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chamomiledaydreams 's review for:
Darkstalker
by Tui T. Sutherland
I've enjoyed every Wings of Fire book I've read so far. If I'm rating "Darkstalker" a little lower than the others (three stars rather than four), it's because a lot of my questions and frustrations with the series culminated with this installation.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
There are lots of debates about Darkstalker's morality and how plausible a redemption arc would have been. While I do not wish to excuse any of Darkstalker's actions, I can't help but feel a little hopeless about his situation for two main reasons: First of all, animus magic is incredibly overpowered. It can do literally anything, with no limitations (besides necromancy, but I won't completely cross that off the list until I've seen an animus dragon try and fail). It's one thing to have a story about a superhero who must learn that "with great power comes great responsibility." But if that superhero can do anything they could imagine, and if they have very few role models to explain or demonstrate how they could be that responsible hero, then what hope do they have of succeeding?
This bleeds into my second main problem, which is Darkstalker's youth and immaturity. I still can't quite wrap my head around how dragon ages correspond to human ages. But Darkstalker is about five years old, and even if we say that dragons develop in the egg, so they come out more mature than a newborn human, we can't avoid the fact that Darkstalker has only had five years to develop socially and learn morals. Yet who are his teachers? Most of the adults we see are just as cruel and bloodthirsty as Darkstalker, if not more. We have the queen of the NightWings, who has been ruling for at least forty years. You would think she would be wise and mature, yet she is the one who enlists Darkstalker to commit genocide against the IceWings. This does not make it okay, but it also makes me more sympathetic to Darkstalker. If you have an absolute monarch telling you, "This is how you can help your tribe. This is how to be a hero," then it's no wonder that Darkstalker is confused about why Clearsight and Fathom are so horrified by his actions. The queen literally said it was okay, encouraged murderous behavior, and then lauded Darkstalker as a hero for it--though she later changed her mind once he seemed dangerous enough to threaten her own power; she tried to have him assassinated at that point, and you can imagine how that would upset anyone.
My point is, Darkstalker is actually pretty average for dragon morality in the Wings of Fire universe. He certainly seems more considerate (at least, of his friends and family) than dragons like Persistence and Allknowing. The fact that he was given unlimited magical powers was not his fault, and I feel as though other dragons would have misused his power much more egregiously. That his moral compass has to fall on dragons his own age (Clearsight and Fathom) strikes me as a failure of his society to impart proper morals. Darkstalker DOES commit heinous crimes, but quite a few of them (and the ones that I would argue lead to his worst offenses) were encouraged by the culture in which he grew up. And once again, this dude is only five years old. In human years, maybe that makes him a teenager, someone in late high school or early college. Even so, how can we expect maturity from someone his age with so few positive adult influences in his life?
Speaking of overpowered characters, Clearsight's fate seems awful to me. It's not that I think it's unbalanced for her to be so powerful. Rather, I think it's unfair for any person to be given such responsibility--and remember, she is still practically a child. Luckily, we know that seers like Clearsight are so rare that she's the only one we've encountered in 2,000 years. But still, her narrative more than anyone else's strikes me as a tragedy, because there's so little she can do to shift her fate. I was chilled by the line about her limitless possibilities narrowing down in an instant, and what kind of trauma must a young dragon experience to know so much about their life's potential outcomes when it's barely even begun? Is it possible for her to truly love Darkstalker, when she's already seen the futures where that's a reality? Can she ever stay anchored in the present and keep track of what's happened to this version of herself and her friends?
My overall impression of this story is one of hopelessness: I don't think that these characters stood a decent chance of finding happiness with one another, and I think it's pretty sick and twisted how they were forced towards one another by fate and visions. What if, by seeing Darkstalker in her future, Clearsight was repulsed by him, thereby changing the futures she'd seen? Shouldn't the fact that she's a seer impact the present and further complicate the logistics of using her prophetic powers to effect significant change in her life? It makes my head spin just to think about it... Won't seeing the future only cause distress if there's no reliable way to assert your free will and alter it?
Of course, this book wasn't all headaches and overthinking. I loved the new characters that were introduced, especially Indigo, whom I adored from the very first page on which she appeared. Whiteout was fantastic, too, and I appreciated the presence of long-established relationships (Whiteout and Darkstalker, Indigo and Fathom, Darkstalker and Foeslayer) over those that bud on-screen (Darkstalker and Clearsight and Fathom, Whiteout and Thoughtful). A lot of the romances in Wings of Fire happen too fast for my liking, and I vastly prefer when the characters have an established rapport and when there's an emphasis placed on non-romantic relationships.
All in all, this volume of Wings of Fire is great. I have a lot of concerns about dragon society in general, and I'm still puzzling out what to make of the main characters because of that. But the story is compelling, and I flew through this book faster than a SkyWing. I'm looking forward to starting the next arc of five books, although I'm sad to think that I'm so close to being caught up with Wings of Fire. Whatever shall I read next?
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
There are lots of debates about Darkstalker's morality and how plausible a redemption arc would have been. While I do not wish to excuse any of Darkstalker's actions, I can't help but feel a little hopeless about his situation for two main reasons: First of all, animus magic is incredibly overpowered. It can do literally anything, with no limitations (besides necromancy, but I won't completely cross that off the list until I've seen an animus dragon try and fail). It's one thing to have a story about a superhero who must learn that "with great power comes great responsibility." But if that superhero can do anything they could imagine, and if they have very few role models to explain or demonstrate how they could be that responsible hero, then what hope do they have of succeeding?
This bleeds into my second main problem, which is Darkstalker's youth and immaturity. I still can't quite wrap my head around how dragon ages correspond to human ages. But Darkstalker is about five years old, and even if we say that dragons develop in the egg, so they come out more mature than a newborn human, we can't avoid the fact that Darkstalker has only had five years to develop socially and learn morals. Yet who are his teachers? Most of the adults we see are just as cruel and bloodthirsty as Darkstalker, if not more. We have the queen of the NightWings, who has been ruling for at least forty years. You would think she would be wise and mature, yet she is the one who enlists Darkstalker to commit genocide against the IceWings. This does not make it okay, but it also makes me more sympathetic to Darkstalker. If you have an absolute monarch telling you, "This is how you can help your tribe. This is how to be a hero," then it's no wonder that Darkstalker is confused about why Clearsight and Fathom are so horrified by his actions. The queen literally said it was okay, encouraged murderous behavior, and then lauded Darkstalker as a hero for it--though she later changed her mind once he seemed dangerous enough to threaten her own power; she tried to have him assassinated at that point, and you can imagine how that would upset anyone.
My point is, Darkstalker is actually pretty average for dragon morality in the Wings of Fire universe. He certainly seems more considerate (at least, of his friends and family) than dragons like Persistence and Allknowing. The fact that he was given unlimited magical powers was not his fault, and I feel as though other dragons would have misused his power much more egregiously. That his moral compass has to fall on dragons his own age (Clearsight and Fathom) strikes me as a failure of his society to impart proper morals. Darkstalker DOES commit heinous crimes, but quite a few of them (and the ones that I would argue lead to his worst offenses) were encouraged by the culture in which he grew up. And once again, this dude is only five years old. In human years, maybe that makes him a teenager, someone in late high school or early college. Even so, how can we expect maturity from someone his age with so few positive adult influences in his life?
Speaking of overpowered characters, Clearsight's fate seems awful to me. It's not that I think it's unbalanced for her to be so powerful. Rather, I think it's unfair for any person to be given such responsibility--and remember, she is still practically a child. Luckily, we know that seers like Clearsight are so rare that she's the only one we've encountered in 2,000 years. But still, her narrative more than anyone else's strikes me as a tragedy, because there's so little she can do to shift her fate. I was chilled by the line about her limitless possibilities narrowing down in an instant, and what kind of trauma must a young dragon experience to know so much about their life's potential outcomes when it's barely even begun? Is it possible for her to truly love Darkstalker, when she's already seen the futures where that's a reality? Can she ever stay anchored in the present and keep track of what's happened to this version of herself and her friends?
My overall impression of this story is one of hopelessness: I don't think that these characters stood a decent chance of finding happiness with one another, and I think it's pretty sick and twisted how they were forced towards one another by fate and visions. What if, by seeing Darkstalker in her future, Clearsight was repulsed by him, thereby changing the futures she'd seen? Shouldn't the fact that she's a seer impact the present and further complicate the logistics of using her prophetic powers to effect significant change in her life? It makes my head spin just to think about it... Won't seeing the future only cause distress if there's no reliable way to assert your free will and alter it?
Of course, this book wasn't all headaches and overthinking. I loved the new characters that were introduced, especially Indigo, whom I adored from the very first page on which she appeared. Whiteout was fantastic, too, and I appreciated the presence of long-established relationships (Whiteout and Darkstalker, Indigo and Fathom, Darkstalker and Foeslayer) over those that bud on-screen (Darkstalker and Clearsight and Fathom, Whiteout and Thoughtful). A lot of the romances in Wings of Fire happen too fast for my liking, and I vastly prefer when the characters have an established rapport and when there's an emphasis placed on non-romantic relationships.
All in all, this volume of Wings of Fire is great. I have a lot of concerns about dragon society in general, and I'm still puzzling out what to make of the main characters because of that. But the story is compelling, and I flew through this book faster than a SkyWing. I'm looking forward to starting the next arc of five books, although I'm sad to think that I'm so close to being caught up with Wings of Fire. Whatever shall I read next?