I had it in my mind that Into the Wild and Fire and Ice were a unit,

and that Forest of Secrets was when the big and memorable changes began.

Really though, I couldn't have been more wrong.

Fire and Ice is already leaps and bounds away from Into the Wild.

Although there are still some rough patches that become trademarks of the first arc.

Fire and Ice was released on June 1st of 2003, a little more than 5 months after Into the Wild.

The team was, at this point, the same as it was in the first book.

Victoria Holmes plotted out the book and Kate Cary wrote it.

With a book of practice behind them, the Erins were able to delve much deeper into the world,

with a greater range of characters, clans, and plotlines while following the intended trajectory of the arc.

Fireheart and Graystripe are warriors now

and they have information about Tigerclaw's treacherous actions to tell Bluestar about right away.

Fireheart does, but she doesn't believe him.

Soon after, with both Riverclan and Shadowclan threatening to take over Windclan's territory,

Bluestar sends Fireheart and Graystripe on a mission to find them and bring them back.

On the way home, they decide to take the short route across Riverclan territory,

which proves a mistake when they get in a fight and Fireheart has to save Sandpaw from falling into the gorge

while Graystripe fails to save a Riverclan warrior: Whiteclaw.

As a reward for doing well, Fireheart and Graystripe are given apprentices: Cinderpaw and Brackenpaw.

Dustpaw is rightly very jealous, but Sandpaw doesn't seem willing to tease Fireheart anymore, hmm.

Fireheart starts training Cinderpaw, his excitable new apprentice,

and along the way meets Princess, his sister, who he begins sneaking off to meet in secret and confide in.

Graystripe also starts meeting someone in secret: Silverstream,

a Riverclan warrior who saved him after he fell in the frozen river while trying to chase a water vole.

Both Graystripe and Silverstream say they have no choice about seeing each other,

and dismiss Fireheart's concerns when he comes to each of them individually.

Of course with Graystripe's cold and his inability to stay away from the pretty Riverclan she-cat,

Fireheart starts training Brackenpaw as well in his place.

Sickness sweeps through the whole clan,

including to Bluestar which prevented her from going to see something at the Thunderpath at Tigerclaw's request.

Cinderpaw went instead, against Fireheart's explicit instructions, and ended up with a heavily injured leg.

Bluestar loses a life, and tells Fireheart she is on her last.

Sandpaw and Fireheart are sent on a patrol together where the she-cat is far more amicable than before.

They discover that the river is frozen and tell Bluestar, who decides to attack at once.

Graystripe and Fireheart get into a fight which Bluestar scolds Fireheart about,

and soon after Princess gives Fireheart one of her kits to take into Thunderclan.

No one but Graystripe thinks it's a good idea to keep him

but Bluestar decides to let him into the clan anyway, and names him Cloudkit.

Thunderclan finds Shadowclan scent on their territory multiple times, and finally prey bones that lead them to go off and attack,

but really it was Brokenstar and his remaining followers who were scented there.

They attack when most cats are out of camp and Thunderclan fights them off,

leaving Brokenstar blinded and feeble at Yellowfang's mercy.

She doesn't kill him however, as Fireheart urges her to, because he is her son.

Cinderpaw helps Yellowfang with herbs,

Clawface was killed and buried without a ceremony,

Brokenstar is a prisoner and loses his leader title, and the clan is safe.

Sandpaw and Dustpaw are recommended to Bluestar for their performance in the battle and are finally made warriors,

Sandstorm and Dustpelt, and all is well with the-oh shoot!

Uh, no, there's a bit more here!

Actually Cloudkit and Brindleface's other kits go missing out in the snow and Fireheart has to find them.

He then receives a direct dream from Spottedleaf,

who tells him to beware a warrior he cannot trust.

He believes this to be Graystripe, but doesn't have time to act on it before

Onewhisker barges into the camp and explains Riverclan and Shadowclan are attacking them, together.

Thunderclan goes to help.

During the battle Tigerclaw refuses to help Fireheart when he is in danger and Silverstream nearly hurts Fireheart too.

He finally realized what Spottedleaf's words meant, although too late to do anything about it.

Tigerclaw scolds him for not hurting Silverstream and Fireheart makes up with Graystripe, *finally* ending this book.

Sheesh, okay.

During the last video I said that Into the Wild was a very plot-heavy book.

Now that I've gone through this book, I can say that wasn't quite specific enough.

Into the Wild was a very focused book.

It introduced the world and its main characters and laid out the main threat of the book and arc nicely.

Fire and Ice is also plot heavy, but it is far less focused.

It introduces many plots, characters, and character arcs all at once.

That leads to a lot of intrigue for the book, but it also makes it difficult to summarize what happened.

There's no one big event or plot that could define this book,

and it's easy to forget just how many important moments happened in this book rather than another one.

But before I get into those, let's go over some quick status quo updates.

The Thunderclan allegiances haven't changed much as a whole.

The eye colors and detailed fur colors are still missing, and kits aren't listed.

There are even still 8 warriors and five apprentices.

Although 2 warriors died last book, Fireheart and Graystripe were promoted and took their places.

Although Fireheart, Graystripe, and Ravenpaw all stopped being apprentices of Thunderclan,

three new apprentices are added in this book to replace them: Cinderpaw, Brackenpaw, and Swiftpaw.

However, the other clans get huge changes.

Windclan and Riverclan each get many more cats, and a lot of characterization for those cats.

Windclan goes from just having a leader to adding a deputy, a medicine cat, three warriors all with apprentices, and two queens.

It's still unbalanced against Thunderclan but certainly a big improvement.

Riverclan meanwhile has a new deputy and medicine cat along with 5 warriors and 3 apprentices.

Of course, this book spends a lot of its time dealing with the affairs of these two clans,

between getting Windclan home and Thunderclan's hostile relationships with *Riverclan* (misspoke),

along with Graystripe's Riverclan romance.

Another improvement is in the spread of character dialogue.

The top 10 characters here only get 84% of the lines. It's still not remotely perfect, but it's a start.

Plus, Sandstorm is actually in the top 10 this time!

Unfortunately it's not all good news.

With the big influx of characters, 42% of the characters are now she-cats, a massive step in the right direction.

But they only get 31% of the lines, an even bigger gap than in Into the Wild.

As far as the main plot, it's brushed aside pretty quickly.

I consider the main plot of the first arc to be about Tigerstar's rise to and use of his power to take down Bluestar and Firestar.

In the first chapter of this book, Fireheart and Graystripe have the information to give Bluestar,

which means Tigerclaw's exile could have happened almost immediately,

so the book had to immediately backpedal and give reasons for that not to happen.

Fireheart tells Graystripe they should pass on what they know,

and Graystripe is the first to suggest that Redtail killed Oakheart,

and that Ravenpaw was the only one to have had a problem with Tigerclaw.

He warns Fireheart against taking any action, and Fireheart tells him to stay out of it.

Aside from helping to stop the plot from progressing too quickly, this scene also solidifies a fact:

Fireheart is *the one* protagonist for this arc.

Ultimately, he is the only one who can and does act in time to help.

However, Graystripe turned out to be right, because Fireheart did tell Bluestar everything,

about Ravenpaw and his story, all within the first chapter, and Bluestar didn't believe it,

both because Tigerclaw would have to be a truly bad cat,

and because she assumes, like Graystripe, that it would mean Redtail murdered Oakheart,

which is even harder for her to believe as she trusted Redtail deeply.

She blames the story on Ravenpaw's blood loss and imagination but promises to keep his location and lack of death a secret.

This is a recurring problem for this book where several cats find no issue with Tigerclaw and see him as a good and loyal cat,

but also admit that if he found out certain details, he would overreact and it could be dangerous.

There isn't necessarily a problem with an aggressive but not evil warrior,

but he might also not be as deserving of the deputyship, or the awe that he receives, if you need to tiptoe around him so much.

As for Tigerclaw's power, he makes an attempt on Bluestar's life in this book,

but she died without his interference, and Cinderpaw was injured instead, so not much progress is made.

Like with Into the Wild, this book also gives several character moments

that are integral in reading certain characters over the series, so I'd like to note them down now.

However, unlike Into the Wild, there are many, many more of them

that are spread across many, many more characters.

Crookedstar, in stark contrast to his moment of cowardice in the last book,

starts this book by immediately revoking his agreement with Shadowclan.

Nightpelt asks that it continue, but Crookedstar will not back down.

That is easily forgotten though when both Crookedstar and Nightpelt jump onto the idea of

dividing up Windclan's hunting grounds and getting more prey for themselves.

Bluestar is the only one to demand Windclan be brought back

(though, her argument is that there have always been and should always be four clans

so perhaps she's not as morally devout either).

When Windclan decides to head back, Tallstar chooses Graystripe to stand with him and lead the way,

sending Fireheart back to walk with the clan instead.

From a literary perspective,

it makes sense to send Fireheart to a place where he could speak with and get to know more Windclan cats,

but from a character one, it's interesting that Tallstar doesn't immediately trust Fireheart over Graystripe.

While we're on the subject of Windclan, in this first appearance,

Onewhisker is a younger warrior with a good head on his shoulders.

He comes up with a plan to cross the Thunderpath and proposes it,

but defers to Tallstar's judgement in accordance with their ranks.

He's thankful to Fireheart for putting himself in danger for the clan's sake

and speaks for Windclan when he says Windclan will never forget their debt to him.

Tallstar agrees and says they will honor Fireheart's name in stories.

Also, and with little other detail,

I will just say that Ravenpaw immediately became more confident and joyful after his short time living with Barley.

Moving on quickly,

Swiftpaw is introduced as a shy and nervous weak kit when he becomes an apprentice,

which...we'll see if that changes.

He also has no confirmed parent unlike Cinderpaw and Brackenpaw,

and no one follows him to the highrock at his naming ceremony or otherwise indicates a closer bond with him at this point.

Runningwind of all cats has a moment of second hand characterization.

He's said by Bluestar to be a good hunter and a loyal warrior,

but one that doesn't have the patience to be a mentor.

While this is great for all the Runningwind fans to know,

why would Bluestar also think that the currently depressed jokester Graystripe would be a better option as Brackenpaw's mentor?

Why not Mousefur? Or Willowpelt? She seems nice.

Despite this, Fireheart paws both of the apprentices off on Runningwind when he wants to check on Graystripe

and Runningwind seems to do a fine job.

Is he trustworthy with apprentices or not? We may never know.

This book also continues the first-arc-trend of a few strange cultural details and oddities that fade out over time.

The gathering where we first see Nightpelt announce his position is already a few days after the battle,

but he doesn't have his Starclan title yet.

As the series goes on, not going to the Moonstone immediately

becomes almost as problematic as not immediately naming a deputy.

Another timing oddity comes in the ranks of Thunderclan.

Sandpaw and Dustpaw became apprentices before Fireheart and Graystripe by at least two moons,

yet multiple moons pass over this book between Fireheart and Graystripe becoming warriors

and Sandstorm and Dustpelt becoming warriors.

This sort of discrepancy becomes common for other clans' background characters later on,

but for main characters, this becomes almost unheard of.

Cinderpaw and Brackenpaw are mentioned to be “two of” Frostfur's kits who are ready to begin training,

but it's unlikely she had multiple litters in the nursery at once,

so this is probably another training gap between them and Frostfur's other kits.

The first arc placed far more value on readiness or proof of talent in advancing ranks, rather than a certain amount of time passing.

As far as clan reputations in this book go, Shadowclan and Riverclan are both explicitly bad at hunting rabbits,

while Onewhisker catches one within a minute of being home.

Riverclan is known by the other clans to be the most well fed,

but Silverstream says that twolegs have taken over the river and took all the fish while it was there,

even scaring off the woodland prey with the amount of damage they did.

Windclan gets rabbits on the moor all year, which is why Riverclan wanted their territory.

Knowing how this particular detail will grow…*sigh* makes me a little sad.

In a strange continuation of what was implied to be a last resort in the last book,

Tigerclaw suggests that Longtail and Darkstripe take on multiple apprentices at once as if that is common,

and at Cinderpaw's apprentice ceremony, Bluestar says Fireheart's mentors were Tigerclaw and Lionheart, rather than herself.

Nothing particularly compelling to say on that one.

It doesn't stick around, and while it's here it just seems to undercut Bluestar's fleeting role as Fireheart's mentor.