by Tui T. Sutherland
First sentence: “The volcano was restless, and so were the dragons in the NightWing fortress.”
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Others in the series: Wings of Fire, The Lost Heir
Content: There’s some violence, and a couple of dragons are seriously hurt. But other than that, I’d give it to a confident 8 year old reader. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

If you’ll notice, this is book SIX in the Wings of Fire series and I only read the first two. I have issues with series that go on and on and on, and I lost interest with this one pretty quickly.

However, this is like the second series in the larger story. The narrative shifts from the Dragons of Prophecy in the first book to the second generation after the war (there was a war? Okay then.). There are attempts to build a peace between the dragon clans (tribes?) and one way to do this is to have them all come together at a school to live and learn to get along.

Moon is a NightWing, one of the least trusted dragon clans (tribes? breeds? I don’t know what they’re properly called.) and Moon is an outcast among them. She was basically raised in the rainforest rather than in their volcano, and because of that (well, it’s because she was born under the moons) she can hear other people’s thoughts as well as seeing visions of the future.

When she’s dropped off at school, her mother tells her to keep her gifts secret. Except someone is trying to kill other dragons. And she’s hearing this mysterious voice inside her head of a dragon everyone thought was long dead. What’s a dragon to do?

It worked well as a stand alone, which surprised me. Sure, it’s the start of another adventure, but you can come in to this series on this one and not be utterly lost. Other than that, it’s got pretty much all the standard boarding school tropes: Moon feels left out, she makes friends, friends leave her when she reveals her differences, they end up working together to solve the problem that Moon’s difference plays a crucial role in.

It wasn’t all sorts of brilliant writing, but it’s a good, solid, fun story.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)