Well, I had a few thoughts I wanted to share with regards to the Six, the fiendish leaders of the Lords of Prey. As expected, these guys played a pretty relevant role in Ember's End, and it's stirred up some consideration (for me, at least) or their presence in the series as a whole. Now, as you might imagine, this means that there will be SPOILERS from Ember's End in this post, which those of you who have not yet finished the book may not want to be exposed to. As such, I am hoping that this paragraph will be sufficient to let you know ahead of time that such material is ahead, and thus will be a concern if you haven't yet completed the book. So, if you don't want to find out anything ahead of time, now is your time to leave.

Are they gone yet? Okay, let's move on.

I personally felt like the presence of the Six in Ember's End was a bit of a letdown, given the setup we got for them, both in previous installments and in Ember's End itself. The final book sets these guys up as demonic foes, enemies whom no single rabbit could hope to defeat. However, in practice-with the exception of Morbin-there seems to be little setting them apart from every other Preylord. With the exception of Morbin, no one is seen even trying to take on one of the Six without the use of ranged weapons. This is smart, of course, but at the same time I feel like it kind of hurts their chances to stand out.

On another instance, Morbin seems to be the only member of the Six who has any real significance. Falcowitson is literally standing in for his father, and dies in the exact same fashion with less page time. We don't even know the NAME of one of the remaining Six, and the ones we do know the names of aren't referred to in the text. Did Jo take out Gern, or is there another eagle among the Six? Was the hawk Jo also took out Vardon?

Personally, I think I would have introduced the concept of the Six earlier and/or not been concerned with having the full tally during the final battle. No bringing in Falcowitson to fill the empty space in the ranks; Five would have been plenty, or even Four. On that note, I think it might have been better if Picket had fought and killed Gern in Ember Falls, as opposed to taking out some random nameless raptor. We know Gern was at Rockback Valley, in command, but very little seems to have come of his presence there. For that matter, losing the top-ranking wolf AND bird there would probably have gone a long way towards allowing the Cause to survive that battle, as much if not more so than the personnel from Cloud Mountain.

Now of course, this is all my personal opinion, and I'm saying it as one who gets to enjoy reading the book, not the one who had to take on the task of writing it. It could be that in S.D. Smith's place, I would have had things with the Six play out just as they did in the books. But I thought I'd give my two cents, and see how other folks feel.