More Middle-grade adventures
I’ve been spending time reading through the best-selling Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland. Very entertaining, and great examples of story-telling craft.
Narrative voice and well-defined characters are why these books are so successful. Sutherland clearly lays out “here’s this character’s temperament, attitude, goals” and you know by the end of the story the crises will directly challenge all of those things.
I have enjoyed all of the books so far but I didn’t *like* all the main characters. Some I like a lot more than others, and I suspect the author did too. That, to me, is actually the most interesting aspect of the series, because it tells me what I as a reader wanted from the story. And what makes a successful hero.
I should explain that each book is told from a different character’s point of view. So you may really love one character, but boom, in the next book you have to identify with a new one.
I want courage and heroism and character growth if I am going to identify with the point of view character. If they’re cowardly, betray their friends, refuse to help others in need, then I don’t want to identify with them. And yet some of these characters do just that. I was shaking my head, wondering why we had to go there. Sure, it leaves a lot of room for character development, but it also leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Who gets to be a hero?
And yet my favorite character in the series so far is a mass murderer. There’s a lot of violence in the series, and I am ambivalent about it. But it doesn’t seem to have the same impact as it would if these were human characters. Dragons are naturally violent; or so the dragons invested in the ongoing war claim. Our heroes don’t agree with this familiar human argument.
Peril burns everything she touches; she can’t help it, it was the way she was born. An evil queen uses her as a weapon of punishment. Peril obeys her because she doesn’t know any better, until someone points out she doesn’t have to do this, that she could choose something else. How do you stop being a weapon of mass destruction? Now that’s a moral journey.
This happens in the first book of the series. When we get to Peril’s own book, we see her attempts to change who she is, as she tries to figure out how to be a good, likable dragon, even though most dragons shun her, hating her for what’s she’s done in the past.
Peril says what other people think but would never say out loud. She’s rude, blunt, and funny. She’s also smart. We don’t mind identifying with her — she’s trying, she helps others, she would do anything for the dragon she’s besotted with, and in the end she proves she really has changed, because of the choices she makes.
Peril’s character is transgressive – she doesn’t bother to be socially appropriate and polite, because that’s not going to work for her anyway. She will never be ‘acceptable.’ And we can vicariously enjoy being rude and dangerous and courageous at the same time.
She’s a great hero. I just wish she’d come back in another book.