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Here we finally come to the finale of Power of Three, a book with a scene almost as famous
as the fire scene in Long Shadows, but we'll get to that.
This arc took longer for me to get through than either of the prior ones because of the
buckets of supplemental material introduced during this period so to me it feels like
a long time coming.
Power of Three has been a bit of a meandering arc overall and even now it doesn't quite
feel like we'll reach a conclusion on any of the plot threads set up at the beginning,
but Sol is gone, Ashfur is gone, the three have grown up, and for better or worse, they
know more about their family.
Where is there to go from here in the space of a single book?
How can our characters and plot reach a satisfying conclusion?
Or, well, *will* they?
I guess we will have to see as we get into the book.
Sunrise came out on April 21st of 2009, about 5 months after Long Shadows and 4 months after
Escape From The Forest, the second Tigerstar and Sasha Manga, and thank goodness it did.
Like Long Shadows, it was written by Cherith Baldry, so hopefully some of the continuity
in the at least partial-mystery from the last book can carry over to this one.
But that does mean that Cherith wrote two main series books, and dense finales at that,
back to back, so giving her slightly more time to finish it in comparison to other books
in this arc is a welcome and necessary change.
That said, it did mean that for people reading the books as they came out, they had to wait
5 months to figure out who killed Ashfur, how, and why.
The debate in it of itself became a strong talking point in the fanbase, and even though
just about everyone knows who it was now, the suspense was nothing to sneeze at.
As for the allegiance check-in, no new cats have been made warriors, but with Ashfur dead
that leaves Thunderclan with 20 warriors instead of 21.
No one has been made an apprentice either, and with Jayfeather as a full medicine cat
now, Icepaw and Foxpaw are the only two in the den.
Other than that, Thunderclan is unchanged but I would mention that Flamepaw is now listed
as Littlecloud's apprentice, and Tigerpaw and Dawnpaw are listed as apprentices as well.
The only other notable change is that a whopping 12 cats are listed in the “Cats Outside
Clans” section, with some familiar faces like Smoky, Floss, Sol, and PURDY, but also
8 new names we have never seen before, one of whom is actually in the top 10 cats with
the most lines for the book.
Guess we'll have to see what that is about.
Speaking of, the speaking cast for this book is composed of 72 cats, the second-lowest
in Power of Three after The Sight.
The top 10 members of the cast have 72% of the lines, funny coincidence, which actually
puts them as the highest percentage of the arc in that regard.
The cast is also composed of 47% she-cats, on the low end for the arc but still not awful,
and those she-cats get only 36% of the lines, even lower than Long Shadows and taking the
rank of second lowest from Power of Three, following Outcast.
You might be surprised to know, if you know anything about this book, that Hollyleaf has
the least lines among the three sibling point of view characters here.
Well…we can get to why later, but it does make sense.
After them, though, Brambleclaw, Leafpool, and Firestar have the next three greatest
line totals, all over 100, and my darling girl Hazeltail actually comes up next with
61 lines.
Boy, I cannot wait to talk about her.
Genuinely.
In fact, let's get to all of that now.
It's time that we finished off Power of Three.
In the prologue we pick up with Ashfur dead at Leafpool's paws.
She recognizes the scent on some fur buried in Ashfur's claws and wonders if this was
all her fault.
In Starclan, Yellowfang says it's Bluestar's fault for keeping the secret from Thunderclan
all this time.
She's furious enough to attack her old leader and says they both know Sol is coming back.
Bluestar believes keeping the three's parentage a secret was okay because they had good parents
and she is sure they are the three in the prophecy regardless.
Yellowfang though is worried Bluestar has destroyed the clan she loves.
Kind of moving into not-in-character territory but we'll save those alarms for a few books
into the future.
As we finish the prologue we move not to the world of the living but to another world of
the dead: the place where Tigerstar lives.
Did you forget he was a part of this arc?
Well he's back in order to have a scene with Lionblaze, despite the two of them breaking
off their training rather harshly before.
Lionblaze is appalled that Tigerstar kept the secret of their parentage from him, considering
the shared blood was Tigerstar's explanation for wanting to train Lionblaze at all.
Tigerstar doesn't answer and Lionblaze attacks him, with Tigerstar goading him on the whole
way through.
Lionblaze does choose not to kill him though, because he's already dead.
When he wakes up, though, he is coated in real blood from the battle, which isn't
great.
Cats are debating who killed Ashfur, settling on a Windclan cat.
Firestar decides to lead a patrol and speak to Onestar rather than let the clan launch
an immediate raid.
Windclan is immediately hostile when Firestar brings up Ashfur's murder.
Firestar tries to ask if they saw anything but they didn't and Onestar is too offended
to let them stay any longer.
While they leave, though, Ashfoot pulls them aside to say they did see Sol on their territory,
near the place where Ashfur was killed but not the day.
With this news Thunderclan pivots instantly to accusing and wanting to kill Sol in vengeance.
With Hollyleaf finally letting them know about her encounter with Sol after he was banished
from Shadowclan, they have enough information to send a Sol Patrol to track the loner down,
and both Lionblaze and Hollyleaf are on it.
Also Hollyleaf now thinks the prophecy is irrelevant to them because they aren't in
it.
Jayfeather spends some quality time getting mad at his family for caring about him like
family and says goodbye to his littermates as they set out on the journey.
He then has a dream where he talks to Midnight and finds out Sol did not kill Ashfur, rendering
this journey pointless before we have seen any of it.
She says the truth must come out.
Jayfeather apparently doesn't listen, though he doesn't say why.
Regardless he doesn't tell anyone what Midnight said.
Either he immediately forgot or he chose to keep it to himself.
Oh wait no, he protests that they're going on a fruitless mission in his head but doesn't
take the opportunity to actually tell anyone not to leave.
Perfect logic.
He then wonders why everyone is believing a lie and who could possibly stop this.
(Y-You, you little furball.)
Anyway the Sol Patrol begins their journey and immediately the pessimistic and shockingly
quiet Hollyleaf runs into her foil: a bouncy and emotional Hazeltail.
Hazeltail wasn't actually characterized at all before this so it's a welcome surprise
to have any personality for her, and she plays off Hollyleaf's current demeanor well.
Even better, they remember who Hazeltail actually is and introduce her to Smoky and Floss, her
dad and step-mom, on their way out.
They have a surprisingly touching reunion and fill him in on Daisy's other kits, along
with Daisy herself.
Hazeltail even demonstrates her Thunderclan hunting skills to her father, who is very
proud of her abilities.
Hollyleaf watches and berates herself for not just being half-clan like Hazeltail, but
not a clan cat at all, which she says is worse.
Anyway the Sol Patrol travels for a while and when they get to the sun-drowned place…we
immediately cut back to Jayfeather.
He's watching the clan live their lives and screaming in his head about how they're
all wrong about Ashfur's murder and how no one knows the truth.
He wants to tell them, but doesn't…becau-…well the plot needs him to.
There are several very easy to come up with reasons they could have chosen but they instead
opted for no reason at all.
Anyway, Firestar asks if Leafpool could talk to Ashfur in Starclan and ask who killed him
and Leafpool, worriedly, says she will be ready to listen if he comes but can't seek
him out.
Jayfeather then takes Mousefur and Longtail out to get herbs with him on Leafpool's
orders and while out, he checks on his stick.
Rock appears and Jayfeather asks if he knew all along that they weren't Squirrelflight's
kits.
After Rock dodges around the question several times, Mousefur cuts him off and they head
back to camp.
Leafpool is very angry with him for not finding enough herbs and wasting his time while out
there which…I'll admit it's a little mean and even knowing all of the secrets there
are to know about these books, Leafpool is treating him badly here, and in fact has treated
him badly several times ever since he became her apprentice.
Back in the Sol Patrol, Midnight isn't there so they leave after a quick side mission to
save Birchfall from drowning.
They then make the journey back, with Birchfall almost caught by a monster and Hazeltail falling
in a trash can, but on the way a little cat shows up and distrusts them because the last
cat they met, a he, tricked them.
Everyone immediately thinks it's Sol and they might be on the right track.
Back in Thunderclan, Jayfeather and Leafpool are doing medicine cat things and taking care
of the kits, a very cute scene.
Leafpool then takes him for some basic fight training and chastises him for not having
quick enough reflexes and knowing where she is at all times.
She doesn't teach him so much as she attacks him and expects him to react.
Leafpool says he expects his siblings to always be there to protect him and doesn't care
about learning to defend himself, which is the farthest from true if you know anything
about him, but Jayfeather does not have time to protest before the scene ends.
In Starclan, they too refuse to give Jayfeather answers and Spottedleaf yells at him for not
realizing they're cats too and don't have all the answers.
But we know they know this one even from later on in this book and they are choosing not
to tell Jayfeather what he wants to know.
The Sol Patrol gets chased by dogs and when they're trapped, Lionblaze decides to fight
them on his own, confident that he can win.
Hollyleaf, who doesn't think he has powers, shouts at him to stop but he goes on anyway
and holds them off long enough for them to get away.
They run and find a group of cats led by a she-cat named Jingo.
She explains that they decided to help eventually but no one trusts strangers anymore since
Sol, confirming their suspicions.
Sol apparently brought this group together, told them they could live however they wanted,
taught them to avoid twolegs, and then nearly got them all killed by dogs.
Three of their cats did die.
He taught them to fight so much that they didn't have time to hunt and got very hungry
before the battle, and Sol didn't lift a claw to help them.
But they also mention Purdy as having used to live where Sol was last seen.
Meanwhile Jayfeather is trying to remember his earliest experiences and seems to remember
two cats coming back with him and his siblings to the hollow when they were kits.
He asks Mousefur if she remembers anything and she says Leafpool was with Squirrelflight,
the only reason they managed to survive a journey back in the coldest leaf-bare any
of them could remember.
Longtail also remembers Leafpool giving Mousefur an odd herb and said it wasn't meant for
her.
When Jayfeather asks Leafpool about it, she gets a jolt of alarm and says she doesn't
remember.
And back on the Sol Patrol, Jingo leads our group along the fences and roofs to avoid
the dogs and they part near Purdy's nest, hunting for a bit before they run into the
tom himself.
Not Purdy, but Sol.
He deduces that a cat has been killed and they think he's responsible by their expressions
and before they can respond Purdy walks in with some prey and greets them all cheerfully.
Purdy and Sol have been living together for a while and are quite happy about that arrangement,
but the patrol has demanded Sol return with them.
Hollyleaf actually wants him to stay because Purdy needs him more than they do…as if
that relationship could ever actually be beneficial.
Hollyleaf thinks about speaking out, but knows that if Sol was declared to be innocent, Firestar
might eventually have to look closer to home and she fears the idea of the clan hurling
accusations at each other.
As they're getting ready to bring Sol home, and hearing how hard it has been for Purdy
to get enough prey lately, Brambleclaw asks Purdy to come back with them too and join
Thunderclan.
Hollyleaf is terrified internally about another cat from outside the clans joining Thunderclan
and the rumors it might start but, after some pleading, Purdy does agree to come back.
On the way home, Purdy protests how everyone is talking about Sol and says he's really
a good cat who wouldn't have done anything bad.
One morning, when everyone else is asleep, Sol confronts Hollyleaf again and she explains
that she doesn't know if Starclan holds all the answers anymore, now that she can't
trust what other cats say.
It's confusing.
Sol comforts her, calls her “little one,” and leads her back to the group.
Whitewing is getting very pregnant, Berrynose's tail is infected, and after speeding by his
duties Jayfeather interrogates Mousefur about which herb she might have smelled all those
moons ago, but he comes up empty.
Firestar asks Leafpool again if she's spoken to Ashfur in Starclan and she snaps at him.
Sandstorm then takes Jayfeather out and asks if he has noticed Leafpool acting strangely,
which he has but can't explain as more than stress.
Sol returns and is given a nest to rest in for the night, leading to many cats gossiping
about how he's definitely the murderer.
They also welcome Purdy.
The next day, they interrogate Sol and he dances around the questions calmly without
answering any of them.
Everyone is scared of and angry at Sol, except for Purdy who is still defending him, and
amidst all of this a snake jumps out at Briarkit and Honeyfern leaps in to save her, dying
herself just after having a conversation with Berrynose about how beautiful their kits would
be.
Under Firestar's orders, Leafpool and Jayfeather set up deathberries near the hole where the
snake came through, even though they don't usually keep them in camp.
Blackstar, Leopardstar, and Onestar all come to berate Firestar for bringing Sol back and
demand he be gone by the next gathering.
And finally, Mousefur recognizes one of the herbs on Jayfeather's pelt.
At the half-moon gathering, Flamepaw is officially made a medicine cat apprentice and hopes to
see Tigerstar, but can't find him.
Finally, Littlecloud tells Jayfeather what the herb is: parsley, used to dry up the milk
of a mother who lost her kits…or gave them away.
Jayfeather realizes Leafpool is their mother.
Hollyleaf confronts Leafpool about it, and Leafpool tells her she knows Hollyleaf killed
Ashfur, and that it is her fault because she is their mother.
Hollyleaf exclaims to herself that everything she did was pointless, there was no use in
saving herself or her brothers, and runs away.
Jayfeather also tells Leafpool he knows, and Leafpool tells him he has to help his siblings,
before anything else happens.
He and Lionblaze meet Hollyleaf, who is intent on finding out who their father is.
Lionblaze meanwhile is confused why they want to know the secret when before they were trying
to hide it, which no one actually responds to but Jayfeather thinks about how it will
get out regardless of what they do.
The chapter ends on the note that Lionblaze has realized they are still part of the prophecy.
At night, Lionblaze sneaks out to Sol to talk to him about who their father could be.
Sol says he knows and would tell him if Lionblaze gets him out of prison.
Lionblaze agrees and Sol tells him to meet outside Shadowclan's border with his littermates
the next day.
As soon as the clan discovers Sol gone they agree that means he must have been guilty
but he was getting too problematic to keep around, so it's ultimately good that he's
gone.
When the siblings arrive, they argue about whether or not to even listen to Sol and Sol
decides they aren't ready to listen, so he doesn't say anything.
The siblings get brought aside by their mothers and Squirrelflight explains Leafpool is their
mother, but she couldn't have loved them more if she gave birth to them herself.
Hollyleaf shouts that they raised her to believe a lie and storms off immediately.
Unlike Jayfeather she's also convinced that they can't ask their mothers who their father
is since they would only get more lies.
They talk to Sol again who still says nothing and, realizing he just wants to use them,
they leave.
Whitewing has her kits and Yellowfang finally comes to Jayfeather in a dream and shows him
a crow feather, revealing who his father is.
The three siblings confront Crowfeather at dawn who didn't know he had other kits and
vehemently declares that he doesn't, that Breezepelt is his only son.
Hollyleaf is not doing well.
She's doing so not well that she grinds up a mouse while hunting and Hazeltail is
horrified.
At the gathering that night, she gets up and interrupts the leaders.
In a fully planned speech, she explains that she and her brothers are not Squirrelflight
and Brambleclaw's kits, but rather Leafpool's and Crowfeather's.
She calls them liars and cowards and the gathering erupts into chaos.
Brambleclaw breaks up with Squirrelflight, Crowfeather scorns Leafpool and she demotes
herself from the position of medicine cat.
Hollyleaf's brothers are devastated.
Hollyleaf is shocked because she thought she did the right thing but Cinderheart says there
was no right thing to do.
Hollyleaf runs off, yelling to the stars about whether or not her devotion to the code was
ever worth anything, and, calming into a more quiet fury, she decides this was all Leafpool's
fault and confronts her in the medicine den.
Hollyleaf tells her to eat the deathberries leftover from trying to kill the snake.
Leafpool calmly asks if, with all she has lost, dying wouldn't be easier than living.
Understanding the answer, Hollyleaf runs off again towards the tunnels.
Her brothers chase her, screaming for her to come back and talk, but she is too worked
up.
Jayfeather sees a vision of her killing Ashfur and Hollyleaf says everything is ruined.
She can't stay here.
With that, she runs into the tunnels, the storm causes rocks to fall in on her, and
she is considered dead.
But rather than taking too long to grieve we have to point out that the prophecy still
isn't over because Whitewing's new kits are also Firestar's kin through Cloudtail
and one of them is part of the three!
Yay!
Woo we have a lot to talk about on this one.
Sunrise had the unenviable task of wrapping up an arc that never found its footing, one
that had at least a dozen different character and plot arcs that never connected with each
other, and not a single arc of either type that spanned the whole arc.
Lionblaze's journey with Tigerstar, for example, was one started near the beginning
of the arc but just about dropped in this last book.
How Lionblaze feels about Tigerstar is never mentioned outside of his one confrontation
scene in the opening chapter, and the anger issues, impulsivity, and worries about his
future are all gone.
Lionblaze gets chapters but has nothing to do in this book, save for letting out Sol
for some reason.
I guess it's because his most consistent…not trait, feature, in this book is just being
the one littermate to still care about and fully believe in the prophecy.
Nothing ever really comes of that though because the siblings don't talk very much about
what's happening.
Speaking of, Jayfeather!
His function in this book is being the one most interested in solving the mysteries of
Ashfur and, especially, their parentage.
He actively tracks down information whenever he can because he knows that everything will
get out eventually.
However, he keeps making decisions to not tell anyone the information he already knows
even though he wants to because…well the plot wouldn't work if Thunderclan could
reach an answer too quickly.
He also doesn't really get to be an investigator through to the end because when it comes to
the second mystery: who their father is, the book has used up too much time finding Leafpool
and has to use Yellowfang blatantly telling Jayfeather about Crowfeather to get that answer.
Why did they run out of time, then?
Well the easy thing to point to is the pointless Sol patrol.
Every protagonist, for different reasons, knows before the journey begins that Sol is
not the killer and has little or no information about Ashfur's murder.
The journey continues despite this, and despite the fact that Jayfeather explicitly wants
the truth to come out and was given a vision by Midnight telling him the truth had to come
out, and that Sol was not the killer.
We already knew that Sol was manipulative so the build up of that image on the journey
made little impact and Sol's biggest crime on the page for this book is just convincing
Lionblaze to let him out, which wouldn't have been necessary if they didn't bring
him back in the first place.
The Sol Patrol is out until the end of Chapter 15, which left them with 13 chapters left
for the siblings to be together and talk at all.
The Leafpool reveal wouldn't have been able to make as quick an impact if it was revealed
when two of her children were gone, which I suspect is part of the reason for delaying
that, much easier, half of the mystery until so late into the book.
In any case, the pacing suffers for it.
Speaking of Leafpool though, she is…really not nice in this book, to anyone.
Some of her behavior around Jayfeather through this arc has never sat right with me, particularly
when he was first made her apprentice and she seemed completely oblivious to the feelings
he had clearly outlined, but here it is worse than it has ever been.
She doesn't train him so much as she attacks him then demands he figure out how to avoid
her, berates him for not getting enough herbs rather than asking if anything was on his
mind, pushes him away whenever he asks a question, and immediately jumps to an assumption that
he doesn't work because he expects to always be helped, which anyone who knows Jayfeather,
and she perhaps spends more time with him than anyone else, would know is absurdly untrue.
She even lashes out at her father, and Sandstorm points out how oddly she has been acting.
This is meant to make her look suspicious for the mystery but seeing how she responds
to Hollyleaf's gathering declarations and demand for Leafpool to die with a calm sorrow
it is surprising that she had such a temper before this point that she would actively
antagonize cats she loves, especially Jayfeather where she chose cut him where he was weakest.
It doesn't paint a good picture of her.
Also, as a side note that will come up again and again through the series at large, the
three constantly think about how Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw aren't their parents now
that they know they didn't give birth to them and get actively angry when either Squirrelflight
or Brambleclaw tries to comfort them or ask if something is wrong.
This is not great.
It makes sense at least that they would feel betrayed by Squirrelflight specifically for
being lied to all their lives but these are still the cats that raised you and, in Brambleclaw's
case, a cat that never even knew you weren't his blood kin.
These are your parents, at least a set of them.
Adoption does create that relationship when the parents and children are able to bond
in the way the three could with their parents.
All right.
We held off long enough.
Time to discuss Hollyleaf.
I would love to say what happened in this book is what the whole arc has been building
up to, but it very much wasn't.
Whether Hollyleaf chose to be morally devoted to the warrior code or was literally incapable
of making a decision if it wasn't something spelled out in the code, whether she was capable
of and acted on compassion for others or she had a very narrow worldview centered around
herself, whether she had a large circle of friends or never considered other cats, whether
she even understood or cared about the prophecy, none of this was kept consistent in her across
different books.
She acted the same superficially in some cases but the underlying motives, values, and yes,
code to her character fluctuated wildly.
Her emotional relation to her parents and the prophecy also wasn't dived into enough.
Any sign that she held herself on a pedestal or to a higher standard because of who her
parents were was brief and fleeting and she never got enough time to even consider what
her power could be or, later, what it meant that she wasn't part of the three when her
brothers were.
Because of this, a lot of the foundation that a turn like this was built on is shaky at
best and absurd at worst.
One thing that is made very clear by her thought processes in the last book and this one is
that she doesn't believe she's acting hypocritically.
When she killed Ashfur it was to protect her and her brothers' reputation because she
didn't want to be looked on in the way cats looked at Millie or Cloudtail or even Hazeltail,
for not being born in the clans.
Moreover, she didn't want Thunderclan to be blamed for just taking in more loners or
kittypets, whichever they turned out to be.
She didn't even consider the idea that they could be truly illegal kits, going against
the warrior or medicine cat codes, only that they weren't clanborn at all and would thus
be viewed as weak.
When she does learn who her parents are and she realizes they are illegal kittens, this
clashes with the code she has chosen to uphold and she realizes, even states openly, that
there was no point to her trying to protect her and her brother's reputation.
They were doomed from the beginning and letting the clans know of the crime committed under
her nose was the right thing to do.
But as Cinderheart says, it's not.
Nothing about this was right.
Hollyleaf tries to cling to this sense of justice anyway, turning the blame on Leafpool
as the cat who had kits and broke the code in the first place, but either Hollyleaf's
compassion for Leafpool's suffering or her realization that continuing to live would
be a greater punishment leaves her with nothing left to do, which is when she actually breaks
and decides giving up on the clans altogether is her only remaining path.
Through the beginning of the book, even though the Sol Patrol is pointless, you can see her
thoughts and behavior: clinging to the idea that she's not clanborn even as she despises
the idea, being much more closed off, volatile, and gloomy in comparison to Hazeltail's
bouncy excitement, and she actually confesses to Sol about her feelings, a cat she hates
because of how he warped the clans.
Her arc wasn't built up as well as it should have been but this book does do a good job
with what it has, and the last chapters with her are really, really good.
There's a reason this book made so many people love Hollyleaf…not me though I actually
started loving her before this.
It is undoubtedly the highlight, and there are a lot of intricacies to dig into if you
look at where she is coming from and what her mind is like in the moon between the murder
and confession.
It's not something that can be communicated effectively in a 3 minute music video, and
it's something a lot of people miss when looking at her character.
So I'll say it, I like Sunrise.
While it's not the best constructed book of all time, it had a lot of disparate threads
to conclude from the sporadic mess that was Power of Three and it weaved them all in as
best it could while letting us finish with a satisfying and very emotional climax for
one of our three main characters.
It's not as clean as The Darkest Hour, of course, but for its background characterization,
buildup of Hollyleaf, and fair handling of the mighty task of finishing this arc, it
currently sits as my second favorite book of the ones I have covered so far, outshining
Eclipse and becoming my favorite book of the arc.
Of course, while Hollyleaf may be gone, our other two protagonists' stories are not
yet finished and it looks like they will pick up again soon with the real last member of
the three, so we'll return to check in on them with the next arc: Omen of the Stars,
in a future episode, of our Trip Through Time.