The Flames of Hope (Wings of Fire #15)

So, I made a mistake. I somehow failed to realize that I had skipped a book, The Dangerous Gift, before reading this one, The Flames of Hope. That has two consequences. One, mostly obviously, I don't yet know what happened in Dangerous Gift. Two, the last Wings of Fire novel I read was The Poison Jungle, which came out in 2019. So it's been a very long time for me, and I'm missing whatever context The Dangerous Gift would have given me. As a consequence, Flames of Hope hit me almost as a standalone novel, not so much a member of a series.Perhaps partly for that reason, Flames of Hope felt very different to me from the previous books in the series. Wings of Fire has always seemed to me to be aimed at children. (That's not intended as a put-down -- nothing against children's books here!) The main way this manifests is that it tends to dwell on cute and adorable characters and behavior. With some very large exceptions, heavy, serious matters are avoided.Flames of Hope is different. Yes, there is a lot of cuteness and adorableness. But we also learn the history of how Queen Wasp came to be able to take over and control other dragons. Without spoiling anything, I think I can say that there's a long history, and much of it is very serious and not even a little bit cute or adorable. This is what I meant by "for grownups" in my heading.Different readers are going to feel differently about this. I can easily imagine folks being bummed by the departure from what they've come to know as the usual tone of a Wings of Fire book. I however, liked it a lot. Flames of Hope felt deeper and more like it mattered than the earlier books in the series.It also feels like a finished story. Of course Tui Sutherland could still continue the story from here. But if she wants to move on to other endeavors, this would not be a bad place to leave Wings of Fire.Note: I see that this book is being review-bombed by culture warriors claiming that it is "Gone woke." They are exaggerating. The extent of the "wokeism" is that one or two characters are called "they/them". If you are a normal person who is not obsessed with other people's sexuality, you will barely notice it.

This book, much like the rest of the arc, tackles many difficult concepts like the effects of oppression, how much oppressors are at fault, and moral dilemmas. However it is digestible and lays out the concepts in a way that doesn’t feed you all the answers and let’s you think on your own when parts of the story parallel our real world. As a someone who is studying sociology, I can appreciate the level of research and care was taken to delicately handle these subjects in a way that doesn’t antagonize or belittle certain groups of people. I grew up reading the WoF series and I can say it has sharpened my critical thinking skills.There is also a ton of lore and history in this book that fans will love and the new characters are very fascinating and memorable.As for all of the “woke” concepts these other reviews mention… it’s not anywhere near as bad as they make it out to be. Any same-sex ship is treated just like any heterosexual ship. They simply just exist and serve their purpose just like every other relationship shown in media. There is nothing overtly sexual about it. Purely wholesome. And as for the gender-neutral character, I find it baffling that people are upset over their existence as well. I appreciate their inclusion and wish that there were books that had such characters in books when I was younger so I could familiarize myself with how their pronouns work in everyday sentences.

I feel that it was a little disappointing considering how excited I was to get this book nonetheless it was decent I only had 3 problems with the plot the first is that there was not that much character development I thought because of how Luna felt about hive wings in the beginning there would be a lot of character development but sadly there was hardly any my second minor problem is that everyone kinda Brushes off freedom/lizards death which is really sad :( and my main problem is that it jumps for being long winded and dragging out for a long time to being rushed but thease are just my opinions so I don’t want it to affect the overall review because in all honesty I love the books (it’s just that I didn’t like Luna as much as I thought and would and the reasons stated above) but would definitely buy this book because it’s very interesting but not for the younger ones (lol) because of the sad death of freedom and the weird cave creacher (it gave me nightmares lol) (AGAIN no hate :) it’s just I saw Luna through the eyes of blue so I didn’t see her opinion on moon/cricket but I am glad she approved of cricket in the end and I look forward to seeing more character development :D

As expected

My non reader of a middle school son has now read the whole series twice. Love!!

Grandson loved it

We use this book to improve the vocabulary and Word wise feature would be great. The book description claims it is eabled but in our electronic book is not. It still works fine in other books of this series.I would not take stars from the book for this. I just took a star for having absolutely confusing they character. No explanation no narrative just out of a blue of the people is mentioned as they. I guess I am too conservative for this.

I read this series because my 10 year old granddaughter was reading it. She loved it and wanted to talk about it often so I thought I’d read it in order to discuss it with her. I ended up loving it and read the entire series of 15 books. An excellent series,

Couldn't put it down I could imagine everything described the only thing I found difficult was that humans were able to pick up a baby dragon as I thought it would be to big and heavy

Ci tengo a precisae che questa recensione è frutto al 100% di gusti personali, non prendetela come la verità assoluta.Se vi piacciono storie di distopie, governi autoritari, eroi che passano la maggior parte del tempo nell'ombra per evitare la cattura o prepararsi a cose che poi arriveranno, magari, forse, allora vi piacerà altrimenti avrete difficoltà.Io ho appprezzato la prima pentalogia, la seconda l'ho adorata, i due speciali e le storie brevi sono anch'essi di alto livello e poi arrivo in questa serie con i primi tre libri davvero lenti e noiosi, un quarto libro che è il più bello in assoluto e questo quinto che proprio a causa del precedente tocca un punto ancora più basso.La lettura è stata estremamente noiosa, la protagonista, Luna, non è minimamente all'altezza di nessuno dei precedenti, soprattutto confrontata a Snowfall del quarto libro, e una volta arrivati al finale la delusione regna sovrana.Mi piacerebbe Pantala tornasse ad essere il continente perduto, purtroppo so che non sarà così.

Son las 4 de la mañana aaahhh pero no podía parar de leer, como siempre, este libro es una obra maestra

Own every book in the series (the 15 core “prophecy” books, two legends books, the short stories compilation, Create your own graphic novel, how to draw dragons and the colouring book and the 7 (of eventually the 15) currently released graphic novels.My 8 year old daughter is enthralled with this series!!! We are currently on book 14 having started reading them during Christmas of 2022 and my daughter has read all 7 of the released graphic novels herself!!!Even I, as a 43 year old single father, am thoroughly wrapped up in the impressive story lines!!!Highly recommend!!!