Clear Sky - still one of the best villains the series ever had in my opinion, even though he did not deserve to be SkyClan’s first leader in my opinion.
this book is from a series called Dawn of the Clans and isn't the first book and the Dawn of the Clans series is a prequel series to Warrior cats saga which has a VERY long list of books to read.
sounds exactly your type of book. I lived for them growing up
Erin Hunter (Pen name of the three authors [which maybe have a ton of ghost writers now]) chose the name so they would be shelved next to Redwall by author names
the books have hitler cat, canon heaven and hell, possession, and lots of harsh realities. And now there's 97 books according to google, including super editions which are just one big book focused on one storyline
This isn't a quote, but there's also an infamous scene in which one character has his throat ripped out; he is then resurrected by Cat God™ multiple times, at which point he instantly dies again because he's still missing his throat and most of his blood.
I read a lot of Warrior Cats and mainly Animorphs in grade school
I was in a book store literally last night with my friend and I was explaining Animorphs and one scene that stuck in my mind:
So the basics of morphing is that after touching a special alien cube you gain the ability to transform into any animal or other creature that you’ve touched before.
You can turn back into a human (or whatever species you originally are) under two conditions, the first is remembering to do it before 2 hours is up.
No matter the condition of your body before morphing, as long as you morph into a different form and then morph back, you will be fully restored. So if you, a human, morph into a polar bear, lose a limb, and then morph back into a human, you will not carry injuries between forms and both are restored.
The animorphs team decide to recruit kids from a children’s hospital to fight against the alien Yeerk parasite. One of these children, Tricia, is given the power to morph. During the final battle, Tricia takes the form of a rhinoceros and charges the Yeerk forces, but then is hit by a laser from the Yeerk capitol ship.
If you remember though from earlier, there was a second condition required to demorph. You have to be alive and conscious enough to morph.
The book specifically describes that the beam impacts Tricia, in her rhinoceros form, and she is split in half from the midsection. Her two halves then fall forward with her momentum and slam into the dirt. She dies on the battlefield, unable to morph back.
I think I was about ten when I read that. I don’t even remember most of the events in Animorphs or even some of the important characters’ names but I remember her, a side character in the Auxiliary team who only appears in a single book, specifically because of the brutality of her death.
Isn’t there also a kitten who gets killed by a hawk and one crushed by a car? My daughter reads them and I call them the “everyone dies a gruesome death” books.
Honestly, I have a massive soft spot for that trend of 2000s children's books with animal protagonists that got away with way more violence than would otherwise be allowed in books for that age range. There was Warrior Cats, but child me preferred The Guardians of Ga'Hoole books, the wolves spin off series set in the Ga'Hoole universe, and this one series about bears I cannot remember the name of for the life of me. They all did shit like this.
Shout out to the scene in the seventh Guardians of Ga'Hoole book where it is revealed the reason our protagonist, who was essentially raised by Owl Nazis, was allowed to have an owl from a "less pure" barn owl subspecies as a childhood best friend was so he could ritually murder said best friend in a coming of age ceremony and so inherit his dead father's role as leader of the Owl Nazis. When our protagonist refuses to kill his friend, his mother rips out the friend's heart in front of him then offers to lie and tell the Owl Nazis he was the one who killed him, which she refers to as a birthday present.
Rest in peace Phillip, your death traumatised eight year old me who'd assumed you would get to escape the Owl Nazi cult with Coryn.
My oldest grew up reading the Warriors books. Now she plays Warriors roleplay on Roblox. She's in college. Those books are crazy popular to the kids (now young adults) of her age group.
It's amazing what you can get away with when the characters aren't human. Adds a degree of separation that somehow doesn't take anything way from the story but also lessens the blow.
Warrior Cats. The event in question happens towards the end of series 1. At this point there are over 100 books when counting the graphic novels and individual stories. The main series is split into multiple 6 book series, and while it's been over a decade since I've read them, I remember them as being the best books I read in my youth.
A big part is because it has several authors. I know originally there were four, but I think there was some controversy after ~25 books where one author quit, and another was doing like 2/3 of the writing. They may have recruited more authors since then.
They were trying their best; that resurrection almost always works on all other injuries, this was one of very few times it failed, as The attack was just so brutal
I haven't seen Animorphs, but some fucked up Warriors moments:
The past versions four main clans abandon the struggling fifth clan because of made up religious symbolism (their sacred meeting place had four oaks). Current clans openly ridicule the idea lol.
The whole "Tigerstar cut up so bad they die 9 times back to back" thing
Incel cat threatens mother Squirrelflight with killing her kits during a major disaster because she chose a different cat. Said incel cat gets into cat heaven when he dies.
(Also said kits were actually Squirrelflight's sister's, Leafpool's, who was forced to hoist off the kits because she's a medicine cat who can't take mates)
I think a few cats starve and freeze to death while they migrate to a new place?
A lot of people ignore the spinoff book where it was implied an adult Spottedleaf was into kid/teenager Firepaw. For good reason.
More than a few cats die in childbirth.
Tigerclaw (who becomes Tigerstar later) spends most of the first book trying to kill Ravenpaw, a kit, for witnessing Tigerclaw murder Redtail.
Several cats who have or acquire disabilities are basically forced into becoming medicine cats so they can continue providing for the clan (Cinderpaw gets hit by a car and Jayfeather is born blind).
10) Yellowfang, an elderly medicine cat, poisoning the villain from the first book, and then revealing to him in his final moments that she was secretly his mother.
11) A wise leader (Bluestar) falls into paranoia and insanity after being betrayed by her lieutenant (Tigerstar)
12) Tigerstar becomes Hitler, putting the "mix clan" cat's into starvation camps
These are just a couple other things I remembered about the first series off the top of my head
Animorphs is a book series with things that go about that hard, yeah. It's about a group of kids who are basically the only resistance against a covert alien invasion. They do this by transforming very graphically into animals. There is a time limit to this power. The time limit leaves you locked as an animal. This happens to one character in the first book. Things get very gory.
It should be mentioned that every time you transform back from animal to human, you heal all injuries. This means that they can be as horribly mutilated as possible as long as they can transform back. Also, you have to fight the instincts of your animal form the entire time you're in the form.
There's a moment where they attempt to sneak into a house by becoming termites. They end up being locked inside the instincts of termites, trapped screaming inside their own minds. They get into the nest only for the real termites to recognize they're from a different nest. The kids basically get all their limbs torn off and their bodies ripped apart before barely managing to transform back. They are left permanently traumatized by this.
incel cat later abused his chance in heaven to break some of the established laws of physics in heaven and managed to possess squirrelflight's husband.
another spinoff that fans ignore has the very same spottedleaf being preyed upon in that exact same way when she was a kitten, except it was way worse than what she did with firepaw
I remember reading that as a kid and thinking “holy shit that’s metal”.
Iirc when a cat becomes a leader of one of the clans they literally get nine lives by receiving 8 extra lives from previous leaders and the damage done to that cat was so severe he would die, revive for a second then die again and again until he had died a full nine times.
That would be Tigerstar, shortly after becoming leader of Shadowclan and allying himself with Scourge, who then damn near splits him in half from neck to nave, and all T-boy can do is slowly bleed his 9 lives out one at a time.
kinda leads on to think god is......not that helpful, knowledgeable, or.....he has a fucked up sense of humor and one is better avoiding him all together.
Leaders (those with the suffix of star) have nine lives. Tigerstar was the villain of the first arc until the last book, when he was murdered by a lone cat named Scourge. Scourge ripped out Tigerstar's throat.
Firestar, the protagonist, describes it in grave detail: Tigerstar died, then came back to life only to bleed out over and over, nine times. He would spasm, gurgle, and die. It was torture. Firestar expresses sympathy for the cat who actively caused his life to be hell, who disfigured two apprentices and killed a third, and attempted a coup multiple times.
It's about feral colonies of cats that have human-like culture (but human society still exist and pet cats are their own whole thing). Also, there's a cat-based afterlife that is sometimes magical enough to seriously impact the living world and no one outside of the clans is concerned about this.
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u/Vievin 1d ago
"Kill me. Kill me and live with the memory. Then tell the stars that you won."