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Long Shadows is a very well-known book in the Warriors series, though I've found over
the years that a large portion of fans have an inaccurate view or series of assumptions
about what this book's content actually is.
If I were to summarize its structure, I would say it's a series of three disconnected
but sometimes overlapping short stories where the first connects to the last book, Eclipse,
the last connects to the next book, Sunrise, and the middle one connects most strongly
to specific parts of the fourth book in the next arc and a prequel arc that will be made
over four years after this book's release Suffice to say, it is…a lot.
Whether that lot amounts to good overall quality is yet to be seen, but I know there are a
good number of people who count this among their favorite books for the last third alone
and to this I say, I understand you perfectly, and that is a fine choice.
Long Shadows was released on November 25th, 2008, not even 3 months after Eclipse and,
to precisely no one's surprise, not coming out on the same day as any other books because
of that.
No matter how you felt about their previous 4 to 6 month periods for book writing, this
one coming out less than 3 months after the previous one is undoubtedly a new level of
shocking.
While Eclipse was written by Kate Cary, Long Shadows was written by Cherith Baldry, I imagine
with even heavier guidance than normal from Victoria Holmes thanks to this book containing
the very moment that inspired this arc, and that Vicky intended to build the arc around.
Still, outside of that, it's a likely assumption that the book would have to mainly focus on
material completely uncovered by Eclipse.
Long Shadows may also end up focusing more on plot progression and its effects, not just
because of Cherith's known tendencies as a writer, but also because Vicky's hand
in this particular part of the text would give at least one element of the plot an especially
large amount of focus.
That, however, is a hypothesis we will have to either confirm or reject later.
First, let's begin with an allegiance check-in.
Despite there being a full-scale all clan war in the last book, no casualties were had,
but Poppyfrost, Honeyfern, Cinderheart, Lionblaze, and Hollyleaf were all made warriors so there
are now 21 warriors instead of 16 and 3 apprentices instead of 8.
Wow.
And that apprentice count is including Jaypaw, a medicine cat apprentice who is the very
same age of two cats who are now warriors, so it's likely that even that count will
go down.
The only other difference is that Millie's kits: Briarkit, Blossomkit, and Bumblekit,
have been born and are listed in the nursery.
The speaking cast of this book is 82 cats, which is actually the highest cast size not
just in this arc but in the entire series so far, and the top 10 cats have 67% of the
lines, tied for the lowest in Power of Three with Outcast.
The cast is 50% she-cats, impressively even, but the she-cats in that cast only get 37%
of the lines, second lowest in the arc after Outcast.
These statistics may in part be affected by the highest scorer on this list: Jaypaw.
He has the most lines in Long Shadows, but that means more here than it has in previous
Power of Three books.
The three different point of view cats each getting chapters in every book would imply
a roughly equal division of lines between Jaypaw, Hollyleaf, and Lionblaze.
Here, however, Jaypaw has over 400 lines, almost twice the number of Lionblaze, who
has the second highest lines in this book, and Hollyleaf has a couple dozen less than
even him.
This book is most famous for its final third so I imagine a lot of people would assume
Hollyleaf to be the focal character of the book, but as someone with at least a cursory
understanding of the book's actual contents, I am fairly sure I know exactly how Jaypaw
ends up as the focal character in all three thirds of the story.
Speaking of that story, let's stop dancing around and get into it.
The prologue shows cats named Shadow, River, Wind, and Thunder, the founders of the clans
introduced in Secrets of the Clans, meeting with Midnight, the badger guide from The New
Prophecy.
They want to know why she revealed the secrets of the clans, not the book title, to Sol when
he happened by and Midnight's defense is that telling him everything about the clans
didn't put them in danger because the clans need to learn how to confront threats from
outside…okay well in that case yes Sol's ability to manipulate the clans was entirely
Midnight's fault according to this prologue.
He wouldn't have been able to act like he had supernatural foresight if he hadn't
been given it for free and with Midnight's total consent.
Anyway, Rock, that ancient hairless sightless cat from Fallen Leaves' time who told Jaypaw
more about the prophecy in Outcast appears and chats to Midnight about how her actions
were absolutely necessary because the three need to be prepared for what's coming.
Still no word of what that could be, and it can't be Sol because he isn't coming.
He's here.
Well then, back to our main characters.
Hollyleaf has a nightmare about Sol and is still worrying about him when she wakes up
since he has caused Shadowclan to abandon Starclan and the Warrior Code, the two pillars
of her existence.
Oh also Hazeltail is treating her sort of like a friend and accompanying her through
most of her first chapter.
Anyway Shadowclan is also very aggressive about cats on their border but also patronizes
Hollyleaf for caring about the code…which leads me to wonder which specific parts of
the warrior code Shadowclan cares about now.
Birchfall gets into a fight with a Shadowclan cat and that's the end of the chapter.
In Jaypaw's world, Millie and Briarkit are coughing and it won't be long before this
cough spreads to become a giant green-cough bout across Thunderclan.
For now though, Hollyleaf tries to get her brothers to help her get rid of Sol somehow
and Jaypaw still wants to get whatever information he has about the prophecy.
Hollyleaf agrees with him and Lionblaze reluctantly and they sneak into Shadowclan territory to
watch one of Sol's speeches in Shadowclan's camp.
He's convincing them that Starclan isn't especially powerful and can't prevent harm
and Blackstar applies this to his existing insecurity that they were wrong to go to the
lake but this doesn't reach a conclusion of any specific actions before our protagonists
leave.
Jaypaw also has a vision of Midnight and talks about her to Leafpool so he can learn who
Midnight even is but they conclude that he can't just leave the clans right now to
visit her so if Midnight wants to say something she has to come to him.
In Lionblaze's first chapter, he asks to spar with Ashfur to catch up on battle training
in the hopes of becoming good enough to not need Tigerstar's teachings anymore and Ashfur
and Lionblaze get a little too fight-happy in the process.
Lionblaze also gets a nightmare about accidentally murdering Heatherpaw and Tigerstar egging
him on.
Basically, tensions are rising for all three protagonists.
The sickness is getting worse and the war with all four clans last book trampled the
catnip stems they had, so Jaypaw and Poppyfrost set about picking and protecting what is left.
Jaypaw attends the half-moon gathering alone so Leafpool can stay back and take care of
Millie and Briarkit and there he meets both Rock and Midnight.
They tell him that knowledge isn't power, faith is, and so it's perfectly fine that
Midnight told Sol everything about the clans and pieces of their future…I'm still skeptical
about this.
Jaypaw then talks to Raggedstar and Runningnose who tell him to fix Shadowclan for them without
any guidance or assistance.
Jaypaw gathers his siblings again to give Hollyleaf a chance to expound on how important
it is that Shadowclan believe in their ancestors.
Jaypaw is scared by her intensity.
More cats are coughing.
Tawnypelt arrives in Thunderclan's camp with her kits, now apprentices: Tigerpaw,
Dawnpaw, and Flamepaw.
They have come because Shadowclan has adopted the philosophy that every cat, young and old,
must take care of themselves and Tawnypelt wanted them to be somewhere safe.
Despite some cries that Tawnypelt and her kits shouldn't be allowed in Thunderclan
because they are outsiders and allowing in outsiders is what started the war with Windclan
and Riverclan…uhuh, sure, Firestar allows them to stay.
The three protagonists agree to fake a sign from Starclan on orders from Starclan who
can't just make a sign themselves because they don't feel like it and they recruit
Tawnypelt's kits to lead them there.
By the way, more cats are sick.
The Thunderclan and Shadowclan trios travel to Shadowclan and set up a sign where, when
Blackstar and Littlecloud come through, led by Tigerpaw, they can tip over some trees
and say in as ominous a voice as possible that they should stop denying their ancestors
and that “the forest will fall.”
Blackstar isn't convinced and wants the Starclan cat to show themselves if they want
him to do anything.
So Raggedstar and Runningnose come down physically to talk to him like they definitely could
have done from the beginning to tell Blackstar to get rid of Sol and that some generic brightness
will shine on Shadowclan for many moons.
Blackstar is immediately convinced because his problem was absolutely just believing
that Starclan didn't exist despite all previous evidence and not with anything involving their
philosophy or lack of involvement in the clans.
All of our protagonists' efforts have been worthless, Sol will be driven out, and they
can go home assured that they have saved Shadowclan.
Hollyleaf then starts thinking about whether or not Sol, the cat she hates beyond reason,
might now come back to train them in the prophecy…I legitimately can't make sense of that one.
Littlecloud comes to bring Tawnypelt back to her clan perhaps a day or two after she
left and everything is back to normal.
At this point, Sol meets with Hollyleaf in her territory and says that she and her brothers
need him because he knows things.
He also asks if she's sure she has found the three.
He then leaves.
Hollyleaf isn't swayed at all.
With that, the first short story of the book is done.
It is now chapter 11.
More cats are sick, but now they are out of herbs.
Some chattering Starclan cats confirm that no more catmint exists on Thunderclan territory
and Millie is about to die, but a cat called Brightspirit along with her parents appears
to Jaypaw to tell him the wind has what he seeks.
Okay I know I usually cover the broader and meta points in the next section but I really
need to insert this here because it is the only place where it is relevant.
Brightspirit is a character made to represent a particular fan whose name I won't say
for privacy but is readily accessible elsewhere.
She was an avid reader of every Warriors who, tragically, passed away alongside her parents
when their house was hit by a tornado in 2008, 9-10 months before this book's release.
This is the only book in which she appears and on a technical sense she feels a lot like
a throw-in with little value to the overall story but key in casting any judgments over
this is the reminder that her character is a memorial to a young girl lost to the world
for whom this book series meant a lot.
With that said, back in the clans more cats are sick and this time the newest patient
is Firestar himself.
Pretty much every cat in the camp who isn't sick is worried about the cats who are, and
a couple of nice character relationships are brought up as they do.
Jaypaw uses his dreamwalking ability to go into Kestrelpaw's dream and trick the Windclan
medicine cat apprentice into showing him the location of their catmint so he and Lionblaze
can steal it when they're awake.
They don't include Hollyleaf because of her intense fervor for the warrior code.
However, Lionblaze doesn't want to go either because of his current intrusive thoughts
about killing Heatherpaw.
Meanwhile, cats are getting sicker and Firestar decides that he and all the sick cats should
go to the abandoned twoleg nest to quarantine and so everyone works to set it up and then
get them there in a sort of sorrowful parade.
As soon as it is set up, Jaypaw is told to rest for a minute and forlornly travels to
the lake to visit his stick.
He wonders if sickness is what drove the ancient cats like Fallen Leaves away from the lake
in the first place, and suddenly he sees Fallen Leaves, who isn't sure what happened to
the other ancients.
Jaypaw is determined to get answers and runs out of the tunnels, somehow appearing in the
time of the ancients in the place of one of their cats: Jay's Wing.
Jay's Wing has just become a sharpclaw by navigating and coming out of the tunnels under
their land and he has a sister, Dove's Wing, who is very excited for him.
Furled Bracken, seemingly the leader of the group, officially congratulates him.
Many other cats, all completely unfamiliar to Jaypaw, greet him happily.
Jaypaw knows nothing at all about this world, and doesn't see a version of Jay's Wing
himself in the way that he saw Cinderheart or Kestrelpaw when he went into their dreams.
Whatever this is, it is something new and something very strange.
Jaypaw, in his own head, points out multiple times that he is not Jay's Wing and he in
fact has to convince the rest of the ancients that he is Jay's Wing by lying and making
excuses for his confusion about their world.
Things we do learn about Jay's Wing are that he is a relatively accomplished hunter,
like Jaypaw isn't, he isn't blind, like Jaypaw is, he appears to have been kind and
sociable with several different friends, like Jaypaw rarely is, and he seems to have loved
Half Moon, like Jaypaw-well, he specifically says he doesn't love her but he could see
himself coming to love her.
Jaypaw and Jay's Wing are not the same cat.
Cats called Fish Leap and Half Moon join Dove's Wing in greeting him the next morning and
together they talk about how the ancients have been doing, poorly, it turns out, since
Fallen Leaves' disappearance.
Apparently several cats have been discussing that they should leave the lake completely,
seemingly because a number of cats have died in the tunnels but Half Moon doesn't cite
any more specifics than that many cats have died.
The ancients hunt for themselves, don't have a set camp, don't have a medicine cat
or deputy, have only the leaders they choose themselves, have no connection to any ancestors,
and decide on most big decisions by casting stones in a democratic decision of all the
cats there.
Jaypaw and Half Moon spend some time hunting together until Jaypaw accidentally reveals
knowledge of the mountains from his time in the Tribe and hides it by saying he had a
prophetic dream which is something none of the ancients have ever done.
He quickly realizes that these ancients will eventually become the Tribe of Rushing Water
and that informs his next decision.
With the extra push of that dream, the group sets up a casting of the stones, with Jaypaw
himself giving the last tie-breaker stone, and the ancients decide to head to the mountains
with Stone Song as their new leader.
He is curious as to whether or not Jay's Wing will have any more dreams and Jaypaw
accidentally teaches them about their ancestors being in the stars.
As soon as the ancients set off towards their new home, Rock appears to take Jaypaw back.
Interestingly, Jaypaw asks if the real Jay's Wing will come back and Rock tells him that
he disappeared suddenly at the start of the journey.
Jaypaw wonders if there were versions of each of his siblings in the past somewhere too
and is assured that the three have returned.
Back in the present, even more cats are sick and Jaypaw still has a job to do.
Daisy also briefly confronts a very sick Spiderleg about his ongoing avoidance of their kits.
Leafpool weighs in and seems especially invested in Spiderleg understanding how valuable his
experience as a parent could be.
Firestar loses a life which finally pushes Lionblaze to agree to steal the catmint from
Windclan with Jaypaw.
While there, they run into Heatherpaw, now Heathertail, and after she says Lionblaze
doesn't scare her, Lionblaze attacks her, calling her a traitor and barely managing
to step away before he kills her.
Heathertail leaves him with a warning that he had better not become like Tigerstar and
the brothers return with the catmint.
Thunderclan begins to heal and Leafpool makes Jaypaw a full medicine cat at the half-moon
meeting, Jayfeather.
He thanks Brightspirit for the guidance towards Windclan and they return to Thunderclan.
Back in camp, Brambleclaw is exhausted, taking over the whole clan by himself, and accidentally
assigns Ashfur to two patrols, causing a small argument to sprout up between the two toms
and Squirrelflight.
However, the second short story is over.
It is now chapter 22.
There are 28 chapters in this book.
I believe almost all of you know what's coming.
Hollyleaf is upset that her brothers left her out of whatever they were doing and intends
to talk to Lionblaze about it when thunder crashes and a fire starts.
Hollyleaf, Lionblaze, and Jayfeather meet Squirrelflight who tries to help them escape
despite the weakness she still has from her extensive wound in the war from the last book,
but as they are trying to cross a cliff on a tree Squirrelflight shoved over, Ashfur
suddenly blocks the way.
He says this is revenge for Squirrelflight abandoning him in favor of becoming mates
with Brambleclaw, and he also helped Hawkfrost nearly kill Firestar in order to hurt her.
As a last ditch effort to save her kits, Squirrelflight reveals that Ashfur can't hurt her by killing
them because they aren't hers.
Ashfur then pivots to saying he will reveal this secret, but he leaves and our three protagonists
keep their lives.
None of them believe Squirrelflight was telling them the truth at first, and then they're
mad at her, but they have to keep moving forward because Ashfur's threat now looms over them.
Hollyleaf hates Ashfur and wants to find out who their parents are but Lionblaze just wants
to keep Ashfur quiet.
Interesting to note is also that Hollyleaf's immediate assumption is that they might not
be clan cats at all and are instead the kits of a loner or a kittypet, similar to Daisy's
first litter, Millie, Brook, and other cats who have been scorned earlier in the arc.
For a moment, they all doubt that they're part of the prophecy at all but this doesn't
go anywhere, as Lionblaze instead gets worried about why Tigerstar trained him if not because
they were kin.
Despite Squirrelflight, Jayfeather, and Lionblaze all begging, or in Lionblaze's case, threatening,
Ashfur, he doesn't back down, and as of the morning of the gathering only Hollyleaf
is left.
She isn't Firestar's kin, and she wants desperately to be one of the three, having
worked more than anyone to rise to importance and leave her mark on the clans.
With keeping that legacy secured as her motivation, she too confronts Ashfur and tells him he
doesn't scare her.
Ashfur runs away gleefully and we hard cut to that night when the clan is on their way
to the gathering, Squirrelflight arriving late with mud on her pelt, and they find Ashfur
dead in the river.
Ashfur doesn't have an on-page vigil but instead a session where cats discuss what
could have happened to him.
Leafpool finds out he was murdered and accusations are quickly thrown to Windclan since he was
found at their border.
Lionblaze, knowing exactly which cats would have reason to quarrel with Ashfur, thinks
to himself that they need to keep the secret of what happened the night of the fire forever.
This is where the book ends.
This is a dense book, but in a different way from how Eclipse was dense.
Rather than being packed with character elements and developing relationships, this book is
stuffed with three, arguably four complete plots: breaking down Sol's takeover of Shadowclan,
the sickness in Thunderclan and time travel to the ancients, and the fire scene and its
aftermath.
The book does often feel disjointed because of this, and each plot having to overlap or
rush to finish before the next one comes in leaves no room for the characters to breathe
and contemplate how they feel.
In fact, in the times where they do express a desire to talk to cats about what's going
on or have a moment to process, they are quickly cut off by the next oncoming plot.
If even one of these plots was cut completely, they might have had time to flesh out the
others and allow our characters to react to and change in response to the shocking experiences
they're going through, but the arc has already spent four books doing…what amounts to nothing
so they have to go fast.
With what we have, then, I'm going to go through each story one by one.
First, let's talk about the Sol wrap up things.
Sol himself only appears twice in this book, once while the protagonists are spying on
his speech in Shadowclan and once when he appears to Hollyleaf after everything is said
and done, and in both cases the power he is meant to have didn't come across.
Blackstar seemed to be the only one who agreed with Sol–everyone who was enough of a background
character would just follow his lead–and his motivations for doing so are confused
in a way I will cover in a minute.
As for Hollyleaf, at the time where he confronted her she was entirely disinterested in listening
to him at all and he didn't make any attempts to pry into her psyche, not that he could
after he abandoned her and her brothers in front of them in the same chapter as he first
earned their trust.
Anyway, that scene ends without him having made any effect.
Sol is definitely a character who was intended to be made powerful by learning about his
opponents and taking advantage of their mental weaknesses but in practice he has now been
here for the better part of two books and only ever even appeared as a background element
with little effect on either our main characters or the clans at large.
But where those clan effects are concerned, I have a different problem.
Shadowclan's-well, Blackstar's, entire conflict is framed around faith even when
that isn't presented textually as his main problem.
Starclan tells Jaypaw he needs to return faith and then tells Blackstar he needs to believe
in his ancestors and what finally convinces Blackstar to drive out Sol is just that his
ancestors exist and watch over them.
When Sol has taken over Shadowclan, they stop following…*some* parts of the Warrior Code
but their main problem is just not looking to Starclan anymore.
I'll be honest, this is just silly.
Starclan is known to exist, factually.
Blackstar and every cat has seen that numerous times.
The fact that Starclan exists shouldn't be what needs to be proven here.
Blackstar's issue before Sol arrived was shown to be that he doubted Starclan's decisions,
and his own, because the clans haven't really been any better since they settled in the
lake.
He was especially unhappy with the level of hostility that still existed between the clans.
Shadowclan under Sol then being more hostile and more concerned with borders but just not
believing Starclan exists doesn't seem like a logical extension of that idea.
It's just odd, what can I say.
As for the second plot, the sickness, this one is actually the most long-lasting as it
starts in the middle of Shadowclan's takeover and is wrapping up hastily at the beginning
of the chapter that contains the fire scene.
However, it doesn't amount to much of anything.
We don't see Jayfeather's new, more positive feelings about being a medicine cat applied
here and it is mostly used as a way to inject some foreshadowing and, honestly, filler to
create some sort of main plot for the book.
Some of it is good filler, like Jayfeather noticing that Graystripe is worried about
Millie in the same way he was worried about Silverstream, and some of it has no real meaning.
Ultimately though, the only long-term effects of the green cough are that Jayfeather gets
his name, which could have just as easily been done after he invented a brand new healing
method for Cinderheart, and that Firestar loses a life.
At the time this book was released, we were only aware of three other lives lost.
He lost one to Scourge in The Darkest Hour, one while he was saving Onewhisker and Shadowclan
from the twolegs in Dawn, and another in Firestar's Quest when he was attacking the rats with
Skyclan.
This is his fourth known life lost, which means he needs to die another five times before
it has any lasting effects, and no other cats died at all.
Much like the war in the previous book, this ends up feeling more like filler, whether
interesting or not, because of its lack of effect on the narrative rather than because
war or sickness or even traveling are inherently meaningless.
Of course, in the middle of this sickness we suddenly take five chapters to time travel
instead, and that is…even more obviously filler than the rest of this.
As of now, all we know is that Jayfeather went into the past as a cat he wasn't and
knew nothing about to spend a week learning about the ancients without bonding much before
being tossed back into his own life.
Assuming we never see any of these cats again, and he certainly has no lingering feelings
for the cats he left behind yet, there is no point to this endeavor.
And before I move on to the last part, I just want to repeat for the hundredth time that
Jayfeather is not Jay's Wing.
They are distinctly different cats and Jayfeather doesn't identify with him or share his feelings
on things.
Okay, so the fire scene.
Most people know at this point that Vicky conceived of this scene back while she was
writing The New Prophecy and built the arc around the kits who would end up here.
Because of that framing, the kits themselves have sometimes been sidelined in their own
story, and not having enough development or focus on their values has caused the reactions
*after* this electric scene to be somewhat muddled in the grand scheme of things.
What does it mean that Hollyleaf believes they aren't part of the prophecy anymore?
How does Lionblaze feel about Tigerstar having lied about the reason he trained him, or about
his mentor being a manipulative murderer?
How does Jayfeather feel about any of this as a cat who can read Squirrelflight's feelings
and knows that she loves her kits no matter who had them first?
We don't really have time to answer any of that because by the time it happens there
are only 3 chapters left before the gathering and Ashfur's death.
We don't have time to think about who would mourn Ashfur and what they would say, not
knowing what he did to the protagonists because by the time he is brought back there are only
2 more chapters in the book.
We don't have time to consider any specific potential culprits because by the time we
find out Ashfur has been murdered there are only a few pages left in the book.
Thus, his death is left as a mystery and its effects on the characters left for the next
book to determine all because we have wasted so much time on things unrelated to the characters'
values or Ashfur's death in the arc up until now.
Considering Vicky did actually know where she wanted the arc to go this time, if she
had more time to consider outlines before sending them in I have no doubt she would
have worked out from the beginning who her protagonists were rather than discovering
them only in books 3, 4, or even 5, and that she would have built in more time after Ashfur's
death to address the repercussions.
As it is now, though, we have one book left in this arc, one book to wrap up every character,
plot thread, and maybe make something of the whole powers prophecy that has loomed expectantly
over the arc.
I guess we'll see what all is made of the story then, when we return to Power of Three
in a later episode, of our Trip Through Time.