Alas, Poor Scrappy: Before the release of Thunder Rising, Moon Shadow wasn't that well liked a character. Now, his former haters are mourning his death.
Awesome Art: The original cover art of The First Battle is just amazing.
Clear Sky. Is he a sympathetic antagonist with a believable Freudian Excuse, or is he just a hypocritical jerk who deserves to die?
Storm is either seen as an interesting and fun she-cat or a boring excuse to create romance drama.
Wind Runner became one due to her actions in Thunder Rising and The First Battle, in which she is shown to be a warmonger and fuels the rivalry between the Moor and Forest groups. Some people think that she's sympathetic and well written, while others hate her for these actions and want her to go down.
Jagged Peak, mainly due to his treatment of a newly returned Thunder in The First Battle. Was this behaviour understandable due to his experiences with Clear Sky? Or is he just a jerk?
Star Flower in A Forest Divided. Is she a Nice Girl who genuinely wants to be with Clear Sky and wants to be friends with Thunder again? Or is she a smug Manipulative Bitch who's faking being captured and trying to turn Clear Sky and Thunder against each other?
The treatment of she-cats in The Sun Trail. Some fans think that the she-cats got shafted in terms of character development and the book is full of misogyny. Other fans don't agree and think the complainers are just being obsessive.
Thunder Rising is the most divisive book in the series, so far. Is it good, but not as good as The Sun Trail? Is it an Even Better Sequel? Is it a terrible waste of all of The Sun Trail's potential? It depends on who you ask.
Continuity Lockout: After the amount generated by Power of Three and Omen of the Stars, this arc for the most part avoids it. Someone with no knowledge of the rest of the Warrior Cats series could pick up a copy of The Sun Trail and completely understand it. However, it still exists in small qualities. If this is a reader's first Warriors book, the beginning scenes featuring the Tribe will lose some of their impact, and the last chapter's rather awe-inspiring reveal about Thunder will fall so flat that new readers won't even realize that it's a twist.
Crosses the Line Twice: Tall Shadow's "Shaded Moss, actually" when her brother asks who died and made her leader. Saying it so soon after his death toes the line of being disrespectful to the dead. Saying it in front of Shaded Moss's daughter? That makes it swing around into memetic levelsof humor.
Before the release of The Sun Trail, Silver Frost, a Tribe elder, got the most love out of the characters.
Now that The Sun Trail is out, the most popular characters are Tall Shadow and Jagged Peak, the former of which has already spawned her own meme.
River Ripple has been declared by many to be the best part of Thunder Rising.
Nightheart has appeared only twice and spoken very few lines, but she's a pretty popular character.
Rainswept Flower, for being one of the most genuinely kind and helpful characters in the book, and for having a cool name. She gets tons of fanart.
Lightning Tail, Thunder's best friend and the eventual first deputy of ThunderClan is very popular in certain circles of the fandom.
Fan Nickname: "Proto-WindClan" for the group that settles in the moor.
Harsher in Hindsight: It can be hard to reread the scene in Path of the Stars where Clear Sky gushes over his new kits and promises to never let anything happen to them, since Moth Flight's Vision shows that one of them is killed only a few moons later.
Hype Backlash: This arc is widely praised as arguably the best in the series and a return to form after the disliked Omen of the Stars. Some fans have been disappointed upon reading the arc by awkward pacing, divisive treatment of female characters, and Gray Wing, widely hyped as one of the series' best and most beloved characters, being seen as boring or a Designated Hero.
Before the first book was even released, fans got an "I knew it" moment. Victoria Holmes, one of the authors of the series, confirmed on her Facebook that the protagonist Gray Wing is Graywing The Wise from Battles of the Clans.
The released preview of the series has confirmed the fan theory that the Ancients who didn't like the mountains went on to form the Clans.
As the prologue of The Sun Trail was being released piece-by-piece, fans theorized that the point of view character was Half Moon from Power of Three and Omen of the Stars. The third piece of the prologue confirmed their guess.
A few months before The Sun Trail came out, there was a rather prominent fan theory about Sky being evil. The ending of The Sun Trail made that theory mostly right.
Based on pre-release blurbs and vague hints from the Erins, a few fans managed to figure out that Thunder was Clear Sky's son. They got a massive case of this when it was revealed in The Sun Trail.
On her Facebook, Vicky confirmed the popular fan theory that Tall Shadow was Shadow, the founder of ShadowClan. She also confirmed Cloud Spots being Cloudspots and Dappled Pelt being Dapplepelt.
Some fans admitted to reading The Sun Trail solely because they wanted to see River...but it turns out that he's the only Clan founder that doesn't show up until the second book, Thunder Rising. Then fans could enjoy his presence.
Quite a few fans only read the book because of the beginning scenes with the Tribe.
Gray Wing has been shipped with Bright Stream, Turtle Tail, Rainswept Flower, Storm, Tall Shadow, River Ripple, Wind Runner, and Slate. Not bad at all.
Thunder is no slouch, having been paired with Acorn Fur, Lightning Tail, Swift, Flower, Star Flower, Blossom, and his eventual true mate, Violet Dawn.
Moth Flight is actively shipped with Red Claw, Sun Shadow, Spotted Fur, Slash, and Micah, which is pretty decent for someone who was a minor character until her Super Edition, which came out after the arc was over.
Les Yay: There are a surprising number of fans who ship Turtle Tail and Bumble.
Poor Thunder is always remembered in the fandom as the guy who lost his Love Interest to his father.
Related to that, Clear Sky is remembered as the guy who keeps hooking up with his family's crushes.
One-Scene Wonder: Nightheart showed up, spoke two lines to Gray Wing and Clear Sky, then swam off. A fanbase was born.
Sacred Cow: The Sun Trail has become one for fans. Bash it at your own risk.
The Scrappy: In The Sun Trail, not a lot of people liked Moon Shadow, because he was a complete idiot and a deadbeat dad.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: The introduction of Star Flower has been taken as a huge blow by the Thunder/Acorn Fur shippers, and a lot of them are getting angry. And what the Thunder/Acorn Fur shippers are going through is nothing compared to what Thunder/Lightning Tail shippers are feeling. Which makes it rather hilarious when she ends up with Clear Sky instead...just in time for Violet Dawn to enter the picture.
Slow-Paced Beginning: It's generally agreed that while The Sun Trail is awesome, it takes a little while to get truly amazing.
Strangled by the Red String: One of the bigger complaints about the series is that a lot of relationships feel rushed in it.
Clear Sky and Storm are probably the worst offender. They meet shortly after his previous mate died, literally fall in Love at First Sight, she moves in a few days later, and bam—she's carrying his kits. It's exactly as jarring as it sounds, especially since their next big scene together has her leaving him.
Speaking of, how long does it take Gray Wing to fall in love with Storm? Two meetings. Which is one more than his brother, but still.
Thunder and Star Flower. Most of their meetings go like this: he's gobsmacked by her beauty, she flirts with him a bit, and then they part. After that plays out a couple of time, he's declaring to Lightning Tail that he doesn't know Star Flower like Thunder does. Turns out to be justified and deconstructed: she was pumping him for information and he later admits that he didn't know her as well as he thought and that she would have been a bad match for him.
In A Forest Divided, Clear Sky and Star Flower have some scenes together that show an entertaining dynamic and gently hint at a possible slow-burn. Then, when Thunder leaves, the fast-forward button is hit and they're mates expecting kits. However, it's still plausible because they're Birds of a Feather and we did get to see them spend time together before that point, and they do show themselves to be genuinely in love after.
In Path of Stars, Thunder doesn't even need to met Violet to fall in love with her, apparently—he just sees her, notices she's beautiful, and decides he loves her. She seems to love him back immediately, especially considering she's freshly mourning her previous mate. However, Thunder does say that he wants to get to know Violet before becoming mates with her.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: One of the complaints the series (specifically A Forest Divided and Path of Stars) faced was that a few of the really interesting characters were never used well.
In The Blazing Star, Petal. Ever since The Sun Trail, she was one of the most interesting characters, had lots of development, and was in the middle of her arc. However, she is suddenly killed during the denouement of the book, and while it does showcase some of her character development, her death contributes absolutely nothing to the story, not bringing about a single bit of character or plot advancement. It especially stings we never get to see the scene where she makes peace with Gray Wing, giving no payoff to her development.
Sun Shadow. The Bonus Scene of The Blazing Star does a good job of setting up his character and the conflicts he'll face when he reaches the forest. He proceeds to do next to nothing in A Forest Divided and Path of Stars. He does mention, though, that he had struggles in Moth Flight's Vision, but it's limited to one conversation, and the only notable thing he does on-page is die failing to save Shadowstar in Shadowstar's Life.
Snake. He's dramatically introduced in The First Battle, with heavy foreshadowing that he's going to be a major thorn in the side of the heroes later on down the line. Then in The Blazing Star, it comes true, with him turning on Clear Sky at the end, seemingly beginning his time as a major villain. However, he doesn't even appear in A Forest Divided, and when he does return in Path of Stars, it's only as one of Slash's lackeys, a role that could be filled by any cat. His history with Clear Sky is barely even touched on.
Night. She's the first Cat of the Water that the protagonists encounter, she seems like a potential rival in The Sun Trail, and she's River Ripple's closest friend. However, she does all of nothing in the arc, and is lucky if she gets five lines in a book. Riverstar's Home rectifies this by making her a major character, showing her relationship with River Ripple and giving her a more clear personality.
Night's brother gets it even worse, though. He's mentioned in Thunder Rising by his sister. Then, he never appears, and the other characters act like he never even existed. He doesn't even have a name! Riverstar's Home rectifies this by giving him the name Mist, and showing him more often.
Violet Dawn is introduced as just Violet, a cat in Slash's group who is mourning her recently-deceased mate and fending off Slash's unwanted advances. This seems to set up a character arc of her coming to terms with her grief and trauma, but instead she's a Satellite Love Interest punted towards Thunder for a Last-Minute Hookup. She doesn't get to do much in Thunderstar's Echo either, which is a shame because that would have been the perfect time to expand on her and her relationship with him.
Tough Act to Follow: After having Fallen Hero Clear Sky as the antagonist for the first three books, One Eye and Slash are disappointing in comparison. Slash has it the worst; One Eye actually shows cunning and succeeds at times, whereas Slash is just considered a boring ripoff of his predecessor and an overall letdown of a villain.
Unexpected Character: Virtually nobody suspected that The Sun Trail would feature Graywing the Wise from Battles of the Clans, and if they did they probably didn't think he would be the main character.
Win Back the Crowd: After the lukewarm reception of The Last Hope and Yellowfang's Secret, The Sun Trail's faster pace and fresh ideas made a lot of fans declare it one of the greatest books in the series. And if it didn't win the crowd back, then The First Battle definitely did.
