WINGS OF FIRE: HOPE

Snowfall becomes queen of the IceWings earlier than she ever expected, and her plan for the job is simple: wall her tribe in, keep every other dragon tribe out, and call it safety. Tui T. Sutherland's newest Wings of Fire book, aimed at 8-to-12-year-olds, follows that plan straight into trouble, since a storm blows in a group of dragons nobody can identify and Snowfall's tidy border strategy stops holding up fast. It lands at a point in the series where longtime readers finally get the IceWing tribe's culture and ice magic from the inside, through a queen who's trying to lead before she's had time to grow into the role.

There's a real leadership question sitting under all the dragon-fantasy plotting: does keeping a kingdom safe mean sealing it off from everyone else, or does that plan eventually fail on its own terms? Snowfall has to reconsider what security actually means once her walls get tested, which gives middle-grade readers something to think about alongside the fights and the magic. Fans already invested in the series get the political detail and IceWing culture they're after, while the storm of unidentified dragons and the action that follows keeps the pace moving for readers who came mainly for the adventure, walls or no walls.