mysticteabag - Tumblr blog

mysticteabag · 3 years

Text

More on my thoughts of the dangerous gift:

So I have a lot more to say.

Some of it personal urika moments and others are my thoughts the opinions I've seen around.

I've seen a lot of people hating on it but it's actually pretty good. I have things I hate that I'll get too in a sec but I want to dedicate a paragraph to pay it on the back real quick.

So this book was ambitious, the entire plot was an ocean away, so I feel it's very clever what they did to handle it. It also has compelling new characters, new views on the concept of animus magic, and a cool look into ice wong culture (am I the only one who thought the ice wing village names were cool as frick-pun not intended) overall, decent book. Not groundbreaking but a necessary point in the books.

Now im going to talk about the things I dislike so buckle up cause it's a bumpy ride.

I've mentioned they made good compelling new character, which is great because they ruined the ones they had. The queens are underwhelming and useless (what have you become, glory), the human squad is painful, wren being the main offender and the jade winglet has clear favoritism from the author. Like I got that qiblis clever, but why does he say literally everything? Is he narrating for our sake? Why is winter a ditzy idiot. I love him when he's a soft nerd but he was still a huge cold grump when we last saw him, why leave his therapy off screen?

They did winter no justice. I love him to death but tui clearly didn't like him as much as the others. All he did outside of the group was save his brother and figure out his fellow icewings are dicks. That's cool but it's not super important. Not to mention he was shoved to the background. Moon and qibli are mentioned everywhere and while I like the characters it's weird for the book to practically shout how cool they are and fawn all over them every other page. Not to mention they had huge roles in the dark stalker arc. All I want is more winter plot time.

I've mentioned this in my previous post but winter was literally perfect for the human crew. It perfectly fits his character! He's the scavenger obsessed need who thinks they're intelligent, he's literally built for this plot.

Not only does he know more about the dragon language and culture, but he can actually fight. The human crew is all weakish kids and a pacifist flameless dragon. They could use a heavy hitter. It also makes more sense for him to teach them more dragon language. They sort of waived the fact that sky was probably a newborn and shouldn't have even known basic language (think of bumblebees diction) bit it's a real stretch for him to know things like daffodil and stuff like that. It's more reasonable for wren to mix dragon and human speech like they said they did, and have her barely comprehensible to other dragons, before having winter teach her. It makes more sense.(Also imagine winter dropping culture facts like "you know they queen holds power right, why are you making a big deal about dragon kings")

Seeing his captive human was daffodil I had to get up and walk around a bit, getting excited that they would form a wren and sky dynamic. She's like a human qibli, he's a bit similar to a dragon violet, can't you see them annoying the shit out of each other? She could be like "take that wren you're not the only one with a dragon" and it would have been amazing the banter would be top notch!

Not only would it give winter much needed screentime bit it feels like he was made for this plotline, I have so many headcanons already I think in crazy! If he doesn't join the human. Squad I will cry. He is PERFECT.

The scavenger interaction hurt me it was so painful and wasteful of Winters character, and wren made it worse. Some people think she's a Mary sue, but I found her entertaining, and figured her amazing language skilled necessary to the plot. In the screen in tdg I hated her. She came off as over righteous. Going on a speech about how winter was such a bad guy for keeping daffodil as a pet (what that doesn't fit with his character and also invalidates everything he's done for scavengers to be treated as intelligent wtf) and it felt like tui telling us how cool she is. I miss dragon slayer wren, Not her obnoxious body double. The scene should be cut and hinted at (where did winter and his scavenger go? Why are the scavengers acting strange?) And kept in dragonslayer, it would have been less busy and handled mich better (death to weird bashful winter)

"what do we do with that 3 pages of extra space, now that we cut the horrible scavenger scene?"I hear you cry? No fear,my dedicated reader (how have you gotten this far I know I ramble too much) well dedicate it to cultural collision obviously! I was so excited to see all the dragons freaking out over each other (Clearsight dragons? Animus magic?? Other culture weirdness???COLOR CHANGING SCALES????) But they had one "wow first new dragon" line and now everyone's cool. I was so excited once I found out different perspectives would be shown, I could see them freak out first hand! I was so excited for them to see glory! She's an abnormally young queen, she rules two tribes, she's a goddamn badass, and she has cool scales? Nope not even mentioned. It would have been amazing, I was re-reading all the scenes with tsunami and turtle in poison jungle because I was so excited for the drama of the cultures meeting :(.

Tldr: this is a good book but where it fails it really fails. Winter needs more screentime. Cultures meeting is cool, yeah.

Thanks for reading, if you made it to the end, I know I have a ramble problem 😅

#tdg spoilers #wren wof #dragon slayer #wings of fire #the dangerous gift

14 notes · View notes

mysticteabag · 3 years

Text

Alrighty, so first post, product of my rage, not sure what im doing, be gentle, ect.

My opinions on the wof book 14

So, the dangerous gift, book 14 in the wof series came out recently and I read it. Overall, it was an amazing book and I loved it a lot, but a couple things about it really bothered me and I thought I'd try to write it out, and get some closure on my unhappiness. Keep in mind that overall I really like what this book did, just that the few mistakes really grate on me.

So if you read the book you would know that it brought the humans plot from the dragonslayer book into it. This seems fun but there's already so much going on. The two continents are either recovering from war or starting one, they are dealing with the biggest cultural collide of their entire history, potential death to all life via evil plant, and the issue with animus magic, and now you want to wrap in the plight of the scavengers? That's a lot.

Now I kinda respect that mistake a little. I was worried that wof would fall into the warriors trap of going on and on and running itself to death, so I would be okay with mashing them together, but it would be so much easier to make a second dragonslayer book, and mention in the lost continent how scavengers are acting up, rather than try to mash more in an already ambitious book. It would have solved the problem, and kept the book about the plight of humans to the humans perspective, rather than turning to the dragons who's only issue is maybe guilt that they've been eating intelligent creatures.

The biggest issue however, by far is what they did to winter. He's my favorite character, but he has a lot less plot relevance than his friends. His main plot was a personal character arch. He didn't even fix his nation. So I was really excited for the humans beginning to fight back. He is one of the few characters who truly believes scavengers to be intelligent. And is actively trying to save them. That's why his scavengers little enclosure is being referred to as a sanctuary and not a pet house or something. It would have been amazing if he was heavily wrapped into that story because it would not only give him much needed screen time, but it would totally fit his character.

But that's not what we got. Instead wren gave him a whole speech about how bad it was that he treated them as pets, and he acted sheepish and embarrassed??? This really annoyed me. Not only do we not see the grumpy ice prince were used too, but we see a bashful idiotic nerd. Im Down for making him softer, and im down for letting his nerd shine through, but I feel like it was handled poorly. I was cringing so hard at that whole interaction.

Let's look at a way that could have went down. Sky tries to distract snowfall. Snow fall says no, and during the back and forth mentions he picked the wrong scavenger as her cousin is the worst to try and buy a scavenger from, as he's one of the only ones who thinks they're intelligent and is trying to prove why they shouldn't eat them. Not only does that sound more in tune with his character (he wanted to study them more than have a pet to snuggle) but it would tie his arch with the humans. They would love to have a dragon who knows more of the language, who could teach them more about the dragon world, and be a better representative to other dragons than sky! He's met peril, so he might be able to connect the dots that sky has a twin! He can finally have the plot relevance he deserves but imagine how funny his interactions with daffodil would be (she's like a human qibli) if she claims him as her own dragon or something. He also wouldn't be the strange imposter idiot we are given in that book, he's so out of character. You could argue he got off screen therapy but it would be so much better to see him grow. Not to mention we don't see a stranger with his name running around in the story because we see how he got there. The human crew could have helped him with that actually, he's already more comfortable with then than dragons, and it would have been so fun.

Also, some people think wren was a Mary sue in dragonslayer, and to be honest I didn't quite agree then. She had necessary talents for human/dragon politics, and was entertaining to read. I didn't enjoy her in the dangerous gift. Her whole speech felt less rightful justice and more the author trying to go "look how cool and smart she is! So brave and amazing! Telling off the dragon like that!! Yay wren!!! You tell him gurl". I never like it when I can tell who the authors favorite is. I feel all this did in the book was dampen two great characters. (Also you just learned that he wasn't planning to eat your people and he's still the dumb awkward enslaver? It just felt all around bad)

My final issue is how they handled the continents meeting. I was so excited for the drama of them all oohing and ahhing at each other. They would have lost their shit seeing the rain wings, the original five dragonets we're shocked seeing glory in the sunlight! I thought they would mention how young of a queen glory was but they just ignored her even though there was a whole conversation about stress of young queens. They could have touched on how glory also rules two dragon species because that was a huge no no for the silk and leaf wings.

Solution: cut the scavenger scene and turn it into page space for cultural collide drama. Hint at the scavengers acting up and touch back on them in the dragonslayer books after the whole evil plant is delt with. Give winter the love he deserves. Happy ending for all.

#winter wof #wof #the dangerous gift #wren wof #tdg spoilers

8 notes · View notes