The Flames of Hope (Wings of Fire #15)

My criticisms are similar to that of another reader, Loang.

Luna barely uses her flamesilk. The cover makes it seem that she'll be using it for a really plot-important thing, like destroying something. However, it seems to only depict her using it to make lights for everyone in the cave.

I still have mixed opinions on the increased number and significance of human characters in this series. The Wings of Fire series used to be remarkable in focusing on nonhumans and their society, with humans being only trivial elements. With greater human inclusion, the Wings of Fire series has become somewhat less distinctive in its setting. While I was a little curious about the Scorching, this also re-emphasizes humans in the world. I hope that future arcs tone down human inclusion to focus on the dragons.

The idea of having three minds behind the mind-controlling plant, and how they interact with each other, was interesting. Nonetheless, it did feel more original that a plant and a plant alone could have been the main villain. A large chunk of the book was about Luna and a little dragonet being held captive by the Breath of Evil plant, with the two of them living out the masterminds' memories. It certainly abides more to the "show, don't tell" principle than just being told, and it was interesting to read, but it still feels that it went on too long. It would have been better to have more action sequences and less memory-treading.

While it is, in some way, more original to extend compassion to one of the masterminds to defeat them than acts of violence, there's a reason big battles are so common in books of this type: they're satisfying. The barely-violent method the villain was defeated was a little anticlimactic, particularly since we don't even (for example) hear one of the masterminds' screams of rage or pain. It would have been better to at least create a localized burn through the vine, rather than snip it. (and how it was snipped with a silk loop was difficult to understand) Luna outright points out that she saved everyone using a kind of silk that wasn't distinctive to her, which feels like openly pointing out how anticlimactic it was.

3.5
The plot wasn’t that great throughout the book, and the ending was kind of loose and not that exciting, but I liked Luna’s perspective. The whole othermind thing was also confusing on who was controlling what, and I didn’t like the Cottonmouth person or how a lot of the book was just Luna watching things in the mindspace. My favorite character was probably Dusky and I liked that Luna looked after him underground, and my favorite part was when Luna snapped the breath of evil. Altogether, I thought this book could’ve been better.

This was an exciting and satisfying end to this particular pentalogy in the Wings of Fire series. It has a great range of characters (pulling from all fifteen books) and wraps everything up very neatly. The further involvement of scavengers was a great plot development and something we had hoped for. Without giving any spoilers, my daughter was quite emotional about the loss of one if the characters towards the end of the book and felt it needed more recognition and closure.