Wings of Fire, Book 8: Escaping Peril

★★★☆☆

"Not a very memorable plot — disappointing."

Unlike the previous books in the series, this book is disappointing.

After the Dragonets of the Prophecy completed their quest in Book 5, they retired to Jade Mountain Academy to have a school where the tribes could live together.

One of the NightWings, Moonwatcher, is a mind reader. Darkstalker, the two-thousand-year-old-telepath-who-is-stuck-under-a-mountain-and-wants-to-be freed, is talking inside her head. Darkstalker was betrayed and imprisoned under the mountain and is an animus dragon who put all his power inside a scroll, but does not have the scroll. He tells Moon to find the scroll for him so he can be released and roam Pyrrhia once again.

Moon created a prophecy about death and chaos. She tried to catch Queen Scarlet with her friends to restore peace, including Winter the IceWing, featured in Book 7 and released Hailstorm, Winter's brother. It was very exciting and I could not wait for it to continue in Book 8.

Unfortunately, Moonwatcher's quest was absolutely abandoned in Book 8 and one of the least trusted characters, Peril, is featured, tries to capture Queen Scarlet on her own. There was no smooth transitions between Books 7 and 8.

During almost entire book an exiled shape-shifting RainWing, who turns out to be Peril's father (a firescale SkyWing)'s father has the scroll. The scroll never goes back to Moonwatcher until the very end of the book, where she finds out one of Darkstalker's spells on the scroll, which was to make his father obey his every command. Darkstalker commands Arctic, his father, to commit suicide.

Hearing this, Moon does not know what to do, because she does not want to release a villain of ancient times, but Darkstalker yells at her telepathically. She is quite sad.

Peril burns the scroll with her scales and somehow this action makes Darkstalker rise from the mountain mysteriously, and that is how the book ended.

Unfortunately, Moon's quest was completed by another dragon, so books six and seven kind of seem pointless now.

Pros

It was interesting to get more into Peril's character and what she thought about herself — and other dragons. She always seemed mad, like everything she ran into she wanted to burn up with her firescales.

Peril also seemed quite insecure — feeling her loneliness from the inside was quite interesting. She always turned to clay: Is this what Clay will do? Or, even more sadly: If I scorch that dragon next to me, will he not give me another chance? Poor Peril. Ever so lonely.

I think the best thing in the book was being able to see Peril's personality close-up. She appeared quite infrequently in the other books and ought to have this book dedicated to her, being one of the original characters from Book 1.