Into the Wild
Erin Hunter
War and politics with cute kitties
Into the Wild, the first novel in Erin Hunter's six-novel Warriors series, the first subseries of her 51-book Warriors universe, is ostensibly all about cats. But it isn't really. The cats of Into the Wild live in wild country. They collectively defend large areas that are, effectively, nation states. They take vows of fealty. They engage in power politics. At times they betray and kill in order to get more political power.
It's a very hard thing to write a story about animals that convincingly gets into the minds of the animal participants. The problem is that, if you want humans to read it, your characters have to be relatable. That means they have to have human characteristics. On the other hand, if enough of their true animal nature shows in the characters and the story, it can produce an exotic feel that makes for a good story.
This is very hard to do. Not impossible. The best example I can think of is Richard Adams's Watership Down. The rabbits in Watership Down are of course not real rabbits. But they are inhuman enough in plausibly rabbit-like ways to make for a good story. And even to make for a story that feels like it's about rabbits.
The cats in Into the Wild are far too human to be really interesting. If you adore cats (and who doesn't?) then the mental pictures suggested by Hunter are fun enough to make the book worth a read. But I will not be reading any further in the series.