little overall plot or even character growth save  for the bits of buildup to the one scene everyone  

remembers: Brambleclaw killing Hawkfrost to save  Firestar. You may notice I'm not drawing that,  

though, and that's because I committed early on  to drawing one underrated scene from the book  

for each episode of Trip Through Time: a still  interesting moment that just isn't drawn or talked  

about much in the fandom. But this book, with its  next-to-no material, made that quite difficult.

Sunset came out on December 26th of 2005,  almost exactly four months after Twilight.  

As with all the other books in this arc  that weren't Dawn, this one was written  

by Cherith Baldry, which is about the  only meta thing I'd like to say here,  

except that, by this point, the team not only  knew that they would be making a third arc, but  

had some ideas of exactly what it would be like,  allowing them to foreshadow a few key elements.

Graystripe is once again listed as deputy, not a  surprise at this point, and Cinderpelt is gone,  

leaving Leafpool as Thunderclan's only medicine  cat. Sootfur is dead and Sorreltail has gone off  

to the nursery, so the clan now has 11 warriors  instead of 13. Birchpaw joined Whitepaw in the  

apprentice den. In addition to Ferncloud and  now Sorreltail, Daisy is also a newcomer in the  

nursery, and one last note is that Willowpaw has  been listed as Mothwing's apprentice in Riverclan.  

The top 10 characters have 69% of the lines,  which is almost the lowest percentage of the arc,  

second only to Moonrise, and this time  around, 44% of the characters are she-cats,  

and combined they have 43% of the  lines, less than last book certainly.  

Now quickly, let's get into the story because  there's a lot I have to say about this book.

The prologue opens for the first time,  not in Starclan, but somewhere else,  

where Tigerstar and Darkstripe find each other  and Tigerstar explains his plans to continue in  

his revenge against Firestar by having his sons,  Brambleclaw and Hawkfrost, destroy him and take  

over their own clans and the others, which begins  by training them in fighting skills while they  

dream. While Tigerstar is confident in Hawkfrost,  he is worried about Brambleclaw's loyalty to  

Firestar leading him astray, but is confident  that, with teaching, he can use the respect he  

has gained as leader of the sun-drowned-place  journey to take over the clans with ease.  

Darkstripe offers to help, but Tigerstar refuses,  and explains that cats in this place must walk  

alone. Literally. Back in the living world,  Stormfur and Brook have come from the Tribe,  

and other than telling Brambleclaw that they'd  like to help Thunderclan after their badger  

attack, they don't explain why they're at  the lake and not with the Tribe at all.  

Leafpool and Crowfeather go their separate ways  now that Leafpool must stay with Thunderclan to  

be their medicine cat, and Crowfeather  promises that he will never forget her.  

The clan mourn Cinderpelt and Sootfur, and  Sorreltail names her kits: Molekit, Poppykit,  

Honeykit, and Cinderkit, after Cinderpelt. Daisy,  seeing the levels of danger the clan was just in,  

wants to take her kits back to the horseplace,  and Midnight leaves. Then…*ridiculously* quickly  

and with no resolution after all that happened in  Twilight, Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw just get  

together and Squirrelflight says she'll talk to  Ashfur. We have only just finished chapter *2*…  

Leafpool and Brightheart make up, and then  Leafpool receives a vision showing Brambleclaw  

and Squirrelflight walking off into the sunset  as a couple, tails entwined. Then, while trying  

to think of how to tell Squirrelflight  about Brambleclaw being in the dark forest,  

Spottedleaf interrupts to say that it's not *her*  fault that Leafpool took her comment as meaning  

she should go with Crowfeather instead of stay  with her clan, and either way it turned out fine  

and Starclan isn't angry so it's all absolutely  perfectly fine, right? Squirrelflight breaks off  

whatever budding relationship she had with Ashfur  and, while on patrol, they find out that fox traps  

exist on the territory. Ashfur by the way is…not  taking the break up well and is now avoiding  

Squirrelflight altogether. Brambleclaw meets up  with Hawkfrost and Tigerstar again in his dreams,  

and both of Brambleclaw's family members help  him think of ways to manipulate Firestar into  

making him deputy, which includes deciding that  he will mentor Berrykit so he can fulfill the  

deputy requirement. He then lies about where  his injuries are coming from to Squirrelflight.  

Leafpool gets a slightly ominous dream where a  bunch of Starclan cats say that something bad  

is coming for her, and they don't know what, but  that they will be with her regardless. It bears a  

striking resemblance to the dream where Cinderpelt  was told she would die...but without the  

specificity of her fate. Seeing that it could help  him become the kit's mentor, Brambleclaw helps out  

in finding Berrykit who has lost part of his tail  to a fox trap, and Brook plays the most important  

role in the rescue, but Brook and Stormfur then  decide to go to Riverclan and to stay at the lake  

for good. Riverclan has greencough, Cinderpelt  is nowhere to be found in Starclan, Shadowclan  

tries to steal a strip of territory, Willowpaw  becomes an official medicine cat apprentice,  

and Mothwing shares a prophecy she supposedly got  about two stones blocking the river, which gets  

Brook and Stormfur kicked back out of Riverclan.  Interesting considering she doesn't believe in  

Starclan and needs Mudfur to deliver prophecies  through Leafpool and now Willowpaw. Turns out that  

Hawkfrost pressured her into giving that false  prophecy out of a worry that Stormfur would be  

chosen as deputy over him, but Mothwing decides  to stop listening to him after the gathering.  

Tawnypelt is also, much, much later than her  brothers, brought to Tigerstar, but she refuses  

his training and leaves like a sensible person.  She tries to talk some sense into Brambleclaw  

too after finding him there, but he can't hear  her over the sound of his raging ambition and  

blatantly lies about how well he knew Tigerstar  when he was alive so that he can continue his  

training. Daisy leaves quietly now that Berrykit  has directly been hurt by being in the clans,  

but Cloudtail and Brambleclaw go to get her back,  which, with the eager pleading of her kits, Daisy  

agrees to. Leafpool and Feathertail help Willowpaw  get acquainted with Starclan in her dreams and  

begin that side of her training, and *finally*  Daisy and Brightheart resolve their feelings,  

with the former explaining that Cloudtail  would have been this nice to anyone and she  

was just jealous of the closeness Cloudtail and  Brightheart shared. This does fit in well with  

Daisy's existing perception of how close Smoky and  Floss are and how she would never be a part of it,  

but in the Cloudtail case it doesn't work, because  for the last two books he actually has been  

neglecting Brightheart in favor of spending every  moment with Daisy and her kits, and he has never  

before and will never again display this level of  kindness to other random cats. I'm glad to see the  

plotline over but it's not an ending that was  deserved. A few more chapters of border trouble  

with absolutely no substance go by, Stormfur and  Brook are made official members of Thunderclan,  

Brambleclaw makes Firestar appoint a deputy, the  clan mourns Graystripe, and Leafpool receives a  

prophecy saying the deputy should be Brambleclaw  himself, despite him not having an apprentice yet.  

Ashfur disagrees, but the clan welcomes him more  or less and Brambleclaw is officially made deputy.  

With that in place, Tigerstar and Hawkfrost  are ready to move forward with their plan.  

Brambleclaw isn't quite sure yet, so he suggests  they talk about it in the real world. After  

another medicine cat meeting where Leafpool finds  out that Cinderpelt's spirit is in Cinderkit,  

it is finally time for *the* scene. Brambleclaw  comes across Hawkfrost standing over Firestar,  

who he has caught in a fox trap, and asks  Brambleclaw to finish him off. Also Leafpool  

is there witnessing it. Brambleclaw says no and  tries to free Firestar, but it is revealed that  

this was a test, and Hawkfrost attacks. They fight  and Brambleclaw kills him, making his blood run  

into the lake and turning it red, satisfying the  prophecy. Brambleclaw is told he is a wonderful  

deputy, and the book ends with Squirrelflight and  Leafpool now sure that he's a great and loyal cat.

I'd like to briefly rundown what we learn about  the dark forest in this book, considering it is  

the last time you will ever see this version of  the evil afterlife. Keep in mind that, in Sunset,  

it is just the or a or Tigerstar's “dark forest,”  not capitalized, and isn't ever given a proper  

name or referred to as the Place of No Stars.  In that place, it is always dark, there is no  

moon and no stars in the sky, and there is  also no prey to catch at all. Essentially,  

the reverse of Starclan. Second, like Starclan,  cats here are immortal, and won't become sick or  

hungry, but they cannot leave their afterlife to  go back to the living world. They can, however,  

learn to bring cats in through their dreams,  as Starclan cats can. An additional important  

note is that one big punishment factor here is  that cats are kept apart from each other. It is  

implied that Tigerstar's meeting with Darkstripe  in the prologue is Darkstripe's first since dying,  

and one of only a couple of meetings Tigerstar  has ever had. While they can catch scents of  

other residents of the forest, they rarely  if ever get the chance to meet any of them. 

All right, Brambleclaw analysis time.  First thing's first, he is not as bad  

as he was in Twilight. Instead, he spends  practically every waking moment in his book  

vehemently declaring to himself how  loyal he is to Thunderclan and Firestar.  

However, considering that he simultaneously  trains with his father and Hawkfrost and  

how he constantly pushes for Firestar to make him  deputy and for Berrykit to become his apprentice,  

it feels like something else. His attitude,  taking the kit's disappearance as an exciting  

opportunity taking Firestar's grief as a barrier  stopping him from getting the position he deserves  

make it feel more like denial: a way to convince  himself that he's still in the right even as he  

does bad things for bad reasons. Someone who was  truly motivated solely or even mainly by loyalty  

wouldn't push so hard on a grieving leader and  take it as personal when they are slightly delayed  

on getting a very rare and exclusive position that  they are not in any way guaranteed. This doesn't  

mean that he's automatically a horrible cat; he  did make the right choice eventually, but it does  

mean that he is deeply flawed. Brambleclaw has a  very strong ambition, much like his father, which  

drives him to care less for the cats around him  and make allowances for bad actions and cats when  

they could get him what he wants. Let's be clear  that this isn't a bad character. Having a morally  

flawed or even a morally corrupt protagonist  could be really interesting, and many of these  

tendencies show up again in different forms in  Hollyleaf, my absolute favorite character. The  

issue here is that everything Brambleclaw does is  presented as correct, and he is rewarded for his  

behavior rather than punished. The story never  seems to acknowledge or even realize that what  

he does is a serious problem, rather than a quick  little mistake thanks to Tigerstar's manipulation.  

These are genuine faults in Brambleclaw's mindset,  and his usage of politeness and self-declarations  

to his own loyalty and goodness are all being used  to conceal, even from himself, the immorality of  

his actions. These are faults not with the world  around him believing that he is like Tigerstar,  

which for the most part they simply don't, but  with Brambleclaw actually having tendencies  

to behave similarly to Tigerstar, and fighting  against that impulse. But he shouldn't be rewarded  

for just not choosing to murder his leader after  a moon or more of terrible actions, especially  

considering the context. Brambleclaw violates the  deputy must mentor an apprentice rule and didn't  

really succeed in bringing the traveling group  together in any ways that they hadn't already  

been or didn't do on their own. In my opinion, the  best way to end this sort of character's arc would  

have been for him to deny his father's path and  instead work to build up real loyalty in himself,  

letting someone else take the position of deputy. As for our other point of view character, Leafpool  

is back for ten of the twenty-three chapters,  and she is now officially the only character to  

have been a point of view in every New Prophecy  book. This is a little odd to say, honestly,  

because I couldn't accurately call her the  largest or most important character of the series.  

That would go to Brambleclaw, and perhaps  Squirrelflight as well, or anyone else on the  

sundrown journey. For the first three and a half  books, Leafpool was just there to be our eyes into  

the world that the traveling group left behind,  and in the last two and a half books she hasn't  

done much substantial work, especially insofar  as this arc's plot is concerned. In one chapter,  

she found the Moonpool. In another two  chapters, she got to help Mothwing in Riverclan.  

In two more chapters, she got to spend time with  Crowfeather, and two more chapters on either end  

of that journey were spent on them pining for  a life together that they could never have.  

For the rest of the time, she kept working  her role as an eye into Thunderclan,  

particularly the lives of Cinderpelt, Brightheart,  Cloudtail, Daisy, Sorreltail and Brackenfur. She  

never had the majority of chapters in any book,  and it is only in Twilight where I could even  

call her one of the most prominent characters  in the story, thanks to that book focusing on  

nothing but relationship drama. Her involvement  in Brambleclaw's affairs is particularly jarring.  

She commiserated with Squirrelflight about  his behavior and closeness to Hawkfrost,  

she directly saw him and Hawkfrost training with  Tigerstar, she was there to witness Brambleclaw  

and Hawkfrost nearly killing Firestar, and she  received all three prophecies about Brambleclaw:  

the blood will spill blood prophecy, the one  about him and Squirrelflight getting together  

and the last about him becoming deputy. She  never does anything with any of this information,  

and in fact barely speaks to him at all. Having  a camera into side characters isn't ideal,  

but it's relatively normal. However, having her  camera focus on a main character who could have  

given his perspective himself, or instead  of giving another relevant character like  

Squirrelflight the ability to learn about or  comment on his behaviors, is really strange and  

counterproductive. She wasn't ever an unimportant  character, but it feels like the time given to  

her consistently through the arc could have been  better divided among more of the traveling group,  

or expanding to other clans and their own drama. A side and slightly less important note that I've