2026-05-20

Wings of Fire, Arc 3

Part 3 of my review of the entire Wings of Fire series. Same rules apply, spoilers ahead!

The "prophecy at the start of a book" structure was really starting to wear off on here, because the prophecy didn't even appear until like book 4.

They pulled out another continent with brand new dragon tribes for this. Everyone does that eventually I suppose, and it's often a trainwreck central, and this arc overall is indeed my least favorite (2 > 1 > 3 IMO), but it does house the book that's the absolute best in the series (and also the worst) and the author only really trainwrecked at the very very end. If arcs 1 and 2 are all peak after peak, this one was quite the roller-coaster.

11. The Lost Continent (Blue)

Blue, Blue, Blue. His wondering of what other dragons' lives were like gave him empathy, but it gets to a point. My biggest gripe was how forced it was now, compared to Winter seeing the appeal of being a SkyWing after being Pyrite for a bit.

And it didn't even have any payoff. There wasn't a time when his empathy actually were of any use. He was just wondering whether the dragons currently hunting him down and want Cricket dead were sad when they go home every day or something. It reached a point where I was just like, why is he like this? What made him this way?

But the good thing is, he did change near the end. A little, maybe. On the following rules side, when he retorted against his dad. Took him long enough. Dragons are hunting him down and he was still largely sympathetic to them! Argh!

On that note let's talk about Pantala. Especially compared to Pyrrhia, it was… a lot more human. They live in cities, go to school with classes and stuff, buy things with currency (in Pyrrhia there were shops, but no currency was ever directly stated). They actually have bound books, instead of scrolls. They have "rules" which are basically laws. Misbehavers get put on Misbehavers' Way. You know what they do in Pyrrhia? They fucking kill them right there. Most of the time. I mean, Scarlet's probably an outlier, but this book really made Wasp look pretty benevolent, compared even to, say, Coral.

But despite the lacking of the sort of direct violence Pyrrhia has, Pantala brings about its own sort of horror. Like the toxin used in Misbehavers' Way that traps you in the same position for a full day, or the HiveWing mind control, especially for the Librarian, who was under it 24/7. Genocide was often threatened on Pyrrhia when nothing ever came close, but it seriously took place in Pantala. And then there's the enslavement of the entire SilkWing tribe.

So: just what the fuck did Clearsight create. Both she and her woebegone boyfriend created everlasting legacies of Nazi tribes. Side note: Clearsight somehow taught the entire continent to speak Dragon, the old language, rather than learning their new language. But well, convenient, as Jerboa said.

On that note let's talk about the HiveWings and their mind control, which is something I really didn't like. Firstly, it was stupidly melodramatic, with the white eyeballs. And secondly, HiveWings don't need to be mind-controlled to obey Wasp. Seriously. You tell them finding the flamesilk would get them on some good side with the queen, they'd be out there hunting day and night. Making them mind-controlled just kind of makes them also look like victims of Wasp when they were still benefiting from the oppression of SilkWings. And when it was revealed later that Wasp was also being mind-controlled herself… by the fucking mind-control plant… What even is the point anymore? What's the message? Nature is our enemy and dragons are born to conquer nature or something?

On that note let's talk about flamesilks. Why did they only go after Blue when Luna was confirmed a flamesilk? Didn't they know they were both Admiral's children, and therefore potentially flamesilks, from the get-go? Like if I were Wasp, I'd bring all the flamesilk's children's eggs to hatch right there in the cave. It was really unclear just what the policy around flamesilks and their children is. Luna and Blue were allowed to roam around in Cicada Hive until Luna's Metamorphosis day. There were extra guards there so they knew Luna was a potential flamesilk. Yet they waited to confirm that she was indeed a flamesilk before carting her into the cave, but decided to put Blue in prematurely regardless of whether he was a flamesilk or not. All of this is very clearly made to make the plot work.

Oh and the Librarian has some insane pain tolerance. Pain enough to drive Wasp out, yet she could still walk and talk afterwards. Damn. But she also said she tried to drive Wasp out by hurting herself before, but… how? If she was being mind-controlled, she couldn't hurt herself.

I forgot Clearsight's letter existed. It's still one of the sweetest things I've ever read.

I gave this book a 4.75 on StoryGraph just for the little bit of stuff I disliked about it, mostly the flamesilk policy thing, but it was still a very peak book.

12. The Hive Queen (Cricket)

This book is okay if you don't think about it too hard. It was exciting at first to see Cricket get the answers to the questions she'd had for a long time, but in the end they just feel anti-climatic.

When it was revealed that Cadelle wasn't Cricket's mom, I had been so excited (first readthrough), like who are her real parents then? Are we gonna find out who they are? But then it turns out Cadelle is her grandma and Katydid is her real mom and I'm like. Okay so she's still living with family? They're still all related to each other? Like, I just didn't like it.

Also, so many things about Lady Jewel and her Hive should've been stated sooner. Why did we only know about her prison and the rumors of torture after Cricket got locked in, while the rumors are being disproven? It would've been so nice to lay it out at the very start. "Oh hey we're going into Jewel Hive where it's glittery and everyone loves fashion and Lady Jewel has a huge-ass torture facility." It would've made the stakes at the start way higher. Instead, all we got was the glittery and loves fashion part.

I think this is my least favorite kind of book grievances: the type that's easily fixable. All we needed was for this to be addressed near the start, when they introduced Jewel Hive. The library too. Speaking of the library, Sundew complains that books are made of trees… but LeafWings also make books? It's like Hazel's entire job?

And well, the book definitely tries to portray Scarab and Jewel sympathetically. At least we're not supposed to hate them. But… Wasp's aunt, and a ruler of a literal Hive, you two are some of the most powerful dragons on Pantala right now. And all they do is complain about Wasp, instead of doing anything, anything at all. No I don't care; in my view they only hate Wasp because they don't benefit enough from her power.

Also Scarab's conversation with Cricket breaks apart when you think about it too much too. So she knew that HiveWings only broke apart from SilkWings about 500 years ago. So how could the Book of Clearsight, written 2000 years ago, contain a list of HiveWing successions? Like if Scarab knew that HiveWings used to be just SilkWings, then she would definitely know the succession list is fake.

And if the mind control plant can start controlling you when you breathe in the smoke, it's too much of a coincidence that Blue et al. just hadn't had a single problem burning the greenhouse down, just because someone said "don't breathe the smoke in!"

I was originally gonna say something good about this book was how HiveWing society was illustrated very vibrantly with just a couple sentences of details, like the portraits of Wasp, Jewel, and Clearsight in Cadelle's home, Dragonfly Square with their honoring of Tree Wars veterans, as well as the general culture in Jewel Hive, but on second thought, it's pretty much just human society at this point. I like Pyrrhia's dragon societies way more; they were illustrated just as vibrantly. I still gave it a 4.75 though.

And then there's the constant bickering of whether we should burn all the Hives down or was the HiveWings worth saving and they would stand for what's right as long as they're freed from Wasp. The book nearly makes the LeafWings "just as bad" for wanting the HiveWings dead. But last time I checked, LeafWings didn't genocide an entire tribe and threaten to genocide another unless they succumb to slavery. Maybe I'm just too much of a pessimist but like. Burn all the Hives. Kill all the HiveWings. No I don't care about Cricket or Bumblebee. Or at the very least, don't get all mad when LeafWings or SilkWings want them all dead.

Because you see, I have a lot of problems with Wasp's mind control. I've already said this in the previous section, but again, this makes the HiveWings look like victims when they're not. This pins all the blame on Wasp herself, just this one dragon, as if everything that's going on is her personal fault and if they had a different queen things would've been different.

Something I also disliked about this book was that, I didn't super feel a lot of Cricket's own development. From the start, she was portrayed as a curious, inquisitive cat, always having hundreds of questions and an unquenchable thirst for truth and justice. Not that I don't like it, but she remains so throughout the entire book, and it's always played out in her favor. This book, compared to the rest, is a lot weaker in character development.

13. The Poison Jungle (Sundew)

If I had a penny every time there's a dragon tribe who live in a forest and whom many dragons have misconceptions about and who have some secret ability which not many other dragons know about in WoF, I'd have two pennies. LeafWings are like the murderous, stabby RainWings.

And like, LeafWings just struck me as… not as outstanding as the nine other tribes. I can't even seriously explain why, but reading about them was just a bore. So you have two tribes, one murderous and stabby, the other gentle and nice. You have the power to communicate with plants, and make them grow faster. Leafspeak was also just a weird power. What exactly can you do? Communicate with plants, alright, but can you command them? When making them grow faster, is that a part of the commanding, or something else entirely? Because communicating certainly doesn't entail making them do things they can't do on their own, but we did see Sundew telling the breath of evil to grow. It's all so weird. I even just scanned over the part where they travel to the Eye of the Jungle, because it was boring and half of it was just Sundew and Nettle bickering anyways.

And I just could not bring myself to care about leafspeak, especially after the author laundered scavengers so much. Oh hey NightWing mind-readers sensed that scavengers have emotions! They're smart and we can't eat them no more! Okay now LeafWing leafspeakers also sensed that plants have emotions. Let's just eat nothing now and starve. It's quite jarring how the same grace extended towards scavengers is nowhere present when it comes to these plants. Leafspeakers could literally communicate with plants! The plants' dialog is presented in words, not just vague emotions that mind-readers could get from scavengers, but no one is saying "plants aren't food! Stop eating them!" now. I reiterate my point that the whole fiasco with scavengers shouldn't have existed in the first place. To dragons, scavengers should be no different from other prey. Like what even is the point in scavenger-dragon relations. What message is the author trying to give?? It's not even vegetarianism because other prey is still fair game!

And the Poison Jungle. If there's any tribe that could find coexistence with the plants, no matter how dangerous, it's the LeafWings, the literal plant tribe. But they were constantly fighting the Jungle. Even with their leafspeak. I get it, they eat dragons, but like again, I don't believe that even the LeafWings with their leafspeak couldn't manage to do something about them other than avoiding them.

I know I had just said something along the lines of "don't make friends with dragons who literally eat you" when reviewing Dragonslayer, but in this case I'm sure there is no single LeafWing that are like "all LeafWings are terrible! Dragon traps are clearly better!"

I get that it frames the LeafWings' struggle since the Tree Wars way better if they'd been living very hazardously ever since, but making the hazard a bunch of plants is just… Ugh I don't like it. I don't like it at all. Especially considering, how did the plants even adapt themselves to dragons? In the fifty years when LeafWings were living here? Or before? Who had lived there before then??

And then the final villain is the plant itself? Sequoia and Hawthorn are the real villains because they gave the plant to Wasp? Eating the plant gives you control powers, but breathing in the smoke or getting injected by… someone who… ate the plant… This entire thing is just so incoherent. I don't fucking know what's going on anymore.

The scene where Hawthorn, controlled by the plant, talked to Sundew et al. is also really cringe villain monologue bullshit, and the white eyes thing is just briefly explained that it's some scientific shitfuckery involving second-hand control… Urgh I don't want to think about it too much.

And why didn't the breath of evil grow itself out in all these years with Hawthorn's leafspeak? When did he modify the strain to only work on HiveWings? It has to be before giving it to Wasp, right? But when they first found the plant described in the legend of the hive, why didn't they wipe them all out? Why didn't they wipe them all out after they found out about Wasp's mind control, but rather only sent one dragon to "quarantine" them and never checked up on him for fifty years? UURRGHH all of it is to make sure the current version of the plot works and paint Sequoia as the other side in "both sides bad" so we can teach Sundew to victim-blame!

Like, I think I can imagine how this happened. So Sequoia and Hawthorn discover the breath of evil. Wow, this looks like the dangerous mind-control plant the legend told us about! Let's destroy it! One of them says. Wait, let's give it to Wasp instead and see if we can control her, the other says. But wait! Let's take a precaution and modify it to only work on HiveWings. Don't want us getting all controlled now do we? Good idea! So they sneak it in Wasp's food and she finds her new power over her subjects. Wow that didn't turn out so great, Hawthorn says. Should we destroy the plant now? Fuck no, you go study them, Sequoia says. So Hawthorn eats it and gets controlled himself too, and for fifty years Sequoia just forgets about him, the one singular dragon guarding the most dangerous plant in all of Pantala.

Ummmm it still makes no sense.

A big part of Sundew's development is learning to stop blaming the entire HiveWing tribe, and to blame the actual villains instead, who are Wasp, and Sequoia and Hawthorn since they gave the plant to Wasp in the first place. I do not like this message. So like essentially you're telling me the LeafWings fucked themselves over by giving Wasp the mind-control powers and so they deserved the genocide or something? I guess it makes a little sense if you frame it as "the LeafWings made a mistake and got the HiveWings all mind-controlled so now they have to right a wrong," but like. I would've liked it a lot more if the LeafWings didn't literally get genocided.

Also if Sundew had dated Willow for this long and still don't know why Willow isn't mad all the time like her, she should leave Willow the fuck alone.

14. The Dangerous Gift (Snowfall)

My favorite book in the entire series. Flanked between the shipwrecks that are books 13 and 15, I do feel like maybe I only think it's good by comparison. But nonetheless, it is good, though a reread gave me a clearer understanding, though it was indeed also more underwhelming. I may reconsider its ranking. Maybe Talons of Power was better.

First of all the Ice Kingdom is beautiful. Every time I think about the snowflakes in the walls, the gift of light (whose light globes in my mind have many different colors), and the tranquil serenity of the ice walls that appear to be glowing blue… suffice to say it's the prettiest kingdom in Pyrrhia. And Pantala for that matter.

And then we have Snowfall, the youngest queen in IceWing history, still recovering from grief at her mother's death, thinks she doesn't deserve to be queen, with a brain full of paranoia, constantly thinking Darkstalker would be back and other tribes want to attack them. The capital letters were also kind of excessive. Like, I get it, just replace them with italics or leave them be; they're shouty enough on their own!

The portrayal of pre-character-development Snowfall was just a bit over the top. A little too on the nose. "The strange dragons look nothing like us! They must be evil!" is just kind of silly to see a character think literally that. Also, I think I've complained about similar things in the Arc 1 review about NightWings, but this book kind of did a similar thing with xenophobia where it's teaching kids to be nice to people even if they don't look exactly like you, but is too far-fetched from how reality functions. It all boils down to a reversal of cause and effect. Xenophobic mindsets does not lead to the mistreatment of other people, in Snowfall's case the Pantalan refugees, and in Wasp's case, SilkWings and LeafWings; it is created to justify the fact, which clearly does not happen in the book, whether it's the refugees in the present or Wasp and her mother of the past. However, it all worked out (only in the present scenario) because and only because the other dragons are mostly very welcoming and accepting towards the Pantalans. It's just Snowfall herself and Snowfall alone, being a little bitch about it, and eventually learning to stop bitching through the magic ring.

The ring was also an excellent plot device. Not only does it inform us of what's going on in Pantala right now as the main protagonist is in Pyrrhia, it also helps Snowfall's character development with every vision it gives her. Being too inconsiderate of the refugees? Look at Atala, and how tired and scared she was while flying over the ocean. Look at how many dragons they left behind, and how dangerous Pantala is right now.

Anything involving Sky and the scavengers is crap shit but the book is good enough to make up. The peak occurs when Snowfall returned to the Ice Kingdom, saw the vision about why Jerboa III decided to get rid of animus magic, experiencing Jerboa's gradual loss of her soul, and how Jerboa III finally freed herself, and how she finally decided that animus magic was too dangerous to exist. (She did say "current animus dragons" in her spell though, so new ones could still be born…) Although these two chapters were great, on a reread I noticed how a bit plot-devicey Jerboa's decision was, ending animus magic right as they needed to solve Pantala's problems.

And then Snowfall destroys centuries of IceWing tradition, with the breaking down of the Ice Wall and the ranking wall, but my favorite was actually the crown. By making whoever wears it hate NightWings, it actually represents IceWing tradition more than the other two gifts, and Snowfall put an end to this century-old feud by destroying the crown.

And finally, we see Glacier affirming that she was proud of Snowfall, and that she was the right choice to be queen.

So yeah, demoted. Talons of Power is my favorite. But this book is still good, which proves that the author can write and there is no excuse for whatever clusterfuck is the next one!

15. The Flames of Hope (Luna)

On a reread, this one made more sense than I remembered (compared to the previous one, which wasn't as good as I remembered). But it still doesn't make sense!!!

So it all came down to this. The plant had mind-control powers, but it was all Cottonmouth and Lizard all along. They were the ones controlling the insects and stuff when the dragons first arrived. The plant wasn't interested in anything other than spreading.

When Luna dreamvisited Swordtail, she touched him and all, but it was established that you couldn't do that, with Scarlet trying and failing to claw Glory. Also, blue SeaWing blood? SeaWing blood had literally never been stated as blue. Only IceWing's, stated since book 1.

And then there's this whole thing with Lizard / Freedom and Cottonmouth… and where do I even start. I genuinely don't know. I'll just make a couple comparisons to previous arcs and show why this book was not as good as the others.

Cottonmouth was similar to Darkstalker in the sense that they were very, very old villains that had terrified dragons for centuries. But Darkstalker's villainy was way more well-established, and we didn't even fucking know who Cottonmouth was before this book. It came out of fucking nowhere. Up until this point we were all led to believe that the plant was the villain and all that, and now it's just like, surprise, it's actually some human from the times of the Scorching with a dragon he kidnapped and was somehow fused with the mind of the plant and their minds lived on for five thousand years. Like what.

And for Lizard / Freedom's arc. It was similar to Clay's arc, both dealing with the violent nature of dragons. But Clay's arc was way more deserved. He had been told by the guardians that he was supposed to be violent, and they actually had evidence to back it up, that being Clay "attacking" the other eggs when he hatched. And then Clay goes out right into Scarlet's arena to witness tons of actual violence. But he learned to be kind in such a violent world, to embrace the soft side of himself, by showing kindness to Peril when everyone else thought her a monster. Damn, just talking about it made me nostalgic for those good times again. Maybe I'll read it again. As for Freedom? She was told by Cottonmouth that all dragons are violent and apathetic and whatnot, and she desperately wanted another dragon's memories to see it for herself. Luna cherry-picked memories of other dragons to try to convince Lizard that dragons are actually all very kind and loving actually so yeah it's bad that you don't get to be as happy as them but why won't you be normal like that too? That's basically the gist of it, really. That was all I could take away. Like, just for Pineapple's memories, he literally just venom-in-the-faced Wasp not long ago, and he must've partaken in the invasion of the NightWing island too. Instead all we got was him being all sappy with Jambu. (Not to mention he must've been one of the dragons to hear about the missing RainWings and do nothing about it.) Seriously.

And the "how do we feel about HiveWings" problem got resolved, and the answer is "we don't know yet" or something like that. I think that's good enough. At least the book isn't pushing for forgiveness immediately. But Swordtail said something like, "most of these HiveWings just want to go home to their families" like they're not evil yeah, but like. Home? Families? Some of us don't have fancy little Hive houses and families to return to!

Like really, what the fuck is going on and what the fuck is the point now.

That is really all I wanted to say about the problems with this book. There are more small things, like how the fuck did they get ambushed on an island when Luna also had antennae, or how did Moon get inside the mindspace and communicate with mind-reading if it's a one-way thing (would make more sense if she could watch Luna and Pineapple in the mindspace but not talk to them, since neither Luna nor Pineapple could read minds so they couldn't hear her).

Just one more minor detail. This quote is about Cricket's dad, Malachite, who was taken away from her before she was even born.

He adjusted his spectacles in exactly the way Cricket always did.

That is literally not how genetics work! You cannot inherit glasses-adjusting postures! What is happening!

It's like Starflight and Mastermind, when Morrowseer heard Starflight mumbling about scientific experiments and stuff, he was immediately like "I know you're Mastermind's son." Like no, I don't think a penchant for science is genetic. The only way they would've "inherited" these traits is if they grew up with this parent, which neither Cricket nor Starflight did!

Some things I liked. I love how Luna pictures scenes like tapestries. Truly an artist. And I like how the new kingdom is LeafSilk Kingdom. Finally not an ethnostate! Well Glory's rainforest also had two tribes but they're still separated into two villages.

What confirmed that book 16 was not planned was how in the epilogue, there was no teaser for the next arc. Arc 1 ended on them planning Jade Mountain Academy (wow, good memories) and talking about admitting "the dragon whose mother hid her in the rainforest." Arc 2 ended on Moon and Qibli visiting Jerboa's hut and seeing Luna. Arc 3 had nothing. So Arc 4 wasn't planned.

So. After Winglets it's book 16 time. Damn!