24 Hour Readathon--Intro post plus Wings of Fire: the Lost Continent

Hi I'm Charlotte, reading from Rhode Island.  There is no particular book I'm hoping to read: I'm hoping the 24 Hour Readathon this weekend will help me make progress in general; the thought of spending a good chunk of tomorrow eating ice cream and reading is very appealing!  It is horribly muggy here in Eastern Standard Time....

Half an hour into reading, I've finished the book I was on--Wings of Fire: The Lost Continent, by Tui T. Sutherland (Scholastic, middle grade, June 2018).   This is the latest installment in a long-running and very, very popular series of books about young dragons.  There are several series-es, each starring a fresh group of young dragon characters, and The Lost Continent is the start of a new set of adventures.  So it's a reasonable place to start your Wings of Fire reading, if you really don't want to go back to the beginning (The Dragonet Prophecy; here's my review).

The Lost Continent wasn't, of course, lost to the tribes of dragons who already lived there, and young readers who love all the care and attention paid to making each tribe of dragons distinct and special will love meeting three new varieties of dragon.  It wouldn't be much of a story, though, if the three groups of dragons lived in harmony and nothing happened.  So, as it is the case throughout the books, there is bitter and unjust conflict in which bad things happen to good dragons.  There is also genocide and the worst dragon-racial injustice of any of the previous books.  This made it hard reading, especially at first, because until I got invested in the particular dragon characters, I wasn't at all sure I wanted to spend time with the Hivewings and the Silkwings (the Tree Wings weren't on those first few pages, because genocide).

But Blue, the young Silkwing who's the central protagonist, grew on me, and then he teams up with Cricket, a most unconventional Hivewing who is my most favorite dragon of the whole series.  She is smart and sharp and thinks for herself and loves books and questions things, which makes her a great candidate for an important role in the revolution!  It makes her a good balance for Blue, as well--he's an interesting sort of hero, because he doesn't actually want to cause trouble; he wants to cooperate.  When he realizes that cooperation is no longer an option., because of terrible circumstances, he has to practice very hard at not following rules.

And once again I find myself in the position of closing the book, and wanting the next one now!  Especially since, as we knew would happen from reading the ending  reading the previous series, Moon gets to enter this story too!

I just looked back at my review of The Dragonet Prophecy, and see that I said:

But even beyond those details of story, what pleased even cynical me most was that there were themes here that I was happy to have my son think about--loyalty to friends transcending blind loyalty to tribe, the need to empathize with other points of view, the need to try your best to shape your own destiny, and not be someone's tool, and the senselessness of war.

and I continue, with this new adventure, to appreciate the way in which Tui T. Sutherland can make readers think, and care, and want to change, bad and difficult things without being preachy, and to show darkness, but with the hope that it can be lifted.