Guilty Pleasure: Warriors

Pretty much my biggest guilty pleasure is the Warriors book series. The books are written for 8-12 year olds I'm pretty sure, and in my defense that's when I started reading them. Now, at least seven years and twenty-nine books later, I'm still reading them.

The first book in the series. 

The first book was released in 2003, and, as ridiculous as it may sound, followed a typical house cat as he discovered four clans of cats living in fragile peace in the forest near his home. He is slowly adopted into one of the Clans and gets entangled in a conspiracy theory involving the murder of one of the clan's past leaders. Eventually war breaks out between the clans and he gets involved in that too, and then more things happen.

Yes, I know it sounds really stupid, but once you get a little bit into it the fact that the characters are cats sort of fades away
The books are surprisingly epic and well written. They remind me somewhat of a child's version of A Song of Ice and Fire, but, you know, with cats, and less dragons.

There is an incredibly large cast of characters with complicated family histories and alliances. There are hardly any characters that are purely good or bad, which ASOIAF fans will recognize, almost all the characters fall somewhere in the shades of gray in between.

The 29th book in the series. 

Another great aspect of ASOIAF seen in Warriors is the epic battles. ASOIAF has some of the best, huge battles in any books series, but it doesn't have one every other chapter. Sometimes, it's not even one per book. Warriors does the same thing. There's probably an average of two big battles every three books. That means the authors (Erin Hunter is actually four people) have to focus on actual plot, and there is a lot of it.

There is forbidden love, lots of mystery, politics, infighting, and surprisingly heavy themes for a series of children's books.

While I know I probably look like an idiot reading a book with text so large, and with large pictures of cats on the front, I can't help myself.
I usually read a Warirors book in between more heavy, interesting, but not too exciting books, like the one I just finished: Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights, which is basically 10,000 essays all saying the same thing: journalism is failing and it needs to be fixed. They make for a light, quick read, but not too light. There are a lot of big issues and questions put forth, such as wether or not a cat which can no longer hunt for the clan should continue to be feed and cared for by the clan. (Throughout the series you see several answers to this same question. Nothing is either black or white.)

So there. That's why I keep reading this series of children's books. Make fun of me if you want, but while you type into a computer trying to offend me, I'll spend the rest of my years reading Warriors.