"Warrior Cats" is a bestselling children's book series about cats that fight each other. Actually, it's much more than that. The books explore themes of leadership, diplomacy, ethics, spirituality, friendship, love, war, and redemption, among other things.

There are also hundreds of named characters spanning several in-universe generations.

In the ten years since it's been published, "Warrior Cats" has come a long way. It was originally supposed to be a trilogy, then it was turned into a six-book arc because it sold so well. Then it just kept going.

At first, it was written by three women under one pen name: Erin Hunter. Since then, many more people have had a hand in creating the series. And this is the reason for my love/hate relationship with the series. I started reading it in middle school and I'm still reading it to this day, despite its many, many flaws, and sometimes I wonder why.

I love Warrior Cats because, at its best, it handles heavy subjects like death and war with grace and nuance. Many of the characters have stayed in my mind and continued to inspire me years after their stories have come to an end. It's a complex story but it rarely feels overwhelming.

The world has set rules and a set layout that keeps things grounded (for the most part; StarClan gets weirder with every arc and can't seem to decide the limits of its power). But within those rules, there are epic tales of battle and prophecy that kept me reading all night even as an adult.

The world of Warrior Cats feels lived-in, and I feel like I'm going home every time I enter Clan territory.

I hate Warrior Cats because sometimes a cat's eye color will change several times within the same book (there's an ongoing debate about whether Dovewing's eyes are green or blue). Sometimes siblings or first cousins will become mates because the family trees were forgotten.

Events that should only take one book to resolve themselves are stretched out over a six-book arc, and events that need more time to be processed by the reader are resolved in the last half of a book. There's a lot of quest plots that seem to be channeling Tolkien without realizing what made Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit such compelling stories, so they end up being nothing but filler.

There's also cases of straight-up character butchering. Turning a strong, capable cat into a whiny kit for plot reasons, or having a cat switch personalities without warning, erasing their previous character development. Or retconning their backstory so that it makes no sense or directly conflicts with the canon continuity that has been previously established.

I've often thought that the series has gone on way too long. The main series is five arcs long and there are several points where it would have made more sense to just end it there. But it basically prints money for HarperCollins, so the series continues. The quality has suffered as a result, and the series is a shell of its former self with occasional glimmers of what made it great.

I recently finished the spinoff Crowfeather's Trial, which blew me away and reminded me of how I felt when I first picked up Into The Wild all those years ago. I wasn't going to continue the series after reading it, but now I'm looking forward to seeing more of Crowfeather, a character I originally hated.

I want to continue reading so I can see Warrior Cats end on a high note. I want to see it end, period. I'd rather it end while there's still some quality stories throughout, than drag on for so long that its former fans give up in disgust.