  

They all go out hunting together, learning  to hunt eagles like the Tribe cats do,  

and then Stormfur gets irrational and angry at his  sister for talking with Crowpaw instead of him.  

They also try to leave the mountains, and are  stopped. Stoneteller explains the prophecy to  

them, and declares that Stormfur will save them  from Sharptooth, a mountain lion that has been  

attacking the Tribe. The other traveling cats are  taken prisoner and then thrown out of the tribe.  

After a medicine cat gathering, we get a  couple of Feathertail point of view chapters,  

where the remaining traveling cats plot Stormfur's  escape and then Feathertail teaches Crowpaw to  

fish. As they get ready to save Stormfur though,  they notice Sharptooth barging into the Tribe's  

waterfall camp. They attack and manage to help  Stormfur and themselves get out in the chaos.  

Meanwhile rabbits are poison so Thunderclan has to  throw all of them out and Leafpaw saves Reedpaw of  

Riverclan with Spottedleaf's help, after Mothwing  stumbles and Hawkfrost shoves her aside. And  

while she was gone, Cloudtail and Brightheart  disappeared...and Dappletail died, with Larchkit  

following soon after. The traveling group, now  out of the cave, meet Talon, Rock, and Bird,  

three outcast Tribe cats who were sent to go kill  Sharptooth. Their other three companions died and  

without Sharptooth's pelt, the living three cats  weren't allowed to return. Stormfur talks with  

Talon about how he thinks he might be meant to  fulfill the Tribe's prophecy, since he wasn't part  

of the 4 cats chosen by Starclan for this journey.  Silverstream visits him in his sleep and basically  

tells him he's right. With Stormfur's resolve, the  traveling cats and the outcasts band together to  

go back and defeat Sharptooth by feeding him  poisoned prey. Mothwing defends Sorreltail to  

Hawkfrost when Leafpaw says she didn't mean  to cross their border, and we get more *fun*  

opinions from Hawkfrost about how Mistyfoot  is a coward and he should be deputy instead.  

Mothwing explains that, like some of Thunderclan's  cats, Mistyfoot has been missing for a day. It is  

then confirmed by Mothwing that Tigerstar is her  father. During the preparations to feed Sharptooth  

the deathberries, he shows up unexpectedly and  the battle begins early. Feathertail realizes  

it is her job to defeat Sharptooth and hurls  herself onto a stalactite which falls and kills  

Sharptooth, along with herself. Stormfur and  Crowpaw say their last goodbyes and the Tribe  

celebrates as Stormfur wishes it had been him who  fulfilled the prophecy instead. Sorreltail and  

Leafpaw figure out that the disappearing cats were  taken by twolegs and Leafpaw gets captured along  

with them. The traveling cats leave the Tribe and  see highstones, realizing they are almost home.

Leafpaw gets a much more sizable portion of book  time compared to Midnight, with almost every  

other chapter given to her. In addition, actually  important things are happening back in the clans  

that we need to see: the tensions as every clan  tries to stay strong against the invading twolegs,  

the disappearances and deaths of cats in every  clan, and of course the relationship between  

and backstory of Mothwing and Hawkfrost  in Riverclan. It probably could have been  

more direct if we had Mothwing's point of view  instead of her's to actually see the deputyship  

and sibling tensions first-hand, but Leafpaw does  the job. This phenomenon, however, does cause a  

bit of whiplash as you read the book. Jumping from  tense conflicts in the forest to tense conflicts  

in the mountains can lead some details from one  plot or the other to be forgotten while reading  

the intermittent chapters, something that was  never a problem in the first arc. I do actually  

prefer this style of series writing in general  since it gives variety in the characters we have  

to follow, but it isn't without it's drawbacks. We have a Stormfur point of view! Feathertail too  

but not for long enough to matter, unfortunately.  This should be a big deal, as it's the first point  

of view in the series from a non-Thunderclan cat.  But there are a couple issues with it. First is  

that the whole of his point of view takes place  outside Riverclan, so we don't get the benefits  

of a different clan's point of view. He doesn't  mention any other friends or enemies he left back  

in Riverclan either, so no new information is  gained. Second, he doesn't think much about his  

home either. Most of his attention is on the  traveling group, Feathertail and Squirrelpaw  

in particular, and then the Tribe and Brook.  And third, Stormfur in particular is just a  

really bad character to show what's great about  Riverclan. The few times he does think about the  

clan he left behind, it's just to say that he  and his sister felt isolated from them thanks  

to what Tigerclan did to them, and that he's  glad to be with the traveling cats instead. 

Within the first chapter, we have Stormfur  mentioning how the six cats had become a unified  

force rather than a group of squabbling rivals.  There are two issues with this statement. First,  

as I mentioned in the last episode, the  group hasn't really bonded that much.  

They didn't go through any formative experiences,  share much about themselves, or stick their necks  

out for each other in any way that would advance  their relationships. The closest we had was  

Feathertail and Crowpaw, who did and do clearly  have feelings for each other and grew closer...but  

all of it offscreen, away from the point of  view characters. And of course, after this book,  

Feathertail's death stops that relationship from  being good progress for the mission as a whole.  

Second, and perhaps more importantly, they  were never really a group of squabbling rivals.  

Crowpaw was grumpy, standoffish, and didn't  like taking stupid orders but otherwise every  

cat in the group got along just fine immediately.  Brambleclaw already knew his sister, Squirrelpaw,  

and even Feathertail and Stormfur pretty well,  and didn't gain new insight into any of them,  

save perhaps for finding Squirrelpaw minutely  less annoying than before. This is one case  

where I think having a full group of apprentices  as the main characters could have been a benefit,  

as they wouldn't have had time to get to know  each other at gatherings or across borders yet  

and could truly bond while on the journey. Even if  you went with this exact cast though, there were  

feelings that could have been explored past the  ability to be polite with each other, like Tawny  

and Bramble's individual feelings about their  father and what happened since she left, Stormfur  

and Feathertail admitting to their distance from  their clan after Riverclan agreed to murder them  

under Tigerstar's orders, Crowpaw and Squirrelpaw  not feeling respected among their peers despite  

having good ideas, there were a lot of routes  they could have gone. But instead what we have  

is...six cats who could previously stand to be  around each other, and now after a long journey,  

can still stand to be around each other. Yay. Now a few miscellaneous things: 

Cinderpelt and Littlecloud are still shown to  have a history together after she nursed him  

back to health, so even when Blackstar  is on the aggressive with Thunderclan,  

Littlecloud speak's out in their favor. Firestar keeps having to hold Graystripe  

back from making aggressive comments or flat out  attacking during tenuous diplomatic missions,  

proving even more so that he really  shouldn't have been chosen as deputy. 

Brambleclaw and Stormfur are both commenting  on Squirrelpaw's impressive abilities and  

spunk in this book, though they never  get into an outright argument over who  

should have her or some nonsense like that. The sheer number of apprentice-warrior romances in  

this book is astounding, and a little bit creepy.  Based on the DustFern romance in the first arc,  

it's quite possible that the Erins hadn't yet  determined the exact age-of-consent equivalents  

in the universe at this point, but looking back at  Brambleclaw and Stormfur fawning over Squirrelpaw,  

Feathertail for Crowpaw, and even Mothwing  and Leafpaw, it's a little uncomfortable.  

Though in the case of Leafpaw and Mothwing  it's more understandable, given that we have  

the perspective of the apprentice with a crush,  rather than a warrior crushing on an apprentice.

On the structural and character levels,  Moonrise is a surprisingly good book,  

especially by New Prophecy standards. It is held  back if you don't like the characters they give  

you to work with, which I personally do not, and  there are ways it could have been made better,  

but for the most part it is a solid entry in  the series, amping up the tension in both the  

traveling group and the forest clans, setting up  a Riverclan power struggle, and killing off an