eightpix

It’s pretty much what it says on the tin, “Harry Potter meets Hunger Games.”… but with dragons as the main characters. The storytelling is good. The characters are tangible, well-developed, and relatable. There are three arcs, the first about wartime, the second is post-war, and the final arc — (which I’ve not started — appears to be about the Undiscovered Country. Reading it as an adult, it’s easy to blitz through. There are fights, stabbings, broken necks, decapitations, and torture. None of it described in visceral gruesome detail, but more as a statement of fact. The stakes feel real. There is also magic, betrayal, surprise, and reconciliation. It’s pretty good stuff.

Target audience, grades 3 to 8 says Scholastic. My little reader is a little younger than that, and he’s obsessed. He still likes Captain Underpants, and he’s starting to get into Pokémon. This feeds the need he has for dragons.

I’m taking a break from catching up with my son’s reading of Wings of Fire. I’m about to start book eight, Escaping Peril

During this break from the grade school fantasy, I’m currently reading The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz. It was a random choice for me, served up by the algorithm and a few filters on Libby.

Not sure if I’m going to see this one through to the end as 10 more Wings of Fire Books beckon.

As for a recommendation, the last two “5 out of 5” books I read were, The Message and The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The latter title, his first novel, is just as accessible as his articles and his latest reflection on America and her role in world affairs, the former title.

December 23, 1995: On a wooden basement staircase, in an empty house, with no heat, with my dog. My parents lost the house. All our stuff had been moved out. Our nervous dog wouldn’t settle. I couldn’t leave him. That was the last night I slept in the house where I grew up.

December 1998: On a basement floor near Ottawa. At least it was carpeted. Hammered after some party near a college. In the night, some angel draped a blanket over me. Best feeling of my life to that point. Some guy’s sister was kind to us.

May 2009: Coober Pedy, Australia. Slept in a hostel that was in a mine. Slept underground in a room with bunk beds and no windows. It was weird. Felt like a bomb shelter.

December 2011: Wadi Rum, Jordan. Slept outside under the stars on a sleeping mat on a rock of biblical proportion. The guy in the tent next to ours was snoring. Loudly. My partner couldn’t take it. We dragged our mattresses out onto a rock 300 m from camp. I reasoned — scorpions were less likely to find us. Coulda been wrong. Still here to tell the tale.

I’ve slept in some weird places.