/lit/ - Literature

Wings of Fire 6: Moon rising


To my surprise, I enjoyed this book more than any of the original five though the Darkstalker continues to have been a fucking masterpiece.

The prophecy dragonets from arc 1 were so well developed as they discovered their families and kingdoms that I assumed the next generation would be but a shadow of that especially since these characters are explicitly children. This book did an excellent job of shifting the reader's focus away from the Dragonets of Destiny to a new cast of characters who (thank goodness) are super unique on their own and do not feel like ripoffs of the Dragonets' characters.

Gist of the things: it's a few months after the first five Wings of Fire books, and the characters from that series are teachers now at a school that attempts to mend relationsamong the dragon tribes caused by the long war. Moonwatcher our POV is a Nightwing, and she's the first Nightwing in two thousand years to actually be born with powers of mindreading.
The tone was less world ending here than the previous series. This was probably a good thing as it allowed a more gentle entry into the new arc. There is a new macro arc with Darkstalker's return being imminent but most of this book works well as a standalone mystery story about string of terrorist attacks on the school for former child soldiers.


The mind-reading ability of the main character Moon, made for a powerful crutch and especially enjoyable point of view that bounces around to everyone in the scene. This ability is a powerful tool for exposition, essentially turning the 1st person pov into a 3rd person one and allowed for a huge amount of character development, insight, and backgrounds to be provided for the other characters around her with minimal effort. In fact, I am somewhat worried about losing out on this insightful perk in future books after getting so used to it over Darkstalker and this one. I am also worried about losing Darkstalker as essentially a second main character since he continues to be amazing here as he was in his standalone novel.

rating: 4.7