Darkstalker, by Tui T. Sutherland

Tui T. Sutherland's Wings of Fire books are deservedly wildly popular with their target middle grade audience (and me).  The books are set in a world full of warring clans of dragons, each clan with its own physiological and cultural differences.  The first series is about young dragons working to bring peace to their war torn world.  The second series introduces a new group of dragons, who meet at a dragon boarding school for intercultural understanding, and then go off and have adventures.  Though this story line (now at three books) is going to continue, Tui T. Sutherland found herself taking a break from it to go way back in time and write the story of Darkstalker, an enigmatic, incredibly powerful, and trapped dragon who the young boarding school dragonets come into contact with...and then have to decide if they want to free him from his horrible fate.

So Darkstalker, the first book of the Wings of Fire Legends series (Scholastic, June 28, 2016) can be read as a standalone book, the story of three young dragons caught in trap of magic.  Fathom is a young Seawing dragon who has the animus power of magic that turned his grandfather into a homicidal maniac ( a very appealing new character).  Clearsight is a Darkwing with an extraordinary prophetic gift.  And Darkstalker is the child of on an animus Icewing prince, now exiled, and a Darkwing, and he has all the gifts of magic possible, making him the most powerful dragon ever.  When he transfers his animus powers to an enchanted scroll, he avoids the trap of insanity that goes with that magic, and now there are no limits to what he can accomplish.  Except, perhaps, for Clearsight's prophecies and her love for him, and his for her.  But will that be enough to keep Darkstalker from being corrupted by all the power at his disposal, and keep him from using it to get the revenge he wants on those who have wronged him?

When we meet Darkstalker in Moon Rising, it's not at all clear if he is good or evil, or in-between...and this mystery adds tension to the book and its sequels.  So you shouldn't read Darkstalker first on its own, because then you will have a very clear idea of just what sort of dragon he is....and it isn't pretty.  Although if  you do read this one as your introduction to Wings of Fire, you might have hope that there will be a happy ending, fans of the series know already that that didn't work out.  There were good reasons why he ended up imprisoned.  In fact, one of the things he does is so very horrible that there doesn't seem to be much chance of redemption for him, and it's so horrible that sensitive readers will not want that image in their heads at all (forcing another dragon to eat himself alive).   The Wings of Fire books don't shy away from violence, but this is the most extreme example.

That being said, fans of the books will enjoy this one too (and already have, judging by the long string of five star reviews on Amazon)--the dragons are all well-characterized, and the experience is as immersive as ever.  Except that for the first time I was a tad bothered by a bit of the world building--there were some problems of scale, because if the dragons are so big that they keep humans (aka scavengers) as small pets in cages, why are they growing human-scale plants in window boxes?  But that will probably not trouble the many young fans at all.

And now I can continue to look forward to the next book in the main series, knowing that things are going to be very tense indeed....

Side note--the Wings of Fire website has lots of fun things to do, and a friendly fan community, and now origami has been added to the mix, which I had hoped my boys and I would try out in time for this review, but it was not to be....

The Dragon of the Month Club, by Iain Reading

The Dragon of the Month Club, by Iain Reading (CreateSpace 2014), is a fun portal fantasy with some of the nicest dragons I've read about all year.

A chance encounter in their town's library makes Ayana and Tyler friends--both are outsiders, Ayanna because she is new to town, Tyler because he's a quirky geek.  And a chance encounter of Ayana's foot with a library shelf makes their new friendship into a magical partnership, when "How to Conjure Your Own Dragon in Six Easy Steps" falls at their feet.  The magical conjuring promised by the book really works, and before they know it, the two kids are members of the Dragon of the Month club.  Every month the book offers them the opportunity to conjure a new dragon, and happily the dragons are friendly, cooperative, and easily de-conjured again.   But when they conjure a steam dragon for the first time, they slip up...and find themselves thrown outside of our world, into a land that's a world-sized recreation of Tyler's bedroom.

All the furniture is transformed to geographical features, and the land is populated by characters from the books Tyler had lying around.  The two of them can't think of any way to get home on their own, so they decide to journey across the bedroom land to the tower where a wise scientist (from a factual book series) lives, in the hopes that he can help them.   Some of the books that are now part of reality are not nice at all, like the German fairy tales they find themselves in first.  Others are fun adventures--the Fremen of Dune are helpful, to a point, and their adventure with Sherlock Holmes is lots of fun.  But it takes all of Ayana's and Tyler's dragon conjuring skills to bring them the help they need, and it was delightful to meet all the dragons (it's a really nifty assemblage of dragon-ness!).

The ending, though, is an utter cliffhanger, promising even  more, ramped up and dangerous, adventure to come before they can get home again!

It's a solid book; Ayana and Tyler are perfectly fine young protagonists,  and the dragons are delightful!  The portal fantasy is coherently interesting, and I appreciated that the encounters with fiction (an idea that's been used a lot in middle grade fantasy recently) were ones I'd never seen in similar book-world stories.  That being said, a large part of the fun comes from knowing the stories in question; Dune and Sherlock Holmes might not have been read by the target audience yet!

Short answer-- kids of eleven or so who love dragons might well enjoy it lots. A tad too episodic for my own personal taste, but that's the nature of the story.

Villain Keeper (The Last Dragon Charmer Book 1), by Laurie McKay

Villain Keeper (The Last Dragon Charmer Book 1), by Laurie McKay (HarperCollins, middle grade, February, 2015), starts as if it is going to be a standard medievally boy on dragon-slaying quest story, but bang!  things take a surprising turn when our young hero, Prince Caden, finds himself magically transported to Ashville, North Carolina. How will he find a dragon to slay there in the mundane world?  And how will he ever get home again?  A young magic user, Brynne,  has fallen through with him, and though her magic still works, she has no clue how to get them back where they belong.  (Caden's beautiful white stallion ends up in Ashville too, adding bonus beautiful brave horse elements for the horse-loving kid).

So Caden finds himself in foster care, enrolled in the public school system (where he is, later in the book, joined by Brynne).  But Caden's school has a very peculiar set up, one that makes clear why the book has the title it does.  And when Caden becomes determined to track down a missing girl, Jane Chan, who disappeared from his foster home a little bit earlier, he finds himself in the thick of dangers just as magical as those he might have expected to find back home.  And the lack of dragons proves not to be much of a problem after all! 

Caden's character is initially defined by his all-consuming desire to reach Elite Paladin status, and win the respect of his father and numerous older brothers.  Elite Paladin aspirations and ideals fit somewhat awkwardly into the social norms of our world; as he realizes this, Caden gradually becomes a more developed character (which is good, because he starts the book as a cardboard sterotypical kid hero wanna-be), finding friends and a place in a family that, despite being a foster care placement, offers him more than his own royal family did.  I also enjoyed seeming him learning the potential of the magical gift bestowed on him when he was born; I like people finding out how to get mileage from seemingly not that thrilling magical gifts!  Brynne is obnoxious and not especially kind, but she brings an engaging sort of thumbing her nose attitude to the vicissitudes of the situation.  And Caden's new foster brother, Tito, determined to find out what happened to Jane, adds a nice counterweight on the good kid side.

It's fun and engaging.  Kids will be amused by Caden's mis-steps with modern technology, and readers of all ages will find the titular "villain keeper" fascinating.  With its highly irregular fantastical set up, Caden's new school (where the lunch ladies might really be witches) makes for entertaining, seasonally appropriate (back-to-school-time), reading.

Aside:  sometimes I think I read a lot more like the ten year old target audience than whoever reviews MG fantasy for Kirkus.  After writing this, I went and read their review, and am now scratching my head trying to figure out when "the characters frequently seem to know more than they should...."  This did not cross my mind; I guess I take it for granted when characters in books (also Real Life) know more than me about what's going on.  They have more invested in the story, for one thing, they have longer to think about it (the days they live through, as opposed to the hour and a half of reading time I get, and they are right there, able to pick up on nuance and detail, and they have existing knowledge that I don't have access to).

disclaimer: review copy received from the author
 

Winter Turning (Wings of Fire Book 7) by Tui T. Sutherland

Of all the books I got at BEA, the one I read first for my own personal pleasure was Winter Turning, the 7th book in a series about young dragons reshaping their war torn world (Scholastic, June 30).  War between the dragon clans had been going on for years, and many dragons had died, horribly and unforgivably.  Now the war is over, and young dragons are being asked to forgive the past and to work together to build peace.  It is hard, almost unimaginably hard, when loved ones on all sides have died, many in horrible circumstances.  But it is possible...because among the young dragons are some who are just really great people, who believe friendship is possible.

This particular book focuses on a young Ice Wing, Winter, who isn't at all convinced.  His harsh upbringing (I don't want to be a young Ice Wing!) hasn't prepared him for peace in general, and his main concern is not the good of some abstract Dragonkind, but saving his older brother, still a prisoner of the war.   But to save his brother, Winter might have to betray dragons from other clans who he is starting to care about, who might even be friends...the next book can't come soon enough!

This series is beautifully character driven, each book being from a different dragon's point of view.  There's plenty of action and excitement, but what really makes this a Really Outstanding Full of Kid Appeal (and I don't Capitalize Lightly) set of books is that the dragons are so unique, so strong in some ways, so hurt in others, and the problems they are grappling with are so (sadly) germane to conflicts in our own world that the books are more than just entertainment (though they aren't preachy).  All the various dragon cultures and idiosyncrasies are fully detailed too, making the world building something to enjoy lots!

If you have a fourth or fifth grader, start them on the series (and speaking as a parent, the fact that it's a nice long series is something to be happy about too, viz keeping one's children reading.  They will be hooked and the books will take them through a good part of the summer).  The first book is perhaps the most violent of the series (with dragon pitted against dragon in an arena of death) but there's so much more than violence going on that I would not hesitate to give it to any random 9 year old I happened to run into on the street.

For those who, like me, are already hooked--the next book, which comes out in January, is from Peril's point of view!  I can't wait.  (This is the sort of thing that makes me really glad I started a book blog.  I will probably get a review copy, and give it to my son at Christmas, and he will be So Happy!)

Disclaimer:  received from the publisher

Scorched, by Mari Mancusi, for Timeslip Tuesday

It's kind of late in the day, and this book kind of didn't work for me, but Timeslip Tuesday has a powerful pull on my spirit, so here are my tired and somewhat rambling thoughts on Scorched, by Mari Mancusi (Sourcebooks Fire Sept. 2013)-- time travel from an appolyptic future with dragons, which is a pretty great hook.  In my mind, however, the book doesn't quite do it justice.

The future is a scorched wasteland, because once dragons were rediscovered they were genetically manipulated to be weapons, and they got loose and burned with savage ferocity and were pretty impossible to kill, unless you were a really good dragon killer.   And in this burny future, one young woman from our time was pretty much blamed for bringing dragons back into the world, even though she wasn't the bad dragon gene manipulator.

In the present, this young woman, Trinity, has no idea that the dragon's egg her grandpa just paid all their last money for really is a dragon's egg, or that she and the baby dragon are destined to be psycically bonded soul-mates.   So it's something of a surprise to her when a strange dude from the future, Connor, shows up to stop the egg from becoming a dragon (saving the future from its scorching).  Adding to the surprise is the arrival of a homeland security type swat team (though how they knew to come wasn't clear to me) who want her to surrender the egg to them. 

Connor wants Trinity to trust him, and to agree that her unhatched dragon should be destroyed.  But Connor has a twin brother, Caleb, who has also traveled back through time who wants Trinity to trust him instead, and to save the dragon to breed a race of unkiller dragons who will be good for humanity.  What ensues is a lot of the two guys telling her to trust them, her being uncertain about who to trust, and insta love with both of them (complicated by trust issues).

The book has an exciting beginning, a rather long middle of trust issues and explication that didn't explicate much, and an ending of sudden excitement that was almost enough to make me want to read the next book (Shattered).  But Sorched wasn't to my taste.  I was uninterested by the middle, and grew sick of Caleb calling Trinity "Princesses" (which he did every time he opened his mouth just about), and unconvinced by the world building (like the existence of a Nether world that can be accessed by people with psychic gifts such as the twins and Trinity where there's lots of wish fulfilment), and the whole business of loving bonds with dragons wasn't fresh and new and fascinating to me (though Trinity's dragon is rather charming) and the whole issue of events in the present changing the future was murky at the beginning, and became much more so.  Connor, for instance, is bent on changing the future even if the hellish one he's come from full of killer dragons will continue on in one version of reality, but at least humanity will be spared in an another, if he can change things, which seems odd, but even more complicating was the fact that folks from Caleb's faction were bouncing back into Trinity's time right and left so there doesn't actually seem to be any sort of uncontaminated present left to change.  And where on earth did the mutated dragons in the secret lab come from if Trinity's dragon was the only one left???? 

Mancusi's writing didn't gel for me;  too often, I found myself reading it with an eye for how it wasn't working for me, rather than as a story I was interested in.  And that, along with too many questions, too much time on trust issues (though goodness knows, they were required by the set up), double the usual insta love, and too many princess references makes me not able to actually recommend this one with anything but a rather tepid "it is an interesting idea and if you love baby dragons and double insta love sounds fun and you are cool with psychic powers having popped up in humanity with our heroine just happening to have her fair share along with dragon bonding you might want to read it."

Book number two, Shattered, which came out Sept 2014, sounds better because instead of bad guys from the future manipulating not just the characters but time itself (with no explanation of How they do it) it sounds like straightforward girl and the two guys in love with her on the run from government agents who want her baby dragon.  Which seems like it make for a tighter, more holding together sort of story.

Lily Quench and the Treasure of Mote Ely, by Natalie Jane Prior (for Timeslip Tuesday)

Lily Quench and the Treasure of Mote Ely, by Natalie Jane Prior (Puffin 2004) was supposed to have been the Timeslip Tuesday book both last week and the week before, but things happened that kept me from finishing it the first week, and the second week I just didn't feel like it.  But here it is now, even though I still don't have much to say about it.

The Lily Quench books are a series, currently at seven books, first published in Australia.  They are Elementary grade-level fantasy, good for strong readers in second and third grades, 7 or 8 year olds.  They tell of the adventures of young Lily, last of  family of Dragon Slayers, who sets off to slay a dragon and save her kingdom...and ends up becoming friends with the Dragon Queen. 

Lily Quench and the Treasure of Mote Ely is the third of the series, and the only one I've read.   Lily is kidnapped and dragged back into the past.  There she must search for a long lost treasure, keep a rampaging dragon from killing her and the friends ho have followed her back in time,  while thwarting the bad guys.

It's fairly standard light medieval castle adventure, perfectly fine, but not remarkable.  What makes it interesting from a time travel point of view is that the attacking dragon is Lily's own dragon friend in the present...who of course has no memory of their friendship.   A nice twist, that's surprisingly rare in time travel books.

In any event, if you do have an elementary school-aged kid who likes medievally adventures and human-dragon friendships, this is a perfectly fine series (and it is always a lovely peaceful feeling as a parent to hook a kid on a series...).  If you are not such a kid yourself, there's no particular reason to read this, although I did not mind reading this one.   Apparently (based on a Goodreads review) Lily is more of an active heroine in other books, which may well make those more appealing to older readers...

A Dragon's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans, by Laurence Yep & Joanne Ryder

A Dragon's Guide to the Care and Feeding of Humans, by Laurence Yep & Joanne Ryder (Crown Books for Young Readers, March 2015) is a lovely twist on the currently popular care of magical creatures sub-genre of middle grade fantasy.  In this case, a dragon, Miss Drake, considers a human girl to be her pet, and as the growing friendship between the two is framed by the dragon's perception that the girl is the one to be trained and raised up properly. 

The dragon had had a previous pet, a woman she nicknamed Fluffy.  But Fluffy grew old, and died.  Miss Drake is distracted from her grief by the arrival of ten-year-old Winnie, Fluffy's great-niece.  Winnie had been told about the dragon, and set out to find her rooms in her great-aunt's big old house first thing.  Miss Drake is very doubtful, not being at all sure she is ready for a new pet, especially a vigorous and curious one like Winnie, who will need a lot of training.   But it turns out that Winnie is just what Miss Drake needs to make life interesting again, and Winnie, who is herself mourning the loss of her father, also finds happiness from their friendship.

And in the meantime, there are magical highjinks aplenty, for Miss Drake is not the only fantastical inhabitant of San Francisco....When the sketches Winnie draws in  a magical notebook escape from their pages, the two must find and re-capture them before they can work mischief.  There is enough tenseness to keep the story going, but no so much so as to be scary, or to overshadow the character- driven side of the book.

It is fun, and funny, and sincerely moving, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to any younger middle grade readers who would love to make friends with a dragon!

In the Time of Dagon Moon Blog Tour--Interview with Janet Lee Carey

It's my pleasure today to welcome Janet Lee Carey, who's latest book, In the Time of Dragon Moon (Kathy Dawson Books, March 2015, YA), is the sort of book that will please those who enjoy generous helpings of dragons, romance, fantasy that's an integral part of the world building, and engaging characters!  It is the third of her books set in a sort of alternate Britain (the first being Dragon's Keep, the second Dragonswood), in which dragons and elves are very real, and in which marriage has occurred between those two races and the ruling human family. 

In this installment of the series, Uma, a young girl from the indigenous people of this kingdom tries to save her people's future by serving as the physician to the mad queen, who is desperate to have another child.  The queen has killed or imprisoned all her previous doctors, but Uma has the additional fear for her people, who are being held hostage contingent on her success.... Uma, who has had to push her way into being her father's apprentice in medicine (it was traditionally a male role), is scared and uncertain, but determined to do her best, which means that she must befriend the temperamental red dragon that was her father's friend to find the pharmacological herbs she needs.  And then to complicate matters, she and the king's nephew, Jackrun, who is part dragon and part fey, fall into loving each other while trying to unravel the mystery of the death of the Queen's firstborn son, which has further unhinged her mind...

Thank, Janet, for your lovely answers to my questions (which are in bold!)
 

-Your three dragon books are a series...but each can also stand alone.  I'm wondering if you knew there would be more books to come when you wrote Dragon's Keep, and planned accordingly, or if the second and third books were something of a surprise.  If the later is true, did you run into any problems in which your vision/world building/characterization in In the Time of Dragon Moon clashed with things in the earlier books?

When I first wrote Dragon’s Keep, I hoped there might be more books set in that world, but I did not plan on it. I wrote it before I was a published author and in those days I was still dreaming about and hoping I’d find a publisher who liked my books! That said, I did a lot of world building for Dragon’s Keep. The Kirkus review for In the time of Dragon Moon begins with the line: “Humans, dragons and fey coexist on Wilde Island, but this uneasy peace masks a simmering, mutual distrust.” I created a world rife with simmering tension and that gave me a lot of plot possibilities. I also landed on the idea to move from generation to generation so the reader sees familiar characters from the earlier books. So they meet the witch hunter, Tess and Bion in Dragonswood. And careful readers will recognize Jackrun from the epilogue. He’s just two years old then, and seventeen in this new book.

(me, Charlotte, just saying that here is the lovely cover of Dragonswood, and here's my review of it)

-Now that it’s established as a series, do you think there will be more books continuing the story of the Pendragons?

That’s partly up to the reading community. What I mean by that is authors can sell more books in a series as long as the series has enough of a following. So in that sense, readers have a say in what’s published. Of course I’d love to write more Wilde Island books. I have some ideas brewing.

-Many of your characters are different from those around them, either by virtue of mixed heritage or by physical differences.   Was this something you set out deliberately to include, or is it something that just keeps happening?  (With both your books and with Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman, I have been trying to decide when having dragon scales, or other elements of dragon anatomy, constitutes a disability....my answer being, it depends--both on physical ramifications and on people's response to the scales or claws or fire....Is this something you have thought about at all?)

Very insightful question! My main characters are set apart, and do feel different from those around them. That’s partly because it makes good fiction. Someone who sees things differently makes a good protagonist as well as a good antagonist don’t you think? It’s also because I have a heart for outsiders. I felt different from my peers, so I know what it’s like. Your thoughts on dragon scales are wonderful. Yes whether dragon scales or other dragon powers such as Jackrun has, are seen as a disability has to do with the person’s response to them as well as other people’s response to them. In Jackrun’s case, his nuclear family fully accepts dragon scales and sees them as a mark of honor. Uma feels the same, but Jackrun’s other power is more frightening, both Jackrun and his family have a hard time accepting it. Other members of the Pendragon family don’t even accept the dragon scales. The king and his son Prince Desmond hide theirs, and they ostracize Princess Augusta because she has dragon scales on her forehead and golden dragon eyes. 

-Uma, the central protagonist of Dragon Moon, is in an awfully frustrating position for the course of this story.   She has virtually no opportunities to say what she really thinks, because her people are being held hostage, and on top of that, she is struggling for the opportunity to be the person that her culture says she can't be--a woman who is a healer.  And I commend her for carrying on as calmly as she does!  Did this part of Uma's story make it frustrating for you, as its author, to write?  Or did knowing the ending help? 

 

I was certainly frustrated for Uma. And since an author needs to live inside a character’s skin while writing each scene, I felt what Uma felt. She’s in an awful situation. Yet terrible situations are the stuff of good stories. As a captive of the queen, Uma is forced to struggle toward freedom and independence. She carves her own path. I ended up loving that about her.

 

 -I love that your books have a Giving Back component.  Could you share a bit about how this came about, and how you chose the Giving Back direction for Dragon Moon?

 

I first started giving to a charity in conjunction with a book launch when my book The Double Life of Zoe Flynn came out – the story of a homeless girl who lives with her family in a van. At that time I worked with Hopelink, raising awareness of homelessness and we did some wonderful food drives on my school visits. After that I was hooked. As I worked on each new book, I considered which charity I would donate to, trying to match it to the book’s theme in some way. Offering readers a chance to donate, too, seemed right. I was also a founding diva of readergirlz. Outreach was a foundational part of that literacy and social media project and it still is. I chose Nature Conservancy’s Savethe Rainforest  project for In the Time of Dragon Moon after studying indigenous healers like Uma and her father, the Adan. In the course of writing the book, I learned about the ongoing destruction of the rainforests in the Amazon Basin, the place where vital medicinal plants grow. As it says on the Nature Conservancy site; “Probably no other place is more critical for human survival than the Amazon.”

I knew it would be the right charity outreach for the book.

-And finally, what other YA fantasy books, with or without dragons, would you recommend to readers who like this series, and vice versa? 

I love Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea series, and her Annals of the Western Shore series including, Gifts, Voices, and Powers. I also love Juliet Marillier’s Shadowfell books, Shadowfell, Raven Flight, and The Caller. And I’m a fan of Maggie Stiefvater’s The Scorpio Races.
 

About the Author
(photo credit Heidi Pettit)

Janet Lee Carey grew up in the bay area under towering redwoods that whispered secrets in the wind. When she was a child she dreamed of becoming a mermaid (this never happened).She also dreamed of becoming a published writer (this did happen after many years of rejection). She is now an award-winning author of nine novels for children and teens. Her Wilde Island Chronicles are ALA Best Books for Young Adults. She won the 2005 Mark Twain Award and was finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Janet links each new book with a charitable organization empowering youth to read and reach out. She tours the U.S. and abroad presenting at schools, book festivals and conferences for writers, teachers, and librarians. Janet and her family live near Seattle by a lake where rising morning mist forms into the shape of dragons. She writes daily with her imperious cat, Uke, seated on her lap. Uke is jealous of the keyboard. If Janet truly understood her place in the world, she would reserve her fingers for the sole purpose of scratching behind Uke’s ear, but humans are very hard to train.

Visit her website here

Thanks again to Janet Lee Carey for appearing, and thanks to the publisher for the review copy of the book!  For other stops on the Dragon Moon blog tour please click here.

 

Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman

Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman, continues the story of Seraphina, a young woman who's half-human, half-dragon, caught because of who, and what, she is in a war between the two species.  In an effort both to promote the possibility of peace, and to potentially gather the power to defend her homeland, she sets off on a journey to gather together others who are half-human, half-dragon.  She's looking for the specific people she's had living inside her mind--she made mental contact with them years ago, never knowing they were real.    What follows is not a peaceful journey in which new friends fall easily into her real life.  The other half dragons, some whose hybrid nature has resulted in deformities, some who have been rejected and ostracized because of who they are, don't necessarily want to be friends.  And among the denizens of Seraphina's mind was a young half-dragon woman, Jannoula, whose mental control far outstrips Seraphina's....and this woman wants to claim the minds, the wills, and the powers of the half dragons for her own ends. More personally, Seraphina is tremendously anxious (with good reason) about her dragon uncle (left in peril at the end of book 1), and tormented by her love for the prince who's supposed to be marrying the queen who is also her friend.....

So it's a pretty Seraphina focused story, with her internal life as important as external events.  Some interest comes from the travel elements of the story--though the new places and characters kind of just fall into place like beads on a string, some more memorable than others (some of the secondary characters I like very much indeed!).  Some interest comes from watching the progress of Jannoula's march of triumph through just about everybody's mind, although again this lacked tension, as it seemed inevitable and irresistible.    On top of that, Seraphina's romantic conflict left in tense place at the end of the first book kind of fizzles here--she and the prince have agreed to wait and see, and so it's kind of been put on a back burner while the more important issue of dracomachy is taken care of.

It was not till considerably far into the book (around about page 400) that the book really gripped me; I enjoyed the last 200 pages lots more than the first 400, not just because things started moving more quickly, but because of additions to the world building--like the time Seraphina spends with the quigs--despised cousins of dragons who have lots more too them than most people think, and the explanation of the saints of Seraphina's world.  In general, though, I did not think that Shadow Scale needed to be a long as it is, and I can't help but feel that Seraphina the character could have been allowed to face the Jannoula problem more proactively...

So not quite one for me, though if you loved Seraphina, which I didn't quite, you might well like Shadow Scale more than I do....(though I didn't Not like it.  Just thought it was too long.)

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

Knight-napped! (Dragonbreath Book 10), by Ursula Vernon

I love love love the Dragonbreath books, and I thrill to each new installment of the adventures of Danny Dragonbreath and his friends Wendell and Christina and all the other assorted reptile and amphibian characters who fill the pages of this series.   If you want a book to offer a seven or eight-year old with a sense of humor, especially an eight-year old who is maybe a bit geeky and who appreciates the snarky absurd, a Dragonbreath book is the Right Answer!!! 

In this installment, Knight-napped (Dial Jan. 2015), Danny's annoying cousin Spenser has been kidnapped by knights, and Danny and his friends rush off to the knights' castle to save him.  It is the details that make this fun, and happily there are enough details to make it very fun.

Why do I love these books?  Because Reasons, as my own boys would say, the reasons being:

1.  The books include of lots of graphics--illustrations that continue the action, as well as some that just illustrate, that break up the text and make things reader friendly for elementary school readers. 

2.  The above-referenced graphics delight me with their charm and personality.  So simple, yet so expressive! 

3.  Christina is a really really cool smart savvy feminist lizard and I love her.

4.  I like Wendell too, who is also a smart geek.

5.  I like Danny too, who though not book smart has his moments.....

6.  But mostly I love these books because I am grinning pretty much the whole time I read one, and that is good, because smiling actually forces the brain to release chemicals that make you happier.   So it is total win.

Here are Danny and Wendell climbing a tower; they have reached a gargoyle quite near the top, and
Wendell (terrified) perches desperately on it.

"You can't just stay there," said Danny.  "I mean, I suppose you can, but we don't  have much time to save Spenser-"

"You go save Spencer," said Wendell, eyes tightly shut.   "I will stay with the gargoyle.  I will name him Mister Scowly and we will be friends."  (page 126)

Wings of Fire: Moon Rising, by Tui T. Sutherland- my favorite of the series (because dragons at boarding school is awesome)

I am on a strict mission not to bring new books (bought or borrowed) into the home until I have read down my tbr pile.  But at the same time, being a good mother is important to me.  Therefore, it was with entirely unselfish motives that I bought Wings of Fire: Moon Rising, by Tui T. Sutherland (Scholastic, Dec. 1, 2014) for my eleven year old son (he was very pleased, and sat down and read it in a single sitting), and it would have made the house messy (making me a bad mother) to have left the book lying around until I'd finished my tbr pile, so of course I had to read it myself.  The fact that I truly enjoyed the first five books in the series about young dragons from different dragon factions bring peace to a war-land was immaterial (or not).

Anyway, I really enjoyed Moon Rising.   Tui T. Sutherland had not anticipated the series continuing on  when she started the whole thing, and the first five books tell a complete story ending with Peace.  But of course Peace is something that has to be worked at, and there were lots of loose ends of different dragon stories, and so the story goes on! (Yay!)

This book is perhaps my favorite of the series.  The dragons of the first books have founded a school that will be an institute for cross-cultural dragon understanding and learning, and they've gathered together young dragons (many of whom are deeply scarred by their experiences in the war, and most of whom distrust/fear/loath each other) to be the first students.   One of these students is Moonwatcher, a young Nightwing who has the Nightwing powers of telepathy and prophecy that were thought to be lost.  

Moon is overwhelmed by the mental clamor of all the dragons around her....but then her mind hears what sounds like a dangerous plot that could threaten the school...and then, on top of that, her mind makes contact with another Nightwing (a truly mysterious strange powerful is-he-good-or-bad dragon and it is all very interesting indeed) and she and her cohort of dragons (one from each tribe) are plunged into a dangerous mystery.

The Wings of Fire series is an excellent one to give upper elementary school readers--some tolerance for harsh and vivid violence is required, but alongside the horrors of war and its aftermath, strong messages of friendship, tolerance, and forgiveness are presented in a way that will appeal tremendously to young readers.

But what I really truly liked in this installment is the new kid at boarding school story that's a large part of the book--all the details of the different dragons, and their worries and concerns, and the classes and classrooms and teachers....I love good school stories.  And I love Moon and her friends. 

The Magic Thief: Home, by Sarah Prineas

The Magic Thief  was one of my favorite books of 2008. It was one of the first books I read for the Cybils that year, and it stayed firmly in the small group of books I was determined to push onto our final shortlist of elementary and middle grade speculative fiction. Happily, no pushing was required.

The passage of years has not changed my opinion-- it is a great book for a ten or eleven year old fantasy reader.   It has an interesting story, endearing characters, fascinating magic, a tough older man (Bennet) who knits and bakes biscuits (so few middle grade novels shatter gender stereotypes, and this is one of the best examples going!).

Then came The Magic Thief: Lost in 2009, and The Magic Thief: Found in 2010....which were kind of sadder, so it was harder for me to love them personally as much, and then Sarah Prineas wrote a whole different trilogy (Winterling, Summerkin, and Moonkind), which was lovely too, but it resulted in a long and anxious wait for those of us (like me and my target audience member child)  who love Conn and co. to pieces!

Now another Cybils season is here, and lo, The Magic Thief: Home (HarperCollins, September 2014) is not only in the world, it is on the list of nominated books, which means that I actually read it (all to often I fall into the trap of buying books I really really want to read right when they come out, and then letting them sit because, uh, I know I'll enjoy them....so at least this one didn't have too terribly long to wait).

It is a fourth book, and so best appreciated by those who loved the first three.   The action is somewhat slow to get going--Conn, his memories now restored, and his magical dragon Pip at his side, is trying to figure out his place in the world.  And so we meet old friends, see trouble beginning to brew, see Conn not being happy with what other people want him to be....and then Trouble starts, and things really get hopping.    An old enemy has returned to the city, and the fragile peace that Conn has brokered between its two magics is in jeopardy.  As is Conn's life, and the life of dear Pip the dragon, and lots of other things too.

It's all very satisfying.  Those who liked the first three books will like this one too.  

Small things that I especially liked:

Conn's sentimental attachment to the black sweater Bennet knit him.

The nascent romance between Rowan and Embre, and the fact that Embre is a character whose badly broken legs means he uses a wheelchair but that this does not define him.

Bennet's to-do list.

And most of all, the fact that this particular happy ending is one that satisfies my maternal heart--Conn is really truly home at the end.   And having a home where you are loved and your gifts and quirks of personality are appreciated is about the best ending there is.

The Eye of Zoltar, by Jasper Fforde

The Eye of Zoltar, by Jasper Fforde (HMH Books for Young Readers, upper middle grade, Oct. 2014 in the US) is the third book about an alternate United Kingdom that's totally dis-united into a mishmash of principalities, and in which magic and mayhem and mythical creatures are very, very real.  The main character is a 16-year-old orphan named Jennifer, who is the glue holding together a somewhat creaky establishment of professional magic users.  In this installment, Jennifer finds herself burdened with a somewhat impossible task--she must find the mythical Eye of Zoltar (a stone of tremendous magical power) or else the last two dragons face death at the hands of an malignant and impossibly wealthy sorcerer.  

The trail to the Eye of Zoltar leads to the Cambrian mountains, and in this world the only tourists who venture there are those for whom the risk of death adds to the rustic charm ("jeopardy tourism" sustains the Cambrian economy).  Since Jennifer and her companions (her almost boyfriend, Perkins, the young dragon Colin, and a snooty princess who's been magically swapped into a serving maid's body to teach her a lesson) are more or less sensible people, they would rather not risk dying....but they don't have much choice.

Wild adventure follows wilder one as they journey through the deadly Cambrian Empire.  But their young guide (a plucky 12 year old girl with deadly skills and an impressive resume of tourist survival) calculates their odds as a 50% rate of death...and encumbers them with three thrill-seeking tourists to provide warm bodies for the statistics to chew on.    And monsters are faced, spells are cast, the princess shows that she is more than just a pretty very plain serving girl's face (she has a head for finance that's almost magical itself--goat futures, for instance, have never been so entertainingly brought to life in a fantasy novel), and then there's a crashing cliffhanger of an ending.

So basically this is one of those books that's a collection of fantasy bon mots for the mind, a smorgasbord for the imagination, with the Eye of Zoltar serving as the McGuffin that gets things going (aside--I just learned that without Alfred Hitchcock, we might have been stuck with the word "weenie" to describe this sort of plot device.  Thanks, Alfred!).   Many of the bits of imagination are lovely--I utterly adored the messenger snails, for instance.   And the transformation of the princess into a likable character was tremendously enjoyable.

But those looking for rich, moving, characterization and story might be disappointed--the characters aren't allowed to feel much of anything emotionally, even under difficult circumstances, and so the reader isn't given a chance to either.    Book 1, The Last Dragonslayer, is brilliant (and I really truly recommend it),  Book 2 was just fine,  and this one was fun its own, somewhat Bitty, way.   That being said, I have high hopes for book 4--the set up for that is eyebrow-raising to say the least.

So in general I liked it well enough, but it wasn't quite the book I was hoping it would be.  And there were two things that annoyed me more than somewhat.

Thing that annoyed me professionally:  Australopithecines did not make beautifully knapped flint knives with bone handles.   If you are going to turn a character into an Australopithecine, read up about the subject first.

Thing that annoyed me (much more) because it smacked of racist colonialist attitudes and left a bad taste in my mouth:  the description of some of the indigenous Hotax persons of Cambria as "like humans, only stockier and with broader, flatter heads" (page 223).   Can't we just leave descriptions like that back in the 20th century?????

Thoughts on age of reader:

This is a series that straddles the middle grade/YA line.  Kirkus has it as 12 and up, but School Library journal pegs it as ages 9-12, and it's a Junior Library Guild Selection for that age group.   I am in the middle grade camp, myself.  Yes, Jennifer is 16 and she has a boy friend, but Luv is not front and center (there's just one kiss) and we barely see any emotional involvement, and what we do see is somewhat superficial.   And the dangerous adventure fun with bonus deaths/disasters is at the middle grade level (touched on with a light hand, and not such as would cause emotional trauma in the young, unless the reader is the sort of young who resents characters being killed off with no emotional weight given to their passing).  I can easily imagine a reader who thinks they are getting a YA book not being best pleased.  On the other hand, an 11 or 12 year old fantasy reader would quite possibly love it for what it is, and enjoy the bonus zest of feeling like they are reading "up."

Disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher

The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler

The Forbidden Library, by Django Wexler (Penguin, April 2014, middle grade) -- a review in three acts.

Act 1:  In which we meet Alice, and the Library

Alice, who quickly becomes an orphan once she
a.  realizes she's the heroine of a middle grade fantasy
b.  loses her father to a mysterious boat accident in which a nasty insect fairy person might have had a hand

is taken in by her "kindly" uncle who has
a.  a big house
b.  a big house with really strange and creepy staff of two and no clear reason for putting Alice in a maid's room at the top of the house
c.  a Forbidden Library

and Alice of course enters the Forbidden Library and starts becoming embroiled in its secrets.

Act 2:  In which there are magical secrets revealed
Setting:  a library with lots of mysterious bookish passages, nooks, etc, as well as (more unusually) places where the ambiance and environment contained within particular books leaks out, causing physical ramifications.

In the library, Alice meets
a. a cat
b. a boy
both of whom strike up conversations with her,

And finds that
a.  it is possible to read oneself inside certain books, after inadvertently doing so and almost being killed by the cute little deadly killers trapped inside.
b.  She's really good at reading herself into books, and now has psychic control over the whole host of cute little deadly creatures (this comes in useful in Act 3)

[The book is illustrated, but the picture of these little creatures is the only one I noticed because the cuteness is just too cute.  Does anyone else read so fast you can't remember if a book was illustrated or not?]

Act 3--In which we learn that not everyone can be trusted and there were lots of things people weren't telling Alice

Turns out Alice is being used to do something magical that might have ramifications and there is Potentially Fatal Adventure involving the denizen of a very dangerous book indeed....

It's a perfectly fine fantasy adventure, with a nicely detailed and intricate plot and setting ( although I expected more actual bibliophilia).   Not a huge amount of emotional depth, but that's not a necessary prerequisite for middle grade reading enjoyment, and there was enough actual rational thought and sincere feeling on Alice's part to make her more than a place-holder.  She also gets points for pluck.

So basically, I enjoyed reading it just fine, can easily imagine lots of 11 year olds enjoying it, don't particularly want to urge it on adult readers of middle grade fantasy in a Read This Now because My God it is Brilliant way,  but wouldn't want to dissuade anyone from reading it either.   I will be reading the sequel; it ends at a good ending place but clearly there needs to be more.

Those who like The Books of Elsewhere series, by Jacqueline West (another trapped by magic story, though in paintings, not books, and another one with talking cats) might well enjoy this too. 

Here is the UK cover, which I personally prefer; the US cover makes me think of Poltergeist.

Dragon Keeper, by Carole Wilkinson

Question:  Can one really recommend a book about a Chinese dragon in which the dragon has wings?  Or does that throw the whole story so off kilter that all that is good gets overshadowed?

This is the question I was forced to ask while reading Dragon Keeper (originally Dragonkeeper), by Carole Wilkinson (Hyperion, 2003; winner of Australia's Aurealis Award for best YA novel, but it's really middle grade).  It's the story of a girl in the time of China's Han Dynasty who is the slave of the Imperial Dragon Keeper.   He is a nasty piece of work, and the slave girl and dragons are cruelly neglected, to the point where all but one of the dragons have died.   Now the Emperor wants to be rid of the last of them....but the slave girl, who does not at this point even know her name, saves the dragon from the hunter charged with killing it, and the dragon (though wounded in the wing) flies off with her (and her pet rat).

The dragon tells her her name, Ping, and though Ping had thought that maybe she'd simply return home, this is not in the cards.  For one thing, the dragon hunter is after them, and has spread the story that she is a witch.  For another, the dragon doesn't want her too, and is rather insistent that they do things his way.  So Ping, her rat, and the dragon head off toward the mythical ocean (on foot, because of the wounded dragon wing).   And Ping finds that the dragon is taking a rather bossy tone with her, assuming she'll be there to look after the mysterious Dragon Stone that is his chief treasure, and it's a bit hard for her to trust him entirely.  But they journey together, outwitting the bad dragon hunter who's still after them, and meeting sundry other folk (including the new young emperor), and the dragon teaches her to develop the power of her qi (which is formidable, and magically efficacious) and shares Taoist bon mots with her.  And at last, after doubts and dangers, the secret of the Dragon Stone is revealed.

In short, it's a rather engaging "girl with special gifts on journey with dragon" story.  The Chinese setting adds interest (although in that sort of "here is an exotic setting adding interest to this fantasy story" way-- such that quotation marks are called for around "Chinese").  Ping is an appealing heroine (once she gets a name) whose dilemmas and decisions and dangerous circumstances make for good reading.  It gets a few bonus points for making Ping the first ever female Dragonkeeper, and one can cheer her on as she develops self-confidence and self-respect, and one can cheer as well for the brave rat friend.  However, the main dragon character is not my favorite dragon ever-why isn't he more open with Ping?  He's basically using her.  Why does he speak fluently aloud, but in broken English when using telepathy? Why does he suddenly not trust her toward the end? Why do his magical powers never come in all that useful? Why is he keeping a comb under one of his scales (this distracted me)?

And most pressingly of all-   wings on a Chinese dragon?????

So I'm not sure I'll bother to look for the sequels, and I'm not going to bother to offer this one to my own inveterate fantasy reading child.  Though I didn't mind reading it at all-- that the pages turned nicely and I enjoyed it (except when I was being critical)--I think there are better books.

Here's the Kirkus review, if you want another opinion that is essentially the same as mine.

Dragon Girl: the Secret Valley, by Jeff Weigel -- great graphic novel fantasy fun!

If you have on hand a nine or ten year old girl who loves mythical creatures, RUN to get a hold of Dragon Girl: The Secret Valley, by Jeff Weigel (Andrews McMeel Publishing, June 3, 2014, 192 pages) .   The baby dragons she'll meet here will make her heart absolutely melt.  If you have any other sort of kid around who loves graphic novels (including, in my case, a 13 year old boy), you can also move very briskly indeed to put it into their hands.   And I myself loved it.

Dragon Girl tells how a girl named Alanna finds a dragon hatching ground, becoming the surrogate mother to one of the baby dragons after the mother is killed by a knight, Sir Cedric, who's determined to rid the world of the "scourge" of dragonkind.    Alanna loves the time she spends with her new dragon friends, befriending other hatchlings through dancing and playing, while wearing a dragon disguise she made herself to keep them from becoming too trusting of humans.  This is a wise thing for her to have done (though it doesn't work on her special dragon friend, who loves her in human form too!).   Because when Alanna's older brother spills the beans about the baby dragons to Sir Cedric (because of wanting more of a life than his home village offers), Cedric is filled with fighterly determination to kill them all....and then, when he sees that the eggs are veined with silver, greed comes into play too.

When a grown-up dragon arrives at the hatching ground to take the babies off down a tunnel to the secret valley of the dragons, Alanna's dragon costume is so convincing that she's carried off with the hatchlings.  Cedric and Alanna's brother follow, and find a world full of dragons (and lots of silver, which sets Cedric's greedy heart afire!).  There they meet a young woman named Margolyn, who studies dragons from her steampunkish airship, who helps them foil Cedric's nefarious plans.

nice bonus:  it's Alanna's cleverness that gets Sir Cedric in the end--yay for smart girls!

It is lovely, charming, exciting and moving, and great fun all around!  The illustrations, in black and white, do an excellent job of moving the story along without distracting the graphic-novel challenged of us from the words!  The baby dragons are adorable, as is Alanna in her dragon garb! And as an added bonus, pages from Margolyn's dragon-study notebook, and detailed schematics of her airship, are included.

This one is a winner, and I am sending it off with my fifth grade today to share with  his dragon-loving friends today full of the happy certainty that it will delight them.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.

Wings of Fire, Book 5: The Brightest Night, by Tui T. Sutherland

Yesterday my ten-year-old and I headed up to Boston, for the launch party of Wings of Fire, Book 5: The Brightest Night.  We enjoyed listening to Tui talking about the series, and enjoyed meeting her when we got our copy signed, and we enjoyed reading the book very much!  I won by a nose, with a clever rear-guard action (getting up first).   And happily, The Brightest Night (Scholastic, March 25) turned out to be my favorite book of the series.

The basic premise of the books is that five dragonets from different dragon tribes were raised together in isolation, told that they were destined to end the war between the three Sand Wing sisters fighting to become the next queen of those dragons.  It's a bloody struggle that drew all the other dragon tribes in as well (except the Rain Wings).  Each book was told from the point of view of one of the dragons, and this is Sunny's story.

Sunny is the sweet one, the cute one, the Sand Wing who isn't exactly all a Sand Wing should be (she's missing the barbed poisonous tale, for one thing), the one who's kind of dismissed by the others.   But inside Sunny is much more than sweet and cute.  She is smart, determined, and brave, and she manages to do more than any of the others for the cause of peace.  

And that's all I'll say about the plot.  Except that it has "scavengers" aka humans in it, playing actual roles, which was a fascinating new development!  And it also has more magical artifacts in it than the other books.  And we meet Sunny's family.  And there's some dragon romance.  But that's really all I'll say....

 Sunny is my favorite heroine of the year.   Any one who's ever been told they are sweet,  and patted on the head, when really they are smart and brave and tough, will relate to her.  She is a truly excellent role model--it would have been easy for her to give up, and stay just the sweet one of the lot, but it is her conviction that peace is possible that makes her  a truly strong force to be reckoned with.

I could spend a lot more words on how great Sunny is, though the other dragonets all have their good points too, and I'm fond of them all. 

I'm very glad that Tui T. Sutherland is going to be bringing us five more dragon books!  There are so many fine young dragons in these books whose stories I want to know more about that this makes me very happy.

Give this series to any nine or ten year old you have on hand who likes dragons (or who you think might like dragons).   They have just tremendous kid appeal, and the larger themes are truly appealing.  The first book and the fourth are a tad violent (just in case you have a truly sensitive reader), but the point of the series is that violence doesn't solve a thing--friendship and loyalty and understanding and appreciating difference are what is important.

Here are my reviews of the previous books:

The Dragonet Prophecy

The Lost Heir

The Hidden Kingdom

The Dark Secret

The Menagerie: Dragon on Trial, by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland

In my review of The Menagerie, by Tui T. Sutherland and Kari Sutherland, I said, "You want a book that hits the sweet spot for the nine-year old mythical creature lover?  This is what you are looking for."  The second book in the series, Dragon on Trial (HarperCollins, March 2014), has strengthened my conviction.

The menagerie in question is home to all manner of creatures, from unicorns and griffins and dragons to a goose that lays golden eggs.   And it is the apparent murder of this goose that is the catalyst for this adventure.  All the evidence points to a dragon named Scratch--and if Scratch is found guilty, he'll be exterminated.

Zoe and Logan, two middle school kids who are part of the Menagerie team, are convinced Scratch has been framed.  But unless they can find who really committed the dastardly deed of goose murder (if murder it was), disaster won't befall Scratch alone--the whole menagerie might be shut down by those in Authority.  Together with a new friend, a were-rooster named Marcus (a great addition to the cast, who provides comic relief that offsets the tension nicely), they set off on a detective hunt to find the answers they desperately need.

What makes this series a stand-out in kid appeal is that it beautifully combines the angsts of middle school life with a truly wonderful ménage of magical creatures.   The characters and the set-up are so convincing that the  menagerie almost seems possible.  It's clear that the authors are truly enjoying themselves--so many fun details about the creatures!--and this enjoyment carries over into the reading experience. 

Although the case of the missing goose is successfully resolved, bigger questions remain--someone is trying to sabotage the menagerie, and the disappearance of Logan's mom (whom he found out in the first book was a tracker of mythical creatures) remains a mystery.  My young one and I cannot wait till book three comes out!

I didn't see anything in this book that made it clear, but I know from the first book that Logan happens to be African American--I hope it's might slightly more obvious in book 3, because it would be nice for readers to be able to pick up on it!

The above-mentioned young one and I are going up to Boston tomorrow to meet Tui T. Sutherland, at the release party for The Brightest Night, the fifth book in her Wings of Fire series!  So exciting.  We are taking this one for her to sign too if possible....

The Dark Secret (Wings of Fire, Book 4), by Tui T. Sutherland

The Wings of Fire series tells of five young dragonets, taken from their various clans of dragon kind while they were still unhatched, and raised to believe that they were the Dragonets of Destiny, who would bring piece to the war torn world.  Each book is told from the point of view of one of the dragonets, and now, in the fourth book, The Dark Secret (Scholastic 2013), it's Starflight's turn.

Starflight is a Nightwing--mysterious dragons with strange powers and suspicious secrets.  Starflight hasn't yet manifested any powers, and all his life he's hungered for knowledge, and worried that he's not brave enough to help his friends bring the prophesied peace to fruition.   As the book begins, he's been taken by the Nightwings to their island home.  But it's not the place of happy learning he'd hoped it would be.  Instead, the Nightwings are savagely plotting to conquer the land of the Rainwing dragons, to make a new home for themselves there.  And they want Starflight to help them, by betraying his friends, including Glory, his fellow Dragonet of Destiny and the new Rainwing queen.

This is a GREAT series to offer your handy nine or ten year old--it is immensely popular in my son's reading circle, which includes both boys and girls.  There is violence, and some gruesome deaths and maimings, but it is not gratuitous (parental discretion is advised, though, if you have a younger child who isn't ready for very vividly awful dragon deaths).   It has to be real, and bad, in order for the efforts of the Dragonets to be meaningful, and it succeeds with vengeance in this regard!  What I appreciate most is that although there is plenty of action and adventure, character is front and center.  In The Dark Secret, for instance, the focus is on the dilemmas and challenges faced by Starflight as he tries to be worthy of his friends, while trying to thwart the Nightwing plot.

To quote from my review of the first book, The Dragonet Prophecy: "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."  These themes are still there, and still set in a truly exciting story.

The revelations of this book give fresh urgency to the waiting for the next book....me and my ten-year-old are both desperate for book five now!

In the meantime, there is a whole Wings of Fire wiki community to explore, with fan art, forums, etc.  This makes me smile, because when when I reviewed the first book, I wrote:  "this is a series that absolutely cries out for a website, with all the information about the different types of dragon expanded, and legends of the different dragon tribes, and little stories about the characters when they were babies, and printable pictures of the dragons etc."

disclaimer:  review copy received from the publisher

Handbook for Dragon Slayers, by Merrie Haskell

If you are looking for a book to tempt a thoughtful, introspective 10 to 12-year-old girl who likes books and horses, with a bit of dragon on the side, offer her Handbook for Dragon Slayers, by Merrie Haskell (Harper Collins, 2013, middle grade).

Tilda, the young princess of a small Germanic kingdom in the Middle Ages(ish), chaffs against her place in life.  She is filled by an insatiable desire to spend more time reading and writing, and less time thinking about domestic animals and their needs (tedious and worrying--it's a poor kingdom)  and the prejudiced attitude her people take toward her twisted and painful club-foot (hurtful and dispiriting as heck).   Fate, in the form of a greedy cousin intent on taking the kingdom for himself, offers Tilda an escape from the uncomfortable role of princess when her two best friends, Judith, who has grown up alongside her as her handmaiden, and Parz, failed squire of a neighboring knight, rescue her, and decide that the time has come to be dragon slayers (!).   Tilda, they all agree, will watch and learn and research, and write a Handbook for Dragon Slayers that will make her famous.  She likes the idea lots; she's less convinced (with good reason) that Parz and Judith have any immediate hope of achieving their dragon slaying goal....

Judith and Parz, though both have been diligent with their weapons practice (despite Judith having to do it secretly), have as yet little theoretical, not to mention practical, knowledge of how to slay dragons.   Their first try doesn't go well; they are no match for even a baby, and retreat in disarray.  But then the companions meet the Wild Hunt, and Tilda, facing down the Hunter, rescues two of its magical horses (beautiful, magical horses), who give a whole new plausibility to the idea of dragon slaying, and from then on the pace Picks Up something fierce, and there are encounters with other dragons, and an evil magic user...and enchantments and imprisonments and dangers...And it all becomes a very exciting fantasy adventure.

And by the end of the book, slaying dragons is off the table, and Tilda returns to take up her duties with a new, hard won, maturity (and beautiful horses and a dragon friend and a new respect for Judith and sundry other characters).

It must be said that the beginning of the book is somewhat slow, and Tilda is not immediately a charismatic heroine.  Her character has been shaped by her disability--by both the physical limitations that it has imposed on her and by the pain of the prejudice against her because of it--and she has pulled herself inward in self-defense, which makes her somewhat self-centered and inclined to run from reality.   But once the threesome set out after dragons, she perforce expands and matures, and as she does, she becomes increasingly likable.  There is no magical healing here, nor do Tilda's people become magically unprejudiced against those with disabilities, but the ending promises acceptance and the opportunity for Tilda to define herself by finding balance between what she wants, what she needs, and what she is responsible for.

Judith is a great supporting character in her own right.  She has thoughtful considered the limitations of her life (like handmaidens not being allowed to be dragon slayers), and challenged them head on.  The friendship between Tilda and Judith, with the complications of their unequal relationship, makes for satisfying reading, and plays a major role in shaping Tilda's character arc.  (Parz doesn't get to be nuanced--he's a nice, loyal boy who likes swords and heroics at the beginning of the book, and at its end.  Which is fine.  Not everyone needs to be extraordinary).

So, after a bit of hesitation on my part (there isn't much zing to the beginning--Tilda is depressed, with good reason, and it colors the story)  I enjoyed this one very much indeed, and read it faster and faster, with increasing snappishness toward interrupting children. 

This isn't one to give to the reader who's already gotten hooked on books with Romance--they might find it flat in that regard, because there isn't any; sure, Parz might well end up with Tilda or Judith, and Tilda crushes on him a bit, but they are still kids.   But if the need for romance isn't an issue, older readers may well appreciate this one for the complexities of character, the rather amusing bravado of the would-be dragon slayers, and the interesting twists of the fantasy elements.  I don't think it has universal kid appeal (I don't think my own ten-year-old boy, for instance, would stick with it to page 53 when the true adventure begins), but I am sure it will be a just right book for just the right reader--the girl I describe in the first sentence!

Here are some other reviews:  Slatebreakers, The Book Smugglers, and Random Musings of a Bibliophile.