Warriors: Tales from the Clans by Erin Hunter

GoodReads|Amazon|Barnes&Noble|BookDepository

Content/Trigger Warnings: Death, loss, grief, bullying, manipulation

Tales from the Clans features three stand-alone Warriors novellas, which were previously available only as ebooks. Each novella in this paperback bind-up centers on a never-before-told story in the Warriors world—giving both first-time readers and dedicated fans a chance to experience spectacular new adventures in the series.

“Perhaps that’s the best way to recover, to return to the way things were before as quickly as we can. We won the Great Battle, so nothing needs to change.”

This book is a bind-up of three novellas from the Warriors series. Each of these novellas were originally published as ebooks; Tigerclaw’s Fury, Leafpool’s Wish, and Dovewing’s Silence. These three novellas are told in the sequence of past, present, and future. If you’re not familiar with the order of the series then this may be lost to you, but for those who are fans of the series then you probably already made this connection. In this bind-up you’ll read from the perspective of a clan traitor, a medicine cat, and the struggles of a ordinary warrior. You’ll learn about dark thoughts, secrets that can only be shared with a sibling, and how mistakes can impact everyone. Prepare to step into never-told-before stories from the cats of ThunderClan.

This was such a easy read for me and as someone who’s been of this series for a really long time, this was a perfect way to dip my toes back into this world. To be honest, it’s been such a long time since I read anything from this world that I nearly forgot everything that’s happened. But nonetheless, I’m so happy I picked up this novella bind-up. If you’re not familiar with this series then I probably wouldn’t recommend this book for you because you might not be able to enjoy it or even understand what’s happening in these novellas.

In reality, I don’t want to give too much away because I feel that it might be a spoilers for those who have yet to truly read the series or to those who aren’t familiar with the series. So I’m just going to do a breakdown of all three of the novellas and talk a little bit of what I liked and disliked in each one without any spoilers. This is a spoiler free zone!

🌻 Tigerclaw’s Fury

This was probably my least favorite of all of the novellas in this book. For those of you who are familiar with the series you know who Tigerclaw is and you yourselves probably dislike him as much as I do. To those who aren’t familiar with the series, Tigerclaw is known as a super villain throughout this entire series. He’s evil to the core, he thinks the only way to achieve greatness and power is by instilling fear and harm to those around him, and he’s has the horrible idle that only the strongest members of a clan make the clan above all other clans. He’s just a really horrible character and he’s not my favorite. I personally don’t like reading about him because of my knowledge of knowing how evil and toxic he is. He uses lying and fake acts of kindness to brainwash other’s into his cause. On top of all of that, it seems like he has a borderline personality disorder to add to how he goes about doing things. There are parts in this novella where he has an internal conversation with himself, one moment he’ll be talking in a logical manner of plotting and scheming then the next moment he’ll be like “only harm and fear will solve this issue.” So unfortunately for me, this was not the type of novella I wanted to be reading. However, I can appreciate seeing how he got from one phase in his life to the next phase in his life. It was definitely interesting to see that process and read about how he went from one clan to the next. Overall all though, this wasn’t my cup of tea and it definitely shifted the vibe of the other two novellas.

“If mercy is power, then I have never been more powerful.”

🌻 Leafpool’s Wish

Now this is the novella that might get you a little choked up. I’ll admit, I got soft and sappy while I was reading this novella. Leafpool is ThunderClan’s medicine cat meaning she’s a healer, a nurse, a doctor, a shaman, etc… any of those terms could be used to describe what she does for her clan. However, the terms of how she’s supposed to live her life is like that of a nun. No children, no relationships/lovers, only devoted to StarClan and helping her clan as their medicine cat. I have always had a soft spot for Leafpool and even more so with her relationship with her sister Squirrelflight. I’m always here for a sibling relationship. And one of my older favorites, Yellowfang, makes a few appearances in this novella.So the nostalgia was hitting hard. However, I went into this novella knowing what she had done and if we’re being honest, I was a little bitter about how she handled everything. Not to mention, I found her dumping her situation on her sister just for the sake of her staying the clan’s medicine cat was a selfish act and even more shocking of her trying to play it off as selfless act, for the “good of the clan”. I understood the reasoning and I know why she was so hellbent on staying as the clan’s medicine cat, but it still gave me insight to a side of her character that I never saw before. Nonetheless, I still like her character and I still felt sympathy for everything coming full circle for her.

“Leafpool stood outside the barrier of thorns and closed her eyes. Three tiny shapes filled her mind, three pairs of eyes—amber, green and blue—glowed from the shadows.”

🌻 Dovewing’s Silence

Let’s just be honest, this was probably my favorite out of all the novellas in this book. Granted, there is a lot of pain, there’s death, and you can feel the resentment radiating from the pages, but this was so brilliant. This novella makes me wish I had read from end to beginning because this one novella is worth a thousand reads. I got so emotional with this one. There were so many characters I became familiar with, had fallen in love with, only to read that they were taken away by doing what they were destined to do or what they wanted to do. But this was so beautifully written and it will make your heart ache especially anyone who has experienced loss. We also get to see the three siblings come together again and we got to see them struggle only to come together. I was real soft and sappy, I still am! I do, however, think a lot of fans/shippers of the Dovewing and Tigerheart romance are going to be let down by this. This novella isn’t about that relationship, it was never going to be about her romances. This novella is more centered around her trying to find normalcy after a really intense battle that claimed the lives of loved ones and friends, making sense of losing her abilities and what that means for her and her siblings, and standing up for what’s right. I think if more readers, especially fans, go in knowing this then it will be less of a disappointment. For me, I wasn’t bothered by the lack of her romances being addressed more or not enough. However, I can understand why some readers would see this as a let down. I still really enjoyed it, but it’ll definitely make readers soft especially if you’ve read the majority of this series!

“All battles leave deep wounds, whether you can see them or not. And wounds take time to heal. You know that, Dovewing. Don’t give up hope.”

Overall, I truly loved the novellas in this bind-up. As I stated, I think this bind-up could have been done without Tigerclaw’s Fury. It just shifts the mood too much of the book as a whole. I would say that two-thirds of this book is very soft, sappy, and bittersweet while the other third is enough to turn readers off or have a reader dnf the book. I definitely think if you’re a fan of the Warriors series then you should pick this book up. I know I’m glad I picked this book up and have it to add to my library.