I’ve had the prose version of this story at home for years now, but it took being called on to lead a book discussion to goad me into reading this graphic novel version, which I knew I could read more quickly than the prose. I still haven’t read the prose version, so I can’t discuss this as an adaptation of a longer, prose novel but can only judge it as a novel and a story of itself.
While I can’t compare the two texts, I did find that the dialogue of the graphic novel felt sometimes forced. I suspect the details revealed in these forced lines either came more naturally in long dialogue or as narration in the prose novel. The protagonist, Clay the Mudwing dragonet, asks questions that seem for the sake of making one of the other characters explain some detail of their backstory or some detail lost when the narration was. Deutsch is perhaps relying on the belief that Mudwings are unintelligent to make Clay’s questions seem more probable.
Somehow, despite how many children and parents come to the store looking for this series, I’ve managed to remain relatively unaware of its plot. I knew that it involved a prophecy about chosen dragonets—well, the first book is called The Dragonet Prophecy—that would somehow influence a war, and that there were many species of dragons. And I think that was about it. Dragonets I correctly assumed to be juvenile dragons, though if I now look up the term, it seems to refer to a type of fish.
This graphic novel was not what I expected it to be. It was more violent. The effects of the war on the dragonets of the prophecy and on the larger dragon cultures were more violent. Blood was shown.
This book delves into the politics of war far more than I ever expected it to do.
This book delves into prejudices and preconceived notions around race more than I ever expected it to do.
Like many of the best children’s stories about war, this one is about the power of friendship—despite all the violence that the friends endure.
It’s a story too about discovering and accepting yourself and about disentangling your self from the world’s expectations of you.
This is about what makes a family.
The later books especially I think will delve into fate versus choice and what being fated does to consequences and ideas of morality and goodness. This only touches on these.
SPOILERS! Many of them.
When we meet the dragonets, they are six years old but seem to be older adolescents and are being held captive by a society that has brought them all together as eggs and intends to use them to sway the war in their favor. The dragons are bullied, physically punished, and forcibly restrained by the older dragons who are their caretakers.
The dragonets, learning that one of them has been judged unfit and will be killed, escape from the cave that has been their only home.
They aren’t, however, past the threshold before they are captured by the queen of the Skywings, Scarlet, and imprisoned in her gladiatorial ring, made to watch combats between different dragons for the Scarlet’s amusement and later to become combatants themselves.
The queen’s champion fighter, a Skywing dragonet about the age of the dragonets of the prophecy, takes an interest in one of the dragonets, Clay the Mudwing, because she’s “never fought a Mudwing. You know, because we’re on the same side of the war. I’m so excited!” Peril tells Clay. (I forgot to get this page number before returning the book to the library. Sorry!)
She visits Clay in his cell, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. When a trial that she is forbidden to attend piques the Peril’s interest, she hides in Clay’s cell to watch, and Scarlet’s story about killing Peril’s mother to save Peril falls apart. Peril rushes to her mother’s defense.
Peril’s is one of the more interesting plot lines to me because it’s a decent redemption arc, and she’s an interesting character with a complicated backstory. Having believed that Scarlet saved her from her mother, knowing that Scarlet has raised her and promoted her to a position of power and prestige, she struggles to disobey her, even as she befriends Clay, and Scarlet threatens Clay.
Freed, the dragonets set out to search for their families. Knowing where the society found Clay’s egg, they go there first. They find Clay’s mother, who dismisses her son, but they also find Clay’s siblings, who are more glad to see their lost brother. Clay learns about his family and his culture and then returns to his found family.
The war that the dragonets are destined to end is a Sandwing civil war in which several other species have taken sides. Three Sandwing sisters, daughters of the previous queen, vie for the throne. One is the strongest, one is the smartest, and one is the prettiest. The prettiest, Blaze, is also described as “about as smart as a concussed sheep” (18). I dislike that beauty in this war seems correlated with unintelligence. Two of the three queens are destined to die and one may live and learn.
Humans—scavengers—exist in the world but are “endangered” (58), and I was interested to see that Black not white is the norm, the default. Pale skinned humans are so rare that one of the sisters keeps them in her collection of oddities.
***
Sutherland, Tui T. Wings of Fire, Book 1: The Dragonet Prophecy: The Graphic Novel. Adapted by Barry Deutsch. Illus. Mike Holmes. Color Maarta Laiho. New York: Graphix-Scholastic, 2018.
Intended audience: Ages 8-12, Grades 3-7.
This review is not endorsed by Tui T. Sutherland, Barry Deutsch, Mike Holmes, Maarta Laiho, Graphix, or Scholastic, Inc. It is an independent, honest review by a reader.
Dragon Bite Books 