wings of fire book 16: final notes + shitty review
VERY SPOILERY, obviously. all just my opinion, also obviously. harass me if you like lmao it'll get ignored
verdict:
i didn't like it that much. it was ok enough to read in chunks before going to sleep each night but it wasn't that good. i know i'm being super critical in this review, but i truly do love the wof universe and its characters.
rating:
4.4/10
recommendation:
if you wanna stay up to date with the fandom or whatever, sure, but on its own? nah. i don't recommend this book.
notes below cut
general notes:
this is the first wof book i've read in a while... probably four years? since book 15 lol.
i don't remember the writing being this... YA-esque? like it's always been a young adult/children's book but this part of the writing really jumped out at me (in a bad way) this time around. the dialogue is so stilted and unnatural at time, combined with the exposition dumping, it just made me remember my old fics on AO3 instead of enjoying the book.
some of the descriptions (whether that be of dragons, objects, spaces, etc.) are so obtuse i genuinely had kind of a hard time visualizing what tui was trying to say. i'm not a low-level reader either lmao, i just get the striking feeling that, again, reminds me of some particularly beginner fics i've read and written.
story notes:
i dislike all of this new lore SO MUCH. what the fuck is going on?? it's so ridiculous and convoluted, and leaves gaping plot holes in the rest of the universe. why did tui feel the need to rewrite so much of her universe??
—> i get that the skywing and nightwing queens were supposed to be made out as "extra extra cruel muehehe evil" whatever, but sending two entire tribes to a Fuck Ass Magic Forever prison for one (1) political murder (something that happens all the goddamn time btw) is just cartoonishly evil. plus, it's just a wedge shoved up the rest of the plot's ass to retroactively add the fact that all dragons came from pyrrhia, and it SHOWS that the other books weren't written with that in mind when you read them.
—> what do you mean there were two whole other tribes living on pyrrhia, and they just got... forgotten? the book doesn't even say "oh, ho ho, precipice casted a spell to make everyone forget about two entire tribes of dragons" (which would still be an incredibly stupid explanation), we're just expected to believe that every trace of the leafwings and beetlewings were just wiped from memory. did none of the other tribes remember them?? how did they even remove all physical evidence of their existences so completely???
—> how the fuck did some of them not go to the Fuck Ass Magic Forever prison? were they just let go? if so, how did knowledge of pantala come back to pyrrhia? did they not come to round up their Magic Forever Prisoners??? <- cause we know that clearsight had knowledge of it by the time of darkstalker's events.
—> same with the dungeon isle. if the skywings had a Fuck Ass Magic Forever Prison, had they forgotten about it when the whole darkstalker shit came around? did they choose to not say anything and just let the icewings and nightwings deal with it and find a way to imprison him on their own??? what the fuck guys
how are there enough new dragons coming in that the dungeon isle isn't inbred to shreds...
the explanation for mulberry being able to pass the barrier is Cool In Theory I Guess but the dialogue and exposition to actually explain it is so forced i physically cringed while reading it.
some of the book felt so strikingly modern that it stood out from the tone of the rest of the entire series. particularly the whole aurora subplot. what the fuck do you mean they have concerts?? and drumsets????? this is just gazelle from zootopia but dragon. plus there's an ACTUAL singer named AURORA and their appearance here just broke my immersion every time. aughghhg
the sharpwings and barrier and magical shit feel like they belong in a whole different book series/universe. i feel like tui has so many New Random ideas and wants to put them somewhere, but is too afraid to start a new Dragon Book Series after being in the wof universe for so long that she now has to jam them into an already overbloated world.
the mudwing siblings are handled in such a disappointing way. they really have nothing to them.
—> umber is an incredibly generic and boring protagonist, and he's basically clay 2.0. he's supposed to be this fun bubbly jokey younger brother character now forced into a serious position and has to take care of sora, but we get to see so little of his previous characterization that it basically means nothing. i felt nothing for him at the start, and i ended the book feeling nothing for him. damn.
—> SORA, oh SORA... she's the one i was actually intrigued by. the prospect of her trying to live after murdering two dragons, of her being a danger to the rest of dragon society, was so fascinating to me! i actually loved her characterization at the start of the book! i get that it's Dungeon Isle Magic Shit but i hate that she mellowed out so much... she's just Some Generic Mudwing now, and by the end of the book the Soft Shy Caring Sister character is in a motherly position toward the grey egg. i wanted to see more of her grappling with her hatred for icewings and learning to deal with her dangerous tendencies. NOOO.... we were robbed...
there are so many new characters with a single personality trait introduced. i really really don't care for any of them. platypus is loud and angry, quokka is scared and overburdened, dugong is derpy and gets beat on, royal is a haughty sad boy, queen beryl and king snakeroot are two different flavors of Crazy Monarch. s i g h . none of them are fleshed out enough for me to care.
it's also showing the cracks in tui's naming system, cause i'm genuinely hearing dragons with the goofiest names ever and i CANNOT take them seriously. the angry leader of the revolution is supposed to be named... platypus??? quokka? wollemi? FUCKING BERYL AND MULBERRY?? these names are so bad i'm crying i can't even take these characters seriously anymore.
also the constant Romance Everywhere is pissing me off. mulberry and umber would be cute if there wasn't So Much Shit going on and if umber was an actual character. then there's ships left and right that we get introduced to through one (1) singular paragraph of PDA and never see anything of again. aurora and platypus. wollemi and quokka. dugong and sora are implied, i think?? and there's definitely others that i'm missing. i dislike it intensely, it brings nothing to the story!
the pacing was so awful. we trodded around the dungeon isle for 300 pages, saw a concert, went to the library, then it escalated from finding the sharpwing nest and nineteen to mulberry getting kidnapped and storming the palace with the whole revolution and trying to overthrow the king and queen in one chapter! idk it might just be my perception but all the plot was really crammed into one end.
