There's another thing about Clouded Moon that I just can't stop thinking about.
I seriously don't understand the point of mentors. They're not even technically mentors! Except sometimes they are? They're meant to oversee training while other rangers do the actual mentoring, but then, mentor overseers are sometimes chosen to personally teach a new-claw anyways, so what's the point in that distinction? And what's the point in having an entire class of rangers dedicated to teaching the young when regular rangers are chosen to teach the young anyways?
It just doesn't make sense for "mentor" to be a specific teaching career when nothing they do is specific to them. Envoys are the rangers who speak on the council & help make decisions for the clan. Herbalists are doctors. Keepers take care of kits & keep the base in order. Rangers patrol the territory & hunt. All of those have specific roles in the clan! Then you have mentors, who oversee the training of new-claws, something they can't really do if they're given a new-claw of their own (as we saw with Birdflight & their constant absence from battle training due to personally training Osprey, which allowed Boulder to bully the other new-claws), or personally train new-claws of their own, which is something every other ranger is expected to do, so it's not specific to them.
If you want a class of rangers dedicated to teaching the young, that's great! But make it actually mean something! The way mentoring was presented in Field Colony was good because the only new-claws we saw were being taught by mentors, so it made it seem like mentors were the ones solely responsible for teaching new-claws. This is all well & good & is honestly the way it should be. Leave the teaching of young cats to the rangers who are specifically trained to teach young cats!
Then Marsh Colony messes everything up because not only are there new-claws assigned to non-mentors, but a brand new unenthusiastic mentor-in-training is given a new-claw despite having no mentoring experience??? And nobody bothers to actually train him to be a mentor??? Marsh Colony only has one fully trained mentor, Birdflight, but we only see them interact with Wildfur once & it wasn't even about mentoring! If you're trying to train someone to be a mentor, which is supposedly meant to be overseeing the training process, why would you distract him by giving him a new-claw to train on top of his own training? Why would you give the only other mentor who is meant to be training him a new-claw of their own to train, distracting them from training the new mentor? Does Marsh Colony just not care about properly training their young? Because this is how you ruin the training of a new generation of rangers. Maybe that's why Boulder is so mean & constantly bullies the other apprentices, because Birdflight is too distracted with training Osprey that they can't supervise Halfmask training him, & Wildfur isn't being trained & therefore has no experience on how to handle the situation. Then again, Birdflight didn't have a new-claw before the beginning of the book, so they were free to supervise the training, & Breezeheart was also there to supervise as well, yet Boulder still ended up being a jerk so maybe Marsh Colony mentors are just terrible at their job. I think the book wants me to believe that Halfmask is responsible for Boulder's attitude, but it just reinforces my opinion that only mentors should be allowed to train new-claws. Why would you leave the future of the colony up in the air like this? You allow a terrible cat to train a new-claw with poor supervision & you end up with another terrible ranger who I guess will go on to teach another new-claw to be terrible & so on. I seriously don't understand the Halfmask thing. It seems well known among the colony that Halfmask is a terrible teacher (or at least that Boulder has an attitude problem, which reflects back on Halfmask since he's Boulder's teacher), so why doesn't anyone do anything about it? Why doesn't Hawkshell give Boulder a new teacher? Why does she assign Birdflight a new-claw when they should be handling the situation on top of training Wildfur to be a mentor? Does Hawkshell just not care about the future generation of her clan??? She & the mentors are basically setting Boulder up to fail cuz they're all so negligent about Halfmask teaching him bad habits.
This isn't much of a problem in Warriors because there's no specific mentor class. Warriors are meant to use their own experience to train apprentices. Sure, it does sometimes result in bad warriors training apprentices to be bad or just straight up abusing them, but it's less egregious because Warriors doesn't have an alternative while Clouded Moon acts like it has a good alternative but never puts it into practice. It does make Warriors frustrating when mentors abuse or misguide their apprentices without any repercussions (like tigerclaw with ravenpaw & thistleclaw with tigerpaw) but I'd prefer for it to just be a flaw of the system instead of them having a system in place that should prevent that sort of thing from happening but the book still making it happen anyways & making the characters seem incompetent.
I know the rangers are given the responsibility of training new-claws when there's more new-claws than mentors (Birdflight & Breezeheart were new-claw free beforehand so either of them could've taken over Boulder's training! Not to mention that there's quite a few new-claws in other colonies not assigned to mentors even tho there are mentors available, so the whole "mentors have priority & other rangers only step up when there's too many new-claws" thing isn't even freaking true to the book!!! There's that whole "new rangers will train the next available new-claw" law, but taking a quick look at the family trees & timeline proves that that isn't true to the book either. Why is every rule these authors make about mentors just not true to the book they wrote??? What are they doing???) but if mentors are specifically trained to teach the young then I don't really understand why they can't teach multiple new-claws at the same time. It makes sense in Warriors because mentorship is treated as a relationship & it's hard to really develop a relationship between one teacher & multiple students with the way Warriors is so personal about it, but Clouded Moon wants to be different from Warriors, so why keep it the same? Cats in real life teach their multiple kittens to hunt at the same time. Teachers in real life are responsible for teaching multiple students. It's really rare to have only one teacher teaching only one student at a time! Training usually consists of one teacher & multiple students, even for job training! Even with one-on-one tutoring, the tutor usually has other students they're doing one-on-one tutoring with at different times! These cats are supposed to be specifically trained to teach new-claws, so why can't they be trained to train more than one at a time? They're already supposed to be overseeing the training of multiple new-claws at a time, so what's the difference???
I mean I get why Marsh Colony has one mentor assigned to one new-claw at a time & also assigns rangers to help out because the mentors aren't doing too good at their job, but the alternative method they have also isn't working cuz Boulder still sucks & the other colonies seem to have a better grasp of the whole mentoring thing yet still does the same thing Marsh Colony does, so maybe Marsh Colony just sucks at mentoring no matter what they do.
Oak Colony seems to have the only example of what mentoring in the colonies is actually meant to be in the world of Clouded Moon.... sort of. The first appearance of a mentor, at least, seems like a good example. We see Tornleg overseeing Aspen & Lark's assessment & instructing them on what to do. This is all well & good, but I don't really see why Dawnfrost & Thornheart couldn't instruct them on what to do since they're the new-claws' actual teachers & have gone through the same challenge & would know what to look for... I guess it does make sense for the trained mentor to make the call on whether they pass or not, but Dawnfrost is an envoy who helps make clan decisions so it doesn't really make sense why she couldn't make the call considering she's the one who did all the actual training... it also doesn't help that the only time we actually see a mentor overseeing training is at the very end of the training period. We never actually see Aspen & Lark be trained, or Tornleg overseeing it & instructing their teachers on what to do, so there's still a big blank on what mentorship actually means in the Alliance. The other Oak Colony mentors, Snowfeather, Rowanstorm, Stonestep & Stagcharge, don't really do anything significant, so they're not a good example to understand what mentoring really involves... I think Stagcharge had a new-claw but I can't remember who it was cuz there was only like one sentence where it was mentioned. He really only existed to be by Elmtail's side while he's sick so none of his mentoring was shown, neither his training of whoever-it-was nor him supervising other teachers & new-claws. Stonestep is on maternity leave so no luck seeing any mentor duties from her for a while. We don't see much mentoring from anyone else, so who knows! The new-claws don't seem to be troubled at all so guess as far as we know, mentors in Oak Colony have things handled. would be nice to actually see it, though!
River Colony is... well... they're evil right now, so their mentoring isn't really a good representation of how River Colony training is supposed to be. We don't really see much of it outside of Wolfthorn, who isn't a mentor, & Swiftmask, who is training to be a mentor but is in the same situation as Wildfur where he isn't given any mentor training (are these cats just expected to go right into the job whenever they're assigned to a specific role??? Why doesn't anybody actually train these cats when they're taking on a major responsibility???). River Colony has the most new-claws & has supposedly good mentors (we never see any of the other actually trained mentors doing any mentoring so I'm just assuming here) so I guess everything's going fine? Rainfall does seem to treat mentoring as an "assign any cat I want out of my way here" position which, considering she wants River Colony to be the strongest, doesn't make a lot of sense??? Why not just assign them to be keepers instead? Like, Cherryrill apparently got in trouble with Iceclaw (which wasn't in the book btw. I got that from the wiki), yet she's given the responsibility of training a new-claw, & not just any new-claw, but Iceclaw's own daughter & Rainfall's niece!!! Who they're both secretly training to be the future of the colony! (Again, not actually in the book but something I got from the wiki) Wouldn't Rainfall be worried about Cherryrill corrupting the new-claws? Especially her niece??? I mean, it makes sense to assign loyal cats like Swiftmask to the mentorship role, but not cats that are considered suspicious. I know Rainfall is meant to be a schemer who's ten steps ahead of anyone, but this all just seems stupid imo... & we still don't really get a sense of what Mentorship in River Colony is supposed to be like! We get one unique River Colony training session where Moss & Gray are learning how to catch fish, but Wolfthorn doesn't even really pay attention & it's up to Swiftmask to show them how it's done when they're struggling. That's all we really get. Just one scene dedicated to showing an actual unique aspect of one of the colonies, but all the other training we've seen is just typical Warriors-esque battle training & whatnot. Again, doesn't this book want to be different from warriors? Why is the training so similar?
I don't think we need an in-depth look at what every aspect of life in the colony is like (at least, not all in one book when this is meant to be a series), but just a few paragraphs explaining it would be nice! They did that with the Keepers & the Herbalists & the Envoys, where they actually took a moment to show the cats assigned to these roles doing their jobs, but everything they've shown about mentors just leaves me confused about what this role is supposed to be. It's even worse because two of the four main POV characters are actual mentors, & one of the other two POV characters was assigned a new-claw & is always hanging out with a mentor, so if any role should get an in-depth look into how it works, it's the mentorship role! But there's just so much to be desired! The glossary is just flat out wrong because it says mentors are overseers, but we saw basically no mentors overseeing any training except for when they're watching their own new-claw, & most of the mentoring we saw was just mentors training their new-claws the exact same way regular ass rangers train them!!!
It's pretty clear the authors wanted to have a different training system than Warriors, but still wanted the same type of mentor-apprentice relationships Warriors has. You have to pick a side! If you want it to be different, then make it different! If you want the same type of relationships, then DON'T make it so different! Either don't have a specific mentor class & just have all rangers train new-claws, or put more thought into how a mentorship class would work! Have the mentors either strictly supervise the training process with no new-claws of their own, or have them be the only ones training new-claws. Mentors can still have personal relationships with new-claws even if they're training more than one at a time! We've all had that one teacher growing up who had a massive impact on our lives. That was one teacher teaching an entire class! It actually might be better to see how the mentors' relationship with multiple new-claws differ! This is how (I assume) the relationship between mentors & new-claws would be when a mentor doesn't have a new-claw of their own & solely oversees the training instead of training one-on-one (not that we actually get to see that). It just makes sense for the mentors to be the ones solely responsible for training the new-claws instead of the other rangers. Or, if you want every ranger to be expected to train at least one new-claw during their life time so badly, have a grade-school/university type system, where mentors teach basic necessities & then rangers/keepers/envoys/herbalists teach more specific duties after the new-claw graduates. That's already how it is in the freaking book!!! Moon in Oak Colony isn't allowed to be trained as an herbalist until she graduates no matter how badly she wants it, & Clayfur & Timberleg of Field Colony weren't trained to be Keeper & Mentor respectively until they finished new-claw training, so why not push that further & make it a staple to how training in the colonies works??? It doesn't make sense to prevent new-claws from learning to be keepers or envoys or whatever when all of the different classes of rangers (except herbalists I guess??? They're not allowed to train anyone except future herbalists, but they're not medicine cats we swear!!!) are allowed to teach them anyways! Like, what's stopping a keeper assigned to a new-claw who has decided they want to be a keeper from teaching them specific keeper duties? If you only allow the other classes of rangers to teach new-claws after they graduate under the mentors, then it would make sense!
Back to the whole mentor-apprentice relationship thing. The authors made Spottedshadow a mentor so she could have a personal relationship with Peach. They did the same with Wildfur so he could have a relationship with Pool. That's all fine & good, let the mentors teach the young! But then I guess they also wanted Wolfthorn to have a relationship with Gray, but didn't want to make him a mentor, so he's just a ranger with a new-claw... & tbh his relationship with Gray isn't really all that interesting. Wolfthorn doesn't even pay attention to training half the time. Not to mention that Moss is a much more prominent character than Gray so like, why not make Moss Wolfthorn's apprentice??? Or why not just have Wolfthorn tag along with Swiftmask training the new-claws because he's his friend, & he helps him out because Swiftmask is struggling as a new mentor & Rainfall doesn't care to actually get him trained, which could be a hint to River Colony not being super great, & also allows Wolfthorn to have a relationship with both Gray & Moss without having to be a mentor himself. Or just make Wolfthorn a half-assed mentor so that Rainfall can keep a better eye on him (something she's already doing by convincing Moss to spy on him, which makes it even more confusing as to why she would only make Swiftmask a mentor & then assign Moss to him instead of Wofthorn), which would also show River Colony's corruption! Rainfall already treats mentors this way & she's also highly suspicious of Wolfthorn, so she could just force him into the mentorship role. Or just have Gray & Wolfthorn be friends!!! Characters can have close relationships without being mentor & apprentice! Maybe Gray is being neglected cuz his mom was a traitor & Wolfthorn decides to step up & help him out or something. There's so many other options they could've gone with if the Wolfthorn & Gray relationship was so important!
There's just so much they could've done better with the mentors. When they changed this story from a Warriors fanfic to an original idea, they really should've thought more about these changes they made instead of half-assing them. Make mentorship actually mean something if you want it to be an actual career for these cats!!!
When you create such an ambitious project based off of a fanfic for an already existing piece of media, & you want it to be different than that existing media, you have to put a LOT of effort into the changes you make. Sometimes that means making big sacrifices. Making mentorship a specific role means sacrificing the mentor-apprentice relationships of cats who you don't actually want to be mentors. The only real relationship this would affect is Wolfthorn & Gray's, which isn't really a relationship that means very much in the book anyways & wouldn't really be a loss to the story if it went away, but is something that could be easily remedied with the suggestions I made earlier (and also better writing). I guess the only other new-claw & non-mentor relationship this would affect is Boulder & Halfmask, but Halfmask is Boulder's uncle & could've taken him under his wing during his parents' divorce so there's still a reason for Halfmask to have a big influence on him. Dawnfrost's relationship with Larkwing isn't really all that important; Aspenbreeze was the important one & she wasn't her new-claw (kinda weird that they chose to kill her instead of Larkwing considering how much her death affected Dawnfrost. I honestly forgot that she was Thornheart's new-claw & not her's because of how the narrative presented their relationship... her & her brother training with Thornheart & Dawnfrost wasn't shown so there's nothing lost by making Dawnfrost Aspenbreeze's mentor instead of Larkwing's) & they didn't really interact much after Aspenbreeze's death. I don't see why Dawnfrost can't just be a close friend of their's instead of a mentor. That's basically how it is in the book anyways, since we didn't see any of the training! If the mentoring relationship was so important, then, well, first of all it should've been in the book, but also Dawnfrost could've either previously been a mentor before becoming an envoy & was just completing her new-claw's training, or they could've made Aspen or Lark an envoy-in-training under her. No other mentor & new-claw relationship really matters much (at least as far as what was shown in the book) so just change some things!!! The only other one that was really given any attention was Falconswoop & Red, but that's apparently a rocky relationship anyways (thanks for being so good at overseeing new-claw training, Birdflight & Breezeheart) & nothing is lost for either of their characters by changing it. Same with Shrewpelt & black, another non-existent relationship the narrative insists is important but in reality wouldn't change anything if it were gone cuz it was only mentioned in like two separate sentences. None of the other new-claws were really important to the story & neither were their mentors/teachers, so nothing is lost by either making mentors the ones solely responsible for training, making them strictly supervisors, or having the grade school/university type training system.
Also, just my opinion, but if you do go the route of mentors overseeing training rather than training the young cats themselves (which is what seems to be the idea behind it, despite what was shown in the book), then "mentor" is a bad name for them. Call them overseers or supervisors since that's more accurate to what they actually are. Calling them "mentors" while also calling the actual new-claw's trainer "teacher" just gets confusing. Mentors are also sometimes called teachers when referring to them teaching their new-claws, which is just more confusing cuz why are you switching between the two terms as if they mean totally different things when they're practically synonyms? If anything, the words should be switched where teacher refers to the supervising position while mentor refers to the one actually guiding the new-claw, cuz teacher usually indicates a more structured curriculum while mentor usually indicates more personalized learning, but the words are still too similar to be used the way the book uses them, so I still think what the book calls "mentors" should be overseers or supervisors instead cuz it's a more distinct difference & can't be used interchangeably with "teacher."
Last thing I'll talk about is the term "new-claw." I don't really have an opinion on it. I've seen other ppl criticize it, but I'm fine with it. If anything, I wish these cats had more made-up words for the different rankings of cats within the colony. You could call kittens little-paws, rangers big-claws (sharp-claws would be cool but that's a Warriors word, tho it's only used in like one book so who cares, it's not an entirely unique word & this series is already fine with borrowing things from Warriors) keepers could be neat-paws or something, envoys could be strong-jaws or whatever, so on & so forth. New-claw isn't bad, it's just strange when it's the only unique cat term used in the book when everything else uses human terms. Pick one or the other! Either make new cat terms or stick to human terms! Doing a mix & match of ideas just makes it seem like you don't really know what you're doing!
That's all I have to say. Sorry it was long again, I love mentor/trainee type relationships so it's frustrating that this book faild so badly at making mentors a thing. If you're gonna pride yourself on making so many changes, don't half-ass them! It just comes off as lazy & makes you look like you don't know what you're doing (which could be a said about a lot of things in this book). In my own totally-not-Warriors cat colony story, I decided to go the route of mentors teaching all apprentices basic things while the other ranks teach cats a more specific role of their choosing once they graduate (the grade school/university system I mentioned earlier). I did have to sacrifice some of the mentor-apprentice relationships, which was pretty difficult but necessary for the sake of distancing it from being a Warrior fanfic & making the story work better. You gotta be willing to make tough changes when you're developing a story! Who would've thought?