Wings of Fire

• Why Books for Children and Young Adults?

Tui T. Sutherland’s Wings of Fire series is the kind of thing I wish I had available to read when I was a kid. I genuinely love this series and am glad my child introduced me to it, and to have read it, even if I had to wait until my forties. I also enjoyed Tui’s other books as well, and she regularly recommends books for both adults and children on her blog.

Wings of Fire has many of the things I appreciated about A Song of Ice and Fire: a wide variety of point-of-view characters, adventures spanning multiple continents, villains both sympathetic and sadistic, character redemptions, amazingly solid world-building, mysteries to which the solutions are often never entirely spelled out, a show-don’t-tell approach to illustrating the horrors of war, and set over the backdrop of a cruel world. Unlike ASOIAF, it’s also complete, and very few characters are killed off.

The books follow dragonet (young dragons) characters from different “tribes” with different physiological characteristics thrust into dangerous circumstances, with each of the main books following a single point-of-view character. Its fifteen main books are divided into 3 arcs of five books; there are also two separate “Legends” books, each with their own set of three point-of-view protagonists; and a collection of four short stories: Winglets. There are also graphic novel adaptations of the first eight books so far, with a new one being released annually.

A few things I really appreciated about these books

• emphasis on peaceful problem solving by the young characters, in spite of the adult characters often being selfish and cruel

• emphasis on empathy, and understanding not just what motivates other characters but also what conditions might have lead to their current situation

• emphasis on how understanding the differences between people & tribes can lead to better relationships and prosperity

• having characters who are both reptilian and from different tribes each with different customs, physiological needs, & biome habitats offers interesting opportunities to explore alternate family structures and societal customs

• a magic system that really gets into the cost of magic & the power that it comes with: according to legend, magic usage consumes the magician’s soul

• the ethics of power: physical strength, intellectual ability, societal power, mystique & notoriety, the aforementioned magic, mind-reading, future-seeing, and more

• many things are left up to the reader to figure out: the true nature of Nightwing powers; what actually drives magic-users towards megalomania; the nature of the arc-centering prophecies as fate vs. consequences vs. scheming; the relationships between certain characters we encounter in disparate contexts; and more

• how the dragon characters come to understand that the humans in their world are actually sentient creatures and not just particularly adept squirrels

• most all of the point-of-view characters are dealing with some kind of trauma and resulting inner turmoil, and their books see them overcome this

• there were plenty of opportunities to pause and discuss why behaviors from antagonistic characters was not right, and how to spot and respond to such behavior from people in real life

A few content warnings

My initial comparison to A Song of Ice and Fire is not without merit: The first five books are set against the backdrop of a war that’s been going on for a generation. The protagonist characters of that arc, who are in dragon age the equivalent of early teenagers, are captured and made to fight in arena combat for entertainment; they are later re-captured and one is almost killed out of neglect due to inter-tribal animosity; one tribe is horribly cruel and has plans to commit either genocide or enslavement of another; and most of the adult characters in this world are vindictive, cruel, and unhesitatingly violent. And that’s just the first five books!

The war ends after the fifth book and the harms become less about physical violence and more about psychological, societal, or structural violence, and while those may be less graphic they may perhaps be more fundamentally horrifying. The third arc introduces a new continent dominated by a tribe that’s created an apartheid society over a second tribe and attempted genocide against a third. Be prepared for some uncomfortable questions.

My child had first requested me to read this book to them at age six, though the books are more aimed at middle grades (ages 8–12). I, for one, think kids can not only handle such things when introduced appropriately, but also that it’s important for kids to understand that there is not just evil in the world, but people who would do evil to them if given the opportunity.

A few personal highlights

The books whose characters I had the most reservations about to turned out to be my favorites:

The Brightest Night follows Sunny, a Sandwing dragonet who is relentlessly positive, trusting, and optimistic, to the point where her fellow dragonets don’t necessarily trust her. I found her annoying, but it was her optimism, willingness to see the best in others, and the intelligence of empathy that gives her the drive and tools necessary to figure out how to end the war in a manner that resulted in an actually good outcome rather than the “least worst” one I was expecting. I think she might have been the only character in the series who could have pulled that off.

Dragonslayer follows three young humans during the events of the first arc. I wasn’t looking forward to this, perhaps because the dragons seemed so much more interesting. It holds up a mirror and shows how humans can be just as horrible as the monsters they’re trying to avoid being eaten by, provides a lot of great intersections with the events of the first arc, all insightful and some humorous. All three of the protagonist characters were delightful to read, and Wren is an amazingly-written character.

Escaping Peril’s titular character Peril is a Skywing dragonet introduced in the first book who has a dangerous condition that kills anyone who touches her. She is the Skywing Queen Scarlet’s champion and in our sparse interactions with Peril until this book she comes off as unreliable at best, sociopathic at worst — understandable, having killed countless dragons on behalf of the queen.

This book turned out to be my favorite of the series. Its examination of how Peril had been psychologically manipulated by Scarlet since birth to become her weapon is an amazing child-friendly tour of narcissistic abuse patterns, and Peril’s redemption proved tremendously satisfying.

The Dangerous Gift returns us to the main continent of Pyrrhia after three books set on the newly introduced continent of Pantala and its three new tribes of dragons. It is centered on Snowfall, new queen of the Icewings, whose isolationist society as introduced in Winter Turning has a very rigid caste hierarchy full of pride, honor, and strict codes of behavior. I didn’t like the Icewings. I didn’t want the story to return to Pyrrhia. The book follows Snowfall’s transformation from a justifiably paranoid young queen bound by tradition into an empathetic ruler who understands her own agency, and how finding solutions that benefit everyone will ultimately help her tribe more in the long run than selfishness would. Her story made the arc’s jaunt back to Pyrrhia worthwhile.

Aside from that, I also quite enjoyed the characters of Kinkajou and Qibli, both of whom remind me a lot of myself, though Qibli has dedicated haters. Darkstalker was a wonderfully sympathetic antagonist, and Deathbringer as a comic-relief assassin reminded me of Discworld, and his origin story was my highlight of Winglets. Tui’s world-building is solid and I didn’t have trouble suspending my disbelief until I tried rationalizing the ecosystem of The Poison Jungle, despite the world not really having enough food to sustain a society of massive predators who don’t seem to have organized agriculture or livestock.

If you’ve got middle-grade kids who are into fantasy worlds, I highly recommend checking out this series for them. And yourself.