Your destiny is what you make it, Leafstar.
Erin Hunter’s SkyClan’s Destiny is the continuation of Firestar’s Quest. Obviously, after he and Sandstorm banded together to rebuild SkyClan, this group of cats would be navigating their new way of life. Well, let me just say this: if you were bored reading Firestar’s Quest but made it through because you loved Firestar…boy, are you in for it.
…still looked as if some cat had hit him over the head with a dead pigeon.
SkyClan’s Destiny was so friggin’ boring. Honestly, it could be in the running for most boring book I’ve ever read in my life, losing only because the other was exhaustingly terrible. What sucks about this book is that it literally exists as some weird conglomerate of whatever nonsense the SkyClan cats are getting up to now.
And I just did not care.
I barely got to know these characters in Firestar’s Quest. They were boring and suckish then and they continue to be now. The only interesting character was killed off in the previous book, leaving nothing but awful behind. Even the new characters couldn’t save this disaster of a novel. And I liked Billystorm.
But the truth is that you just can’t save a dull novel with dull characters when you’re going to add random nonsense just for the sake of making the book longer. I was done with it a quarter of the way through. I’m still not sure how I managed to power through this.
What SkyClan needs more than anything else is a leader who has faith in herself.
So, SkyClan’s Destiny basically follows a bunch of random encounters among all the cats. These basically contribute to the daily life of stabilizing the clan. But, they also center around the idea of Leafstar figuring out her place within the clan and with herself. There’s a lengthy side plot, as well, featuring rogue cats from a different two-leg place who come in search of help. For some reason, Firestar gave them the feeling that they’d be able to find it among clan cats.
Honestly, the daily grind is boring enough without having to read it in the lives of cats. Its existence in this novel serves only to lengthen the story and give Leafstar more to think about in her quest to figure herself out. And it was nothing but boring. I can’t help feeling that this book was a ginormous waste of time. What’s worse, I never got to know any character well enough to care what happened to them.
You have to stop thinking about Billystorm in that way, right now! You have a different destiny, one that involves the future of the whole Clan. And it is a path that you must walk alone.
Just when I thought this book couldn’t get any worse, this fight happened between Echosong and Leafstar. If I wasn’t already on the verge of tearing my hair out from the boredom at this point, that nonsense would’ve done it. I cannot stand sexism. It’s even worse when that sexism exists in a book written by women. And even more worse when the character expressing such horrible sentiments is also female.
Let me explain.
So, this fight is basically Echosong telling Leafstar that she can’t have a relationship with another cat because such things usually lead to…children. And, since Leafstar is the leader, having children is not something she’s allowed to do. There’s some commentary there about how it would take away from her ability to take care of her clan, playing on what I can only assume is a dig at women stereotyped as emotional.
I was seething pissed at this point.
Cause, you see, in all previous books it was clear enough that there was no problem whatsoever with male leaders having kits. Thus, this commentary was solely to focus on this as a struggle women face. And while I’ll give credit to Hunter in saying that this problem does get resolved, it infuriated me. Frankly, I don’t know how I feel about the fact that the resolution never made it clear that the comments from Echosong were messed up. This plot point was so unnecessary and frustrating.
Honestly, so was the book.
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