Wings of Fire 7: Winter Turning

Winter Turning by Tui T. Sutherland is book seven of Wings of Fire, an icy dragon adventure for 10 year olds about a prince who has never once been good enough for his family.

What happens

Winter is an IceWing, and IceWings live by their rankings. His parents never let him forget how low his is. He once lost a polar bear because he stopped to watch her cubs (and the curious little scavenger watching them too).

The book opens on the day his big brother Hailstorm was taken. Fourteen SkyWing soldiers surrounded them in a forest. Hailstorm talked them into letting Winter go by telling everyone how useless he was.

Winter has carried the guilt ever since. Now he's set on finding his brother, and he plans to do it alone.

His clawmates have other ideas. Kinkajou, Moon and Qibli track him down in a thunderstorm and announce they're coming too. Winter is NOT pleased.

He's so much fun to read. He's haughty and rude and he hates the rainforest with a passion. He shakes spiders out of his ears, refuses fruit on principle and tries to eat someone's pet sloth. Underneath it all, he can't stop thinking about Moon (which gets very awkward once she admits she can read minds).

Then there's Qibli, the clever SandWing who annoys him about forty times a day by being right. Who hasn't had a friend like that?

It's worth knowing that Winter's family are properly cold to him. His mother threatens him with an ancient and probably deadly trial if his ranking doesn't improve, and he's sure his parents wish they'd lost him instead of Hailstorm. Hailstorm's threats to the soldiers are vivid too, with frozen ears turning black. A child who feels they never quite measure up might find that close to home. Most will just root for Winter even harder.

This one carries straight on from the sixth book and leans on everything before it. It's best read in order from the very beginning, which is The Dragonet Prophecy.

What to read next

For another boy whose family thinks very little of him, heading up into freezing mountains, try No Such Thing as Dragons. Ansel's father hands him over to a stranger for a purse of gold, and the pair ride north into the snow to hunt a dragon.