Escaping Peril (Wings of Fire, #8) (2024)

Okay, this series is officially not for children anymore. They just straight up say that Scarlet has a gladiator fetish near the end. The word fetish is actually, completely, knowingly printed into this "kids book." What is the official definition of fetish again?
Fetish
"a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc." -Google search "Fetish Definition". I can just imagine some little kid reading this, and asking their parent, "Hey Mom, what's a fetish," and then the parent's eyes bulge out of their head.
So, why does this book feel more childish than any other Wings of Fire entry?
Tui Sutherland is a master of defining characters through their narration and thoughts, and that's always aided in letting the reader slip into the protagonists, erm, talons, seamlessly. It never fails that a new Wings of Fire book would come out, I would feel skeptical if the POV character was not one I liked that much, and ended up sympathizing with and knowing them as if they were my own children by the end, loving them all to bits in the process.
But now for the very first time, it failed. I don't feel any closer to Peril now that I've been in her head than before I read this. I don't feel sad that her time in the sun is over and now I will have to explore Pyrrhia with someone else.
I don't exactly blame Tui for this failure, as Peril is not an easy character to sympathize with. Not because she was a mass murderer, but because she's childish, impulsively violent, possessive and altogether very unstable. Tui already had her work cut out for her trying to make Peril as likable, understandable and lovable as she's done with all of the other protagonists, but she seemed to have shot herself in the foot when she wrote a lot of thoughts and dialogue in all caps, (seriously, that's just embarrassing and immersion shattering when author's do that. I wanted to smack my head against a sharp edge of a bookshelf every time there was all caps.) and seemed to repeat a lot of Peril's insecurities over, and over, and over, and over again.
If I have to read one more sentence of Peril wishing she could burn someone alive because they were annoying and then think, "but Clay waifu wouldn't want me to do that!" I will scream.
Thankfully, the writing and other characters was still superb, which kept me going through to the end, when the book starts to shine. But I'll get to that later. Let's start at the beginning.
The novel begins with Peril at Jade Academy, waiting in a solitary room because of Queen Ruby of the Skywing's is visiting, to pick up the body of Carnelian, a Skywing student who died in an accident in the first book. Why does Peril have to hide in a room by herself while Ruby's here? One, Ruby banished her from the Sky Kingdom the moment she became queen, since she thinks Peril killed her sister, Tourmaline. As well as the trail of death she left behind as Scarlet's arena champion. Two, she has "firescales", a condition when a dragon absorbs their twin in the egg and burns everyone and everything they touch. Hasn't stopped her from attending class as normal before, so... I guess they just don't want to offend the royalty.
Of course, Peril get’s impatient waiting for the visit to end and goes wandering off by herself, cause honestly, we would be pretty bored if she didn’t. She runs into Turtle, a Seawing prince also attending the school, and he ends up dragging her on his quest to eavesdrop on the royal visit. It amuses me that Turtle is the secondary character in this book because I know that Turtle is going to be the next protagonist, and I can just imagine Tui thinking, “Oh, balls! I forgot to give Turtle any personality whatsoever! Quick, get the shoehorn!”
But I don’t mean that as a negative. I know this character had to get fleshed out one way or another, being in the same class as the previous protagonists after all. That still doesn’t mean it was done all that well, though. Throughout the book, Turtle shows himself to be a passive, laid back, nice, somewhat cowardly introvert, who shows great concern for his friends who have abandoned the school back in book one to help Winter search for his brother, then fulfill the prophecy Moon blurted out during one of her psychic episodes. Never mind that this conflicts with the Turtle shown in book one, who doesn’t interact with his classmates that much and doesn’t seem at all interested in being friends with any of them, but it comes across as plain. To me, Turtle just seems to be the second coming of Clay, except even more cliché and uninteresting. Yet, somehow, I still find myself sympathizing with him. How is that possible?!
So a lot of things that aren’t really worth talking about happens between the beginning and the third act, so I am just going to sum up the event that kicks off Peril’s journey, what sets her on the path to hunting down Scarlet, her former queen, and killing her.
Scarlet flies up to the school and literally drops a decapitated head on them made to look like Queen Glory by a magic scroll, just to scare them.
That is some hardcore psychological warfare there. I was in a panic along with Sunny and Clay for a second there. So Tui, if you even think of killing off my favourite character for real, I will hunt you down and drive pencils under you’re fingernails.

The third act involves a lot of twists, which frankly, I should have seen coming after the twist in the last book. I salvaged some of my dignity when I guessed that Soar, shortly after his introduction revealed to be Peril's father, was not a real sky wing and using an enchantment to look like someone else entirely, and that Tourmaline, Queen Ruby's sister, was still alive. And the second before the reveal, I guessed that Tourmaline was trapped in Ruby's skin by yet another enchantment from Chameleon's, Peril's father's real name, ramblings. Honestly, I was taken by surprise when it turned out to be true, but in hindsight, I shouldn't have been. It was exactly the same twist from the climax of the last book! Talk about lazy. And I feel really stupid for not seeing it from further away.
In all fairness, I don't think that was supposed to be the shocking part. The real core of the twist, the "meat" of the bombshell is truly brilliant.
Ruby isn't real. She was nothing but a mask of the enchantment, loaded with fake memories so no one would suspect her of being an empty husk.
And if it wasn't for the prologue of this book from Ruby's POV, seeing her memories and feeling her dread of Tourmaline's absence and witnessing the horror of toddler Peril burning up all of the eggs in the hatchery under Scarlet's orders, this would not have any impact at all. The dragon mask that Hailstorm was trapped under in WT wasn't real either. But experiencing life under Scarlet's terrible regime through her eyes as if she were a real dragon saved this twist from that fate, made the reader look back at that prologue and think, "but her thoughts were so real!" The best part is that it feels natural. It doesn't feel like Tui realized halfway through the manuscript that this twist wouldn't work and had to put in something else to salvage it. I applaud Tui for re using an old twist and making something completely new out of it.
But I think the award winning part is before that reveal, when the siege on Queen “Ruby’s” court begins. It turns out Soar is working for Scarlet, who is desperately trying to get back her throne. He has a scroll that allows him to create any enchantment he wants, which he uses to create a necklace that can mask Peril’s power. She can touch all the dragons she wants without burning them up, (and no, that is not an innuendo). The only thing Peril has to do is pledge her loyalty to Scarlet once more.
Of course, anyone with a half a brain can see that there’s a double edge to this deal, but Peril, being the insecure, unstable killing machine she is, takes it anyway, and immediately throws herself at Scarlet’s feet again. With any other character, this would have felt abrupt and random, it would have completely thrown off the pacing of the story. But again, Tui shows just how much she understands her characters. Peril is so fickle and self conflicted that this decision feels completely realistic for her, especially when a lot of Peril’s repeated thoughts throughout the book was her going back and forth between her unwavering loyalty to her former queen and wanting to kill her savagely.
It’s only a few chapters later, like a frog in boiling water, that you realize something is terribly wrong.
The change in Peril’s thought pattern is very subtle at first, but immediately noticeable at the same time. There were a lot of moments that I thought Peril was going to go on a lament about Clay, only for her to think, “I feel like I am forgetting something really important, but it’s on the tip of my tongue!” I was relieved at first, freed from listening to Peril’s love crazed whining, then as it was repeated again and again, it slowly dawned on me what was happening. Then a wham line crashes down, confirming my suspicions,
“Clay? Who’s that?”
The necklace that freed Peril from her firescales also stole her memories, one by one. This twist isn’t all that surprising in hindsight, but again, I don’t think it was meant to surprise people. This is Tui’s last resort, to make sure the readers she failed to appeal Peril to before will now root for her to the end. By making Peril a victim of manipulation, by her own father and his magic, even as she’s holding the queen’s chick hostage, she is made a sympathetic anti hero. I’ll admit, this final act had me cheering on Peril to fail in her support of Scarlet and come back to her original self, even if that self did piss me off quite a few times. Which she does, and helps “Ruby” finally kill Scarlet and rule her kingdom with love and fairness.
So that brings me to the last point I want to talk about, the ending, the most unintentionally hilarious cliffhanger ever.
In the first book, we are introduced to a historical figure called Darkstalker, the first and only animus (able to enchant and or control items or the physical world around them with their minds) Nightwing, who had performed crimes so heinous it drove the entire Nightwing tribe to abandon their city and go into hiding beside an active volcano for generations.
It turns out, the scroll Peril’s father had was the one Darkstalker created, and the only thing that can free him from his prison under Jade Mountain. Moon, the only one who can communicate with him, as she is the only Nightwing mind reader since they moved to home sweet volcano, thinks Darkstalker is misunderstood and steals the scroll to free him, but just to be safe, reads the oldest passages first.
And it turns out he’s just as evil as the legends described.
So the rest of the group catch up to Moon and Peril, who reached her first, and start arguing about how the scroll can be used for good.
Anyone who’s heard of the Lord of The Rings can see where this is going.
So Peril makes a decision, the first decision she ever makes by herself, without thinking if it’s what Scarlet or Clay would want her to do. In her first independent act ever made, she snatches the scroll and burns it with her firescales. It’s so beautiful the way Peril is so confident that it was the right thing to do by reading her new friends faces, and she feels so free and hopeful and happy for the first time in her entire life…
And then Darkstalker crawls out of the mountain. The scroll itself was the key to his jail. The very thing they were trying to prevent was brought by Peril doing what was right for the very first time.
I. Laughed. So. Hard. I laughed so hard when Darkstalker turns his massive head and thanked Peril personally. I laughed so much when Darkstalker genuinely smiles at her. I am cracking up just imagining how the next book is going to open up with Peril rage quitting life. If it wasn’t for this cliffhanger, I wouldn’t be able to make myself laugh at the possibilities, so for the first time in media history, I am formally thanking Tui Sutherland for writing a cliffhanger ending.
So overall, this book is the weakest of the Wings of Fire series as a whole, but it’s by no means bad. It’s held back by Peril’s childish and primitive narration, but the clever twists and other characters still hold up the story to a wonderful read.

"Wings of Fire is the greatest book series of all time ever!" - Says Max English, from the Park Slope Reader. "I.Love.This. Series!" Says Georgia Kretz, from the New York Spirit. Wings of Fire is fun and fantastical, but also tackles real life issues such as discrimination, as only dragons can. Tui T. Sutherland writes these stories in such a way that you can't put it down, no matter what. She is an author in part of the Erin Hunter team, "author" of Warriors, Seekers, Survivors series'.

In the latest Wings of Fire book, Escaping Peril, We follow one character through their journey. This time, it's Peril. She made her first appearance in book one, as the "psycho killer" for the evil Queen Scarlet. In this story, Peril tries desperately to redeem herself, and make some friends.

Peril tries to be funny, and innocent, and friendly, but because she has been killing since she was a dragonet (baby dragon), she has a dark side. when someone is hostile, she hopes that they attack her so she can kill them. She has something called Firescales, meaning that her scales instantly burn anything flammable. Anything. With her new "friend" Turtle, she tries to joke about killing people, or melting their ears off, or something along those lines, but really, she just freaks him out. A large problem she faces is discrimination. Everyone, even her on kind, see her as a weapon, not a dragon. She has a hard time dealing with a life not filled with death and hatred.

I would give this book 1000000000000000000000000 stars out of five. It is The best book in the series so far, and I love it! The only downside to these books is they are still being written, so I have to wait, like, six months before I can read the next one! Six months! I recommend this book to everyone who has herd a story where the knight saved the princess from the evil dragon, and anyone who just likes fantasy. Enjoy!