Warriors is a book series written by Errin Hunter that fascinated my interest in reading, sparking a lifelong journey of reading and an obsession with fantasy books.
Ethan Braam
A love letter to an obsession
Reading has always been a big part of my life. In the more recent years, I have spent a good chunk of time reading more historical novels, biographies, and textbooks for classes. But there was a time in my life when wherever I was, whatever time it was, I would have a Warriors book in my hand or my eyes buried in the book. I think I started reading these books in grade four or five upon recommendation from the school librarian. Warriors are about cats and a whole lot of them. Currently, 96 to 117 books are published, including graphic novels, written books, and spin-off books. They follow one or two cats over a series of five books; the book takes on a magical realism aspect, where you are immersed into the rich life of different clans in the novel fighting for peace and territory while the main character is trying to find their own identities while taking place in the real world. The book is fun and whimsical as it is about cats in cat clans fighting other cats, but it has a very serious tone to it, depicting death, war, classism, racism, and other serious tones. Warriors walk a very intricate tightrope of these themes, and because the characters in the books are cats, these themes are more palatable for a ten-year-old while also still holding weight and meaning for the older grades. The books don’t toy around with kiddy concepts with only happy endings. The book has real stakes, characters die, and they don’t come back, and this is something you don’t often get in “kids” books, and I think this is one of the big hooks of these books. Another reason these books captivated me is the world-building and the massive storytelling aspect. With over 100 books, Erin Hunter is able to bring a world to life; it fleshes out the area and the story so well that I can still describe a map of the setting, and I haven’t read these books in ten years. With the massive scale, she tells different stories from different perspectives, the first series will follow a certain character for a certain amount of time, and in the next series, you can see the world from an entirely different perspective or timeline. Hunter masterfully builds suspense this way; she can mention “a great battle that happened many moons ago” and build up hype in one series, and in two series down the road, she will write about the said battle from a different perspective, interlocking the two timelines, and expanding the perspective of the worldbuilding.Â
