Wings of Fire 5: The Brightest Night

The Brightest Night by Tui T. Sutherland is the fifth Wings of Fire book, a big dragon fantasy for 10 year olds.

What happens

This one belongs to Sunny. She's the small golden SandWing of the five dragonets, with the wrong coloured eyes and no poison barb on her tail. She's always believed in the prophecy more than any of them. It's the thing that made sense of everything.

Now someone has told her it might all be a lie. Some of her friends seem almost relieved. Sunny is not.

It gets worse. She overhears her friends saying she'll be fine by tomorrow, because she's always happy about everything. Then three NightWings grab her in the dark. She gets away, but she knows what they're planning to do next.

So she decides to stop them herself. Alone.

You're inside Sunny's head the whole time. Everyone treats her as the sweet little one, and she's fed up with being talked over. It's very easy to be on her side.

Book five picks up straight after book four, and it gives away how the earlier books end. It really does need reading after the first four, which are all in the library.

There's still plenty to laugh at. Glory is queen now and her patience is wearing thin, and one of her RainWings can only count to about twenty.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The prologue ends with a queen going out alone after thieves, and we soon find out she didn't come back. A NightWing is badly burned and nobody knows if he'll see again. The dragons who grab Sunny talk casually about killing her, and one of them sets fire to a monkey. There's also talk of a dragon queen who collects stuffed scavengers and two-headed creatures.

If yours finds it hard when a favourite character is hurt, that's worth a thought. If they've read the first four and want to know how it all turns out, they won't need persuading.

What to read next

If they liked a small hero nobody listens to, Dragon Rider opens with a rat who's furious that no one believed her warning.