Wings of Fire by Tui T. Sutherland

On a Zoom call in mid-June, my eleven-year-old nephew, who until this point in all our family Zoom calls had not said a word unless a question was pointedly asked of him, all of a sudden started waving around a book and suggesting that everyone read it.  I was, frankly, astounded. He's a quiet kid who likes cars and football trading cars, but is kind of nervous about drawing attention to himself.  The book was Wings of Fire: The Dragonet Prophecy.  Immediately, another one of my nephews started talking about how good it was and HOW HAD I NEVER HEARD OF THIS BOOK?  Anyway, I immediately put in on my hold list at the library because my nephew recommended a book to me. I enjoy my little nerds.

Note: These are middle readers. The lexile score places these as appropriate for third to eighth graders.  So this isn't great literature, but it's not NOT great literature. 

The Dragonet Prophecy (Volume One): So there are seven dragon tribes and they each have an alliance in an ongoing war over control of the dragonverse.  The book starts with a run-down on each of these types of dragons.

MudWings: Brown dragons who can breathe fire if it's warm enough,  hold their breath for a long period of time, and are usually very strong.

SkyWings: Dragons with red-gold or orange scales who can breathe fire and are very powerful fliers with their enormous wings.

SandWings: Dragons the color of desert sand who have forked tongues and a poisonous barbed tail.  They can survive a long time in the desert without water, poison other dragons with their tails, and breathe fire.

SeaWings: Blue, green, or aquamarine colored scales, gills, and glow-in-the-dark stripes on their tails/snouts/underbellies.  They can breathe underwater, see in the dark, and are powerful swimmers who can do some serious wave-making with their tails.

IceWings: Silvery or pale blue scales, ridged claws to grip the ice, and forked blue tongues. They can withstand freezing temperatures and very bright light and exhale a deadly freezing breath. 

RainWings: Scales constantly shift colors that they use to blend into their surroundings which is good because, other than a prehensile tail that's good for climbing, RainWings don't have a lot of natural weapons in their arsenal.

NightWings: Purplish-black scales and scattered silver sales under their wings, so that they blend into the night sky when flying. NightWings can breathe fire, disappear into the dark, read minds, and foretell the future.  They are quite mysterious. 

After this introduction, we're told all about a prophecy about five dragonets who will end the ongoing war among the dragons.

Cut to those dragons.

Clay is a MudWing. He is loyal to the other dragonets, strong, and can stay underwater for long periods of time. The book is told mostly through his point of view.

Glory is a RainWing.  RainWings weren't mentioned in the prophecy, but her egg was chosen as a replacement for a SkyWing egg that was broken.  The adult dragons who "take care" of the dragonets refer to Glory as lazy, but we learn there's more to her than the caretakers know about.  Glory is smart and studies history and whatever little bits of knowledge the caretakers tell them about how the dragon tribes fight, live, and feed.

Sunny is a SandWing. She's smaller than most of her kind, her eyes are grey-green instead of black, her scales are gold instead of a pale sand color, and her tail doesn't end in a poisonous barb, meaning she doesn't have much in the way of self-defense.  Her name is her personality, though, and Sunny is cheerful and trusting.

Tsunami is a SeaWing. She's quick-tempered and a dive in a body of water generally makes her feel better when things are going wrong.

Starflight is a NightWing. He's not really much of a personality in this book, but I'm hoping that comes through soon enough.

Anyway, all of this is the first thirty pages of the book. So much exposition! The adult dragons who "take care" of the dragonets are actually kind of mean and abusive.  The dragonets devise a plan to escape and when they manage to do so, they're almost immediately caught and imprisoned by Queen Scarlet, the leader of the SkyWings.  Much of the book is about how they will escape from Scarlet's evil clutches and gladiator-style arena fights to the death.  We end the book learning about Clay's family and a secret about Tsunami's family.  

The Lost Heir (Volume Two): In this book, we switch from Clay the MudWing's perspective to Tsunami, the SeaWing's perspective. Tsunami's egg was stolen from the royal hatchery by the dragon Webs before she was born and she's eager to return to her mother, Queen Coral.  While the queen welcomes Tsunami, some mysterious element has been murdering Coral's dragonets for years and it looks like Tsunami might be in danger.

This book spends a great deal of time with Tsunami, her sister Anemone, Tsunami's ally Riptide, and introduces a gazillion SeaWings who are Coral's advisors. We don't spend much time with the other dragonets and that made me a little sad as I was reading this book.  

Tsunami is not my favorite dragon, but she does come around in the end. I thought this book was much less fun to read than the first one, but I'm hoping the series comes around when the POV switches to a dragon who is more fun to read about.

The Hidden Kingdom (Volume Three): We switch to Glory the RainWing's perspective here. The actual prophecy called for a SkyWing, not a RainWing, so the caretakers for the dragonets often called Glory lazy and let her know that she was, at best, a far second choice.  She feels separate from the other dragonets and like the group doesn't think she belongs.  But they head to the rainforest and find out that RainWings DO sleep a lot and that sleeping in the sun is crucial to RainWings, in terms of keeping their spirits and energy levels up.  Their village is amazing, camouflaged in the trees, peaceful and full of fresh fruit to eat.

But Glory's disappointed. No one even noticed that her egg had disappeared years ago. No one is noticing that there are a dozen missing RainWings from the village right now.  The RainWings are peaceful, sure, but they also do appear to be lazy and not willing to protect themselves.  But Glory and her friends are here to fix it.

I thought this book was quite fun to read. Glory is appropriately full of teenage angst.  There is a lot of action and the plot really chugs along. I'm not sure I would have made it past the second book when I was a child, but this book would have pulled me right in.  

 The Dark Secret (Volume Four): Starflight the NightWing is kidnapped and taken to the Night Kingdom where we learn that the NightWings live on a volcano and they are pretty hungry because there's not a lot to eat and many of them are sick.  Starflight has been the most boring of the dragonets so far and he continues to be. He's insecure (which is a theme in all of the books) with his place in the gang, in love with Sunny, likes to read scrolls, speaks in very long, boring sentences, and is pretty sure he doesn't fit it with the NightWings. We meet another NightWing dragonet named Fatespeaker who is wonderful and adorable. We meet Starflight's father, another nerdy dragon.

But all is not well, obviously.  The queen hasn't been seen in years, the NightWings are torturing RainWings, and the volcano is about to erupt.  The dark secret is quite dark and I was not even mildly surprised by it when it came at the end of the book, but I imagine that many young readers will find it quite exciting.   It will be quite interesting to see what happens in the next book to finish out this series.  I'm looking forward to hearing Sunny's POV.

I found this the least compelling book in the series, though. We are with Starflight, who is incredibly boring, for the vast majority of the book and I wanted to see the rest of the gang, too!  Hopefully we rebound to end the series on a winning note.

The Brightest Night: (Volume Five): A satisfying conclusion to the original series. This one was told from the POV of Sunny as she goes around all the dragon kingdoms tying up loose ends and creating world peace.  Thumbs up for a happy ending, although I wasn't super keen on the set up for the next series, which I guess I knew Sutherland had to do. We did spend a lot of time with Sunny here and we didn't get to be with most of the gang, which is sad, but the last third definitely redeemed it.  

So, I don't know that I think this series is amazing, but I can't wait to talk to my nephew about it and slowly give him all the dragon books I love as he gets older!