Wings of Fire 12: The Hive Queen

The Hive Queen by Tui T. Sutherland is the twelfth Wings of Fire book, a dragon fantasy for 10 year olds about a bookish HiveWing who can't stop asking questions.

What happens

Cricket has always loved books. They answer questions, and she has a LOT of questions. Why don't her parents like her? Why is her big sister Katydid always sad?

The biggest one arrives when she's two. Hiding in a cupboard with a book she isn't allowed to touch, she hears a scream outside. From the window she watches her whole street go blank and white-eyed and march an old dragon away in eerie silence. Her sister is one of them.

It turns out Queen Wasp can step into HiveWing minds and move their bodies whenever she likes. It works on everyone. Except Cricket.

Katydid helps her hide it for years. Now Cricket is a long way from home, in a cave deep under the ground, and in a great deal of trouble. Worst of all, she has nothing to read. (She is SO bored.)

She's brilliant company. Her brain runs at a hundred miles an hour. She asks questions without stopping for breath, and she quietly wonders whether being brave in a book is the same as being brave in real life.

That matters, because the dragons sharing her cave have much bigger plans than she has, and some of them are frightening. Cricket is the one asking who would really get hurt.

A heads-up before you start. The mind control is very creepy. Friends and neighbours turn empty-eyed and point their stingers at an old dragon who's begging to be let go. Later one of Cricket's companions talks quite calmly about wiping out a whole tribe. That could unsettle a sensitive reader. If yours likes a story that makes them think hard about right and wrong, there's plenty to chew on.

It carries straight on from The Lost Continent, the eleventh book, and gives away how that one ends, so read that first. Its first chapter also brings back dragons from much earlier books, and the whole series starts with The Dragonet Prophecy.

What to read next

For another girl who loves words in a place where the people in charge control them, try The Wordsmith. Letta writes out words on little cards for a living, until the list everyone is allowed to use gets cut from seven hundred words to five hundred.