Book Review - Wingfeather Saga (Books 1-4)

I have heard a lot about the Wingfeather saga, and 99% of it has been glowing.   I have read people comparing it to Narnia, claiming it was a favourite story, calling themselves 'fangirls' over this thing.  I'm almost always disappointed when I get around to reading hyped-up books, but when our family friends said it was their favourite family read aloud and even the teens in the family were obsessed with it and they named their cats after characters. ..okay.  Okay, I will buy the books.  I got the first two, NEW IN HARDCOVER so I couldn't not read them because I'm very cheap, and here we go.

On The Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness is book one.  Various people, apparently including the author himself (I have not verified this - it is just hearsay), say that this is the weakest book.  It is, I'm just letting you know, very weak.  The writing is amateurish and very long-winded and there are many little rabbit trails that lead nowhere.  It is also full of potty humour.  References to 'snot' candles, people peeing themselves, etc.  While I liked the cover art, the interior illustrations were at the caliber of your friend's 12yo who is 'super talented!'.  It's a little painful.  The entire story is just chock-a-block full of silly words, bumbling, jovial characters, and nonsense.  And the footnotes!  They almost did me in, guys.  Sometimes up to a third of the page filled with obscure details of the fantasy realm and the items within.  All, again, using as much made up and silly language as possible.  The same adjectives and verbs used to describe the same people - the red faced, one-legged sailor is always roaring, the little girl is always squeaking and squealing...it is very, and I mean very, tiresome.

Also a warning, besides the potty humour and the bad writing and the stock characters - there is also a lot of violence in this book.  People getting cracked across the skull by the butts of spears and such.  

My kids thought it was okay.  They didn't ask to hear me read it, but they didn't fight it or groan when I pulled out the book.  No one seemed particularly invested in the story, which follows the three Igiby children - Janner, Tink and Leeli - through their world of Skree, infested a few decades past now with giant lizard people called Fangs.  Who are obviously evil and also venomous and fat and stupid and lazy and greedy.  Obviously.  It's so nice when evil is just so easy to recognize. 

I was, and it is hard to overstate this, not keen to keep going.  But I was told there was a certain scene in book two that I absolutely had to read to.  So, fine.

North! Or Be Eaten is the second book.  I like the title, and I like the cover.  (Actually, this is my favourite cover of the four books.) So fa, so gud.  Going on the promise that the first book is not indicative of the series as a whole I went ahead and ordered the third and fourth books to finish my series and force myself to read to the bitter end.  Friends - people said they cried over the ending of this series.  Cried.  

Book two had the advantage over book one in that the storyline of the Igiby's fate had already started in book one, so we didn't need to repeat the 30-odd chapters of prequel type writing.  It moved preeeeeeetty slowly in the first half, though.  By chapter 29 [134 pages in] the family had still not reached the first village they were heading to on their journey.  As the book progressed, the story started to move along faster.

The writing did not initially improve; Peterson needed an editor very badly.  In some cases the same adjective was used in two consecutive sentences, which made reading aloud cumbersome.

The formulaic characters continued, and I started to actively dislike the two main adults.  The grandfather, Podo, who had seemed protective, blustering and weighed down by a heavy past in the first book, was much more antagonistic, irrational and angry in this book.  The mother, Nia, who had been caring and motherly but pretty unimportant to the plot of book one, was now essentially completely unnecessary in book two except to reinforce archaic feminine stereotypes.  I also feel like I need to repeat how incredibly violent and sad these stories become at times - there is a lot of punching, kicking, and blood.  A child is whipped and then locked in a coffin as punishment, feet are run over by carriages, children are forced into servitude and their parents into madness and extreme poverty, characters die in very dramatic ways; it's not an easy story to read aloud.

However, my children liked this book much better!  Bad guys chasing good guys, good guys making daring escapes, excitement, deception of dear friends and then intrigue!  And about two thirds of the way in the story really started to pick up and appeal more to me as well.  Also, fewer insane footnotes.  By the end of the book we were really engaged.

 

The Monster In The Hollows is book three.  In this book we finally have the family away from Skree, where they were living before, and 'safely' housed in the Green Hollows, where the mom character was from originally.  Before she married the king.  Anyway, if you thought the previous two books were violent and depressing, you're going to Not Like This One Very Much!  At this point pretty much everyone is mean to everyone else.  The girl character, Leeli, and Grandfather Podo, are both essentially absent from the story.  Nia, the mom, is just sort of...well she's just sort of there.  She doesn't seem to show much of any real growth in any of the books up to and including this one - she's the 'mourning' mom, the 'strong, silent queenly mom', and the person who does a lot of cooking, I guess.  

This story focuses mostly on the relationship between the two boys, Janner and Kalmar.  And it's a weird one, I'm not going to lie.  Janner has always been frustrated and short-tempered with his brother, and Kalmar is consistently immature and irresponsible.  It was like this in book one, book two, and now book three!  Again, no character growth.  Kalmar is depressed and self-sabotaging, and Janner is somehow expected to just act like he doesn't deserve to have things he loves.  The boys get to go to 'school', (Nia is not at ALLLLLLLL supportive.  It's sort of like 'well, make people like you.  Enjoy fighting!' Then just ignoring their bruises when they come home) which in the Green Hollows appears to consist of being beat up.  I'm not exaggerating here - this is school.  The boys join the Durgan Guild class (Janner doesn't want to, but no one cares what Janner wants to do with his life) and they spend a lot of time fighting.  There are bullies.  The teachers are weird and ugly and unsympathetic.  

Oh, and I don't want to totally ruin the book, so I won't spoil the story completely, but something happens at one point in the book that makes me realize that Nia is in the book solely to provide a sacrifice, one way or another.  

My children reacted to this third volume similarly to volume two - they were interested in the story - I mean it IS a story written with children in mind, odd as that may sound with these reviews.  We finished it, and they haven't asked for book four to start, but at this point, we're finishing the series if it kills us!

The Warden and The Wolf King is the fourth, and final, book in the Wingfeather Saga.  Review to come when we've finished it!