Secrets of the Clans is the first released
Warriors "Field Guide", a side book with short stories and additional information about the world. This book covers information from the original series (aka
The Prophecies Begin) and
The New Prophecy, as well as a little bit from
The Sight.
Tropes appearing in this book:
- Afterlife Welcome: In Snowfur's story, she brings Mosskit to StarClan.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: In the "Raid on the Camp!" story, WindClan's camp is attacked by ShadowClan, and they're eventually driven out.
- Back Story: This book introduced many characters' backstories, such as Barley.
- Canon Discontinuity: This was the earliest guidebook to the series, and revealed a lot of information about characters' backstories and so forth. However, in the years following its release, they expanded on the world further, which resulted in other books contradicting some of the things in this one. In one such instance, when asked if Secrets of the Clans or Yellowfang's Secret was correct, Vicky Holmes stated: "I'm afraid Secrets of the Clans is a bit of an anomaly, in that it strayed off the path of rightness in several areas. Please take the Super Editions, and other Special Editions, as canon!"
- Confession Cam: Features a variant of this: there are brief sections called "_____ Speaks", and the characters talk about their feelings during a major event that occurred in the main series, their motivation for doing something, and things like that.
- Discontinuity Nod: In Into the Wild, there was a ThunderClan cat named Rosetail who was killed defending the nursery; she was not listed in the Allegiances or otherwise mentioned in the book. It became a well-known error, and in this book, which came out five years later, Goldenflower speaks about the role of elders and comments about how back when she was nursing Swiftkit in the nursery, an elder named Rosetail died protecting the kits.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Scourge had Violet nearly beaten to death because she dared to look for her missing brother.
- The Ditz: Fuzz, the kittypet that Barley meets, is a cheerful ditz who is so literal-minded that he thinks Barley's name is "Erbarley", and upon being corrected, then thinks it's "Justbarley".
- A Dog Named "Cat": One of Barley's brothers has renamed himself Snake.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Sunstar and Featherwhisker were first mentioned in this book before actually appearing in Bluestar's Prophecy.
- Freudian Excuse: Brokenstar was abused by his foster mother, Lizardstripe.
- From Stray to Pet: Violet was born in BloodClan, but when she was badly injured by her brothers, Barley took her to live with Fuzz, whose owner was a veterinarian.
- Full-Boar Action: One of the Clans' mythology tales features Rage and Fury, two wild boars who plagued the three great cat Clans - LeopardClan, TigerClan, and LionClan - with their presence. Fleetfoot, a LeopardClan warrior, offered to kill Rage (but not knowing about Fury, who the other leaders conveniently didn't mention), and she managed to kill both of them one at a time despite them being powerful animals. Because she had done this, Goldenstar and Shadestar let her and her Clan earn hunting rights to the river.
- Gender Bender:
- Bluestar's dead kit Mosskit - retroactively, since while the kit was originally mentioned as male in Forest of Secrets and in this book, the authors later decided that the kit's official gender would be female as of Cats of the Clans and Bluestar's Prophecy.
- The tabby kittypet in ShadowClan territory was referred to as "he" several times from Starlight to Sunset, but Secrets of the Clans reveals that this cat is a she-cat named Susan.
- The Great Serpent: One figure in the Clans' mythology is a giant snake called Mouthclaw, described as being big enough to swallow a lion whole, with deadly venomous fangs. The story claims that adders exist because she tricked an ancient LionClan warrior: in return for sparing her life, he demanded she shrink to the length of his tail... but he didn't specify that she couldn't multiply into a thousand snakes as she did so.
- "Harmful to Pets" Reminder: This book has a variation where the medicine cat Leafpool warns the reader in-character that they should not give a sick cat the herbs that the characters use in the books, but rather should bring them to a veterinarian instead.
- I Surrender, Suckers: According to the section about battle moves, this is a tactic taught to apprentices.
- Jackass Genie: One of the Clans' mythology stories features a young LionClan warrior named Sunpelt defeating Mouthclaw, a giant, extremely toxic snake. In exchange for sparing her life she grants him a wish: he wishes that she would shrink down to the length of a cat's tail. She does just that...by turning herself into thousands of smaller, equally poisonous snakes.
- "Just So" Story: There are mythology stories that explain how tigers got stripes and how adders came to be.
- Left-Justified Fantasy Map: The Great Journey map has the sea to the west.
- Legend Fades to Myth: The start of the Clans' origin story in this book even says that stories change and details are lost in the retelling. The book has the story that is told in the modern Clans nowadays, in which the forest settlers fought at Fourtrees, and after Thunder, Wind, River, and Shadow try to lay claim upon leadership, the spirit-cats tell them that they must split into Clans, each of the four leading one. While we see in Dawn of the Clans that there was a battle like that at Fourtrees, and the spirit-cats did visit them there and guide them into splitting up, it didn't happen like the story told it, and the cats split apart more gradually over time.
- Literal-Minded: The ditzy kittypet Fuzz, who appears in Barley's short story. He asks Barley's name, and Barley, taken by surprise, responds, "Er... Barley." Then when he calls him "Erbarley", Barley says "No. Just Barley." So Fuzz proceeds to call him "Justbarley" for the rest of the story.
- My Secret Pregnancy: Yellowfang hid her pregnancy from the rest of her Clan, but not from the father, Raggedstar, since she was a medicine cat and not allowed to have kits.
- Named in the Sequel: In the last few books of The New Prophecy, the rogues near ShadowClan territory were unnamed. This book reveals their names to be Jacques and Susan.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
- Animal:
- Fox: Foxheart (whose name is also an in-universe phrase meaning treacherous/cowardly)
- Snake: One of Barley's evil brothers renamed himself Snake upon becoming part of Scourge's guard.
- Nouns:
- Fury: In the Clans' mythology, Fury is a wild boar - the mate of Rage, who can kill a tiger with a single blow.
- The Owl-Knowing One: Owlstar was a wise and just leader of ThunderClan who is Famed In-Story. He isn't actually an owl, but he copied his skills from one, and has an obvious owl theme.
- Panthera Awesome: The cats' mythology says that they're descended from a LionClan, TigerClan, and LeopardClan, and they have folk tales about these Clans (which per the authors are just stories - the big-cat Clans did not actually exist).
- Retcon: As mentioned under Canon Discontinuity above, several things in this book were retconned simply because of how early this book came out. This includes:
- The scene about how the Clans formed, with there being no SkyClan, and also the mention that the four founding leaders created the warrior code. This was later given an explanation that they're the stories the Clans are told nowadays, rather than the actual truth.
- Mentions of apprentices/mentors, deputies, etc - Crookedstar didn't end up mentoring Graypool, and Timberfur is missing from his deputy list, for instance. Raggedstar didn't mentor Brokentail, Nightpelt didn't mentor Dawncloud.
- Rock being a Tribe-Healer and there being three Tribes that visited the Moonpool. In Power of Three and Omen of the Stars, we learn that a community of cats with no official organization lived in the area, but they later moved to the mountains and became the Tribe of Rushing Water. Rock, on the other hand, is revealed to be a spirit who's been around since the dawn of time.
- Universe Compendium: Secrets of the Clans was one for the series at the time it was published.
- The X of Y: The title Secrets of the Clans.
