Fading Echoes is the second book in the fourth Warrior Cats series, Omen of the Stars.
Tropes appearing in this book:
- Accidental Murder: Lionblaze accidentally kills Russetfur when pulling her off Firestar. They establish, however, that she probably shouldn't have been fighting still at her age.
- Break the Cutie: Briarpaw gets this in perhaps the most literal fashion possible: her spine is broken in an accident, leaving her paralyzed for life, feeling worthless due to not being able to continue any normal career in the Clan and relying on the others to survive, and being treated differently by her Clanmates.
- Career-Ending Injury: Briarpaw's spine is broken when a tree falls on her just before she is expected to receive her warrior name. Her hind legs are permanently paralyzed, meaning that she can no longer fight or even move around much.
- Continuity Snarl: In The Fourth Apprentice, Yellowfang witnesses Breezepelt and Brokenstar attacking Jayfeather and tells him that the Dark Forest is rising. In Fading Echoes, which was written by a different author, Jayfeather tells her about the attack and the uprising within the Dark Forest and she is shocked and apparently doesn't know anything about what he's talking about. Ummm...
- Dead Guy Junior: Poppyfrost presumably named her son Molekit after her deceased brother.
- Dramatic Spine Injury: Briarpaw's spine is broken when she's trying to save an elder from a falling tree and both cats are crushed. Sadly, the elder dies, and it ends up being a Career-Ending Injury for Briarpaw as her hind legs are paralyzed for life.
- Dream Intro: The first chapter begins with Dovepaw having a Flashback Nightmare of Rippletail's death.
- Ensemble Cast: The Omen of the Stars arc features four main protagonists: Jayfeather, Lionblaze, Dovepaw, and Ivypaw.
- Flashback Nightmare: Dovepaw has one about Rippletail's death at the start of the book.
- Gender Bender: Pinepaw is female in the Allegiances, and was in the previous book, but is male in the actual text of this book.
- Gone Horribly Right: Tigerstar convinces Ivypaw to persuade Firestar to take back some land he gave to ShadowClan between Sunset and The Sight. It works... but at a cost. Russetfur gets killed, and Firestar loses another life.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Ivypaw has this towards Dovepaw, because she doesn't know of her sister's powers yet. She gets really tired of living as her sister's "echo", especially when Dovepaw seems to get special treatment (like going on the quest to the badgers, since she's the one who alerted the Clan about them).
- I Can't Feel My Legs!: Used with Briarpaw when a tree falls on her. She ends up with her hindlegs paralyzed.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Dovepaw, who hates the fact that her powers set her apart from the rest of the Clan and that it causes a rift between herself and her sister. She even says the phrase exactly in this book.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Ivypaw, who is extremely jealous of her sister and the attention she's getting - to the point that she trains with the Dark Forest, hoping that she'll become good enough to be noticed too.
- It's All My Fault: Mousefur goes through this when Longtail dies. She believes that if she hadn't stopped to complain about her missing meal, Longtail would not have run off and went to fetch it. This sends her into depression.
- It's Raining Men: ThunderClan drops from the tree branches onto their enemies in the battle at the end of the book.
- I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: Toward the start of the book, Dovepaw wakes up Jayfeather to tell him about Mistyfoot and Mothwing heading toward their territory. He snaps that he was dreaming, and for a moment she's afraid that she interrupted a message from StarClan, but then he tells her that he had juuust been about to catch a mouse when she woke him up.
- Karma Houdini: Ashfur. After four counts of attempted murder in order to get back at the cat who rejected him, he makes it to StarClan with the excuse of "his only fault was to love too much".
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Hey, Ivypaw, we know your intentions were good, but trusting the Dark Forest caused Firestar to lose a life and Russetfur to die. Hope the worthless territory was worth it.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Squirrelflight gives one to Jayfeather after he treats her and Leafpool like crap for two books straight.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Longtail gives his life to save.......... a half-eaten mouse, because Mousefur doesn't want to waste prey. And it doesn't get saved. (Although, his running in to get it saved Mousefur, since she was originally going to go in herself.)
- Series Continuity Error: Jayfeather notes that he's never seen Hawkfrost in StarClan, so he's most likely in the Dark Forest. He should already know that Hawkfrost is there, since he saw him in the Dark Forest in The Sight.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The mighty leader Leopardstar does not die during a great battle or heroic deed, as you might expect. Instead, she loses her life to... disease. A slow, painful disease that no one knows how to cure. What? They're feral cats - sickness is going to hit them like a ton of bricks.
- Title Drop: There are no less than three echo related metaphors used in Fading Echoes.
- Villain Opening Scene: The prologue shows cats of the Dark Forest planning their revenge on the living Clan cats.
