The Erth Dragons 2 – Dark Wyng

Chris d'Lacey's Dark Wyng is the second Erth Dragons book, a dark fantasy for 9 year olds about a stranger who rides into a mountain village and offers to beat the dragons.

What happens

It opens on the dragon world, with a father telling his little son a bedtime story. It's about Graven, a golden dragon who burned his own brother out of jealousy and was turned black as a punishment. The son asks for something scary. He gets it.

Then we're down on Erth with the Kaal, a mountain tribe still getting over a war with the fire-breathing dragons they call skalers. Their men are scarred, their shelters are wrecked and a boy called Ren is missing beyond the scorch line. Some of the tribe think he's gone over to the dragons.

Into all this rides Ty. He's handsome and oddly dressed, his white horse has a horn and can vanish, and he closes his hand round a glowing log without a flinch. He promises to teach the Kaal how to beat the skalers. All they need to do is steal a dragon's heart. (Remember the name the father whispered at bedtime? You'll get a shiver when Ty says his.)

The pleasure here is being a step ahead of the people in the story. Your reader will guess long before the tribe does that Ty isn't what he seems. Rolan and Mell, the two who start to suspect him, are the ones to root for.

Ren is still out of sight for this opening stretch. He's the boy with a dragon's skills, who can vanish and make fire from a skaler horn, and everyone is talking about him.

This is a proper step up in darkness, so here are the plain facts. The prologue has one dragon killing another. A grieving widow is lured into the river by her dead husband's face in the water, and she drowns. A crow-like bird coughs up a tooth as payment for a girl who spies for Ty. The men drink a lot and one of them kicks a dog. None of it is gory, but it's grim.

For a child who finds death or creepy magic upsetting, that's a lot to meet early on. If your reader already loves a dark, old-style fantasy with tribes, legends and a villain hiding in plain sight, it's very much their sort of book.

What to read next

If they're hooked, The New Age carries the Erth Dragons story on, opening far from the Kaal in a tower of books kept by firebirds.