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Warning: This forum topic is not for the weak of heart. Turn away now if you value your sanity. You have been warned.
Hello folks. It’s time to crush some hearts and dreams.
I’ve been around this forum long enough to notice that The Wingfeather Saga is somewhat of a staple favorite among this community. Right up there with Narnia and Lord of the Rings.
Narnia and Lord of the Rings also happen to be some of my favorite books, so I decided to give the Wingfeather Saga a try.
And. Well. As you see from the title of this post, I am utterly unable to grasp the appeal of this book.
Honestly, just seeing how people rave about this book makes me both a) wonder if we read the same book, and 2) question my own sanity.
Obviously, I’m still a fledgling writer myself. So to critique this book, I’ll be using common sense and this article as a reference.
Shortly, I’ll be going through each point from the above article to get my criticism across, but first….
The Beginning
After not one, not two, but three introductions that come off as pretentious rather than informative, we begin the story.The opening is actually pretty interesting. We get a glimpse at who Janner is as well as his apprehension living in a world that is subjected to the so-called Fangs.
At any moment, Janner himself could become a victim to the Fangs, and be spirited away in one of the black carriages to who-knows-where.
Suspense. Oppression. Fear. Whispers of adventure and danger to come.
All makings of a great story.
But…. that’s when things start to go downhill.
Plot Problems
According to the article I linked to above, the first sign of a bad book is plot problems.Cliches
“Bad books very often have plots that feel predictable, unoriginal, or cliché. One major problem is the book feels familiar- like you’ve read it before.”
Pursuit by monstrous enemies, narrow escapes, lost royal families, hidden stashes of armor and weapons, destinies, the promise of further journeying, questing, fighting, restoring of thrones, and so forth.
These are all things that can be really, really interesting…. if you do it right.
And that’s the problem. This book is polluted with the most very basic of clichés written in the most unimaginative way possible.
You have your most basic of main characters, fighting the most basic one-dimensional non-human bad guys, and being saved in the most predictable of ways.
Honestly I’ve seen better writing in my 13-year-old sisters journal.
No Conflict/ Flat Plot
“Conflict is the thing that makes your main character different from anyone else in the book. It is what turns them into a hero or villain and without it, your characters do not have an incentive to push forward.
Conflict can be internal or external, but you need both to create a well-rounded story. If there’s nothing to lose in your book, there’s no point in reading it.
Bad books are usually dull reads with no character development. They are predictable and not challenging at all.”When our main characters run into the Fangs, for a second, you think that THIS is where the story will begin. THIS is when things start to get good. THIS is where the Fangs will exhibit their power. And how will they ever be able to get themselves out of this mess?
Turns out? Super easy. Barely an inconvenience.
Leeli, the little (5 year old) girl who is crippled, easily knocks them unconscious by herself and makes her escape.
Okay. So.
What does this tell us about the main adversity in this book? That they are super weak and are super easy to knock unconscious.
Any conflict, stakes, and sense of danger that had been set up before instantly evaporates.
And the rest of the story is just a cycle of the characters running into fangs, and then their ex pirate grandpa swooping in to save them. And that is the story in its entirety.
Without challenge, there is no character development. Nothing in the story seemed exorbitantly difficult for the main characters. They just sailed their way through the plot without so much as breaking a sweat.
This all could have been fixed if only:
The fangs actually posed as a threat
The characters had real internal conflict that tied in with the external conflict. Both making the other conflict more strenuous.
The characters were brought to breaking points. Where we got to see them persevere through real challenges. Cut out the deus ex machina.Deus Ex Machina
People, there is so much deus ex machina in this story.Deus ex machina is a plot convenience where someone or something that had no foreshadowing just swoops in and saves everyone without the main character having to do anything.
Basically, the mom, the ex pirate grandpa, some sock dude, and other characters are constantly coming in at a very convenient moment to save them.
Once, the main characters get captured and sent to jail early in the story. But what happens? Deus ex machina. The mom comes in and bribes the guards to free them.
What?
Look. You can’t just have your main characters being saved all the time. It makes them passive, weak, and boring.
You want to make your characters active, strong, interesting, and have agency. Right?
And maybe, the characters face real challenges in the later books. Sure. But when you write a series, each book needs to push the main character to his limits. That way, with each consecutive book, the main character can face bigger challenges and interact with greater conflict, and grow in more ways.
Just look at any popular book series, and you will be able to see this. And that’s why the series is popular. Because the conflict grows, and so does the character.
Janner, Tink, and Leeli did not have enough challenges in this book for them to grow. And the first book is the most important book to get right with this. That way the reader will be able to see what the main characters are struggling with and their limits.
Any attempts to show any sort of struggle just came off as contrived and forced.
Lack of Tension/ Low Stakes
“Once again, newer writers can fall into the trap of not having sufficiently high enough stakes. Bad writers will write about characters fighting for things that don’t matter to the reader. This is a mistake as it makes a book very dull and pointless.”
What does Janner and his siblings even want? It feels like they just wander around, explore stuff, and get attacked by fangs.
That’s the thing. They don’t have a goal that really matters.
Janner wants to go sail and explore, right? So why couldn’t that have been what the book was about?
Or even better, he does get what he wants. He gets captured by the fangs and taken away. He gets to leave home like he wanted, but now he realizes how much he misses home. So his goal is to return home to his family.
Exploring foreign lands or returning home. Either one would have been a more compelling goal than the nothing goal that we got instead.
As a result, there are no stakes. There is no reason to care about this story. There is no tension. We don’t even get a main character who wants something desperately enough to face the most dangerous of quests.
One Dimensional Characters
“Onions have layers and so do characters. Having a backstory is not enough. Your character needs traits, motivations, and desires that we can see from the outside but also need things going on inside them that we cannot see right away. Bad writers tend to just focus on the visible and never go into what makes their characters tick. One of the easiest ways to make sure your character isn’t one-dimensional is by making them multi-faceted. Giving them many traits that are visible and show what kind of personality they have is a great way to go about it. This will help bring your characters to life and make them relatable to readers.”
This pretty much sums the main characters from Wingfeather. Janner, Tink, and Leeli all have surface traits and some attempts to have anything deeper. But they don’t really have any real motivations, desires, regrets, failures, stuff that makes them tick, real struggles, interesting relationships, negative emotions, and layers.
If you guys hang out from Kingdom Pen, then you probably watched the Kingdom Pen video about boring protagonists. So. Just quickly running through the checklist for Janner, Tink, and Leeli…
Punching bag for the plot? Check. All they do is get into trouble with the fangs and other misadventures. They don’t have any real goal.
Unclear motivation? Check. Besides curiosity (which is a bad motivation) I honestly can’t tell what these people want. We were told that Janner wants adventure and whatnot, but he doesn’t act on that.
No emotions? Check. Like I mentioned before, they don’t explore a big enough range of emotions, particularly the emotions on the negative side of the scale.
No reactions? Check. So, you have a bunch of kids, right? And then they get captured by these monster-thingys and sent to prison. THEY COULD DIE. And what do they do? They just chill out in prison until their mom comes and bribes the fangs.
Also, one time Leeli gets captured and carried off by a Fang for the 100th time. And the whole time she is just super chill.
Nothing new to learn about them? Check. The characters don’t have any backstory or anything deeper than their surface level stuff.
They never fail? lol check. Everything just goes so well for them.
No values/ worldview? Check.
Leeli basically just exists to get captured by fangs over and over again.
Janner is one of the most immature, and unrealistically written 12-year-old’s I’ve seen in a while.
And Tink is so boring, that I already forgot everything about him.
Kids who keep getting saved by these ‘fangs’ who don’t really pose much of a threat anyway doesn’t make me root for them, nor does it make me admire their “courage”.
As for Podo? Having an ex pirate grandpa as a character, honestly, could have been really cool…. if it had been executed well. But he’s just reduced to some 1-dimensional weirdo who plays wack-a-mole in the garden and spits out the main theme of the story to the main characters.
Couldn’t they have made him cool? Mysterious? Have some dark, shady past for the kids to uncover? But instead of giving him that cool, mysterious tone, they just turned him into something for the lols.
And laugh-out-loud, I did not.
Empty Background/ Bad World Building
“Bad books are notorious for having poorly built backgrounds. This bad world-building will result from bad writers focusing more on what is happening in their main plot rather than creating a world for it to happen in.”
This book tried so hard to have interesting worldbuilding. But the whole world was just a basic cookie-cutter fantasy world.
Good world building is when interesting elements of the world actually play an important part of the story. The world itself should be like a character in its own right.
But instead, Peterson just throws a bunch of world building info dumps into the footnotes, does a couple of exposition dumps here and there, and then calls it a day.
Predictable Twists
“Bad books are often predictable. Readers can tell by the first few chapters what happens in the end – this is why it’s critical to add twists and turns along with all of the other elements of a book.”
Yeah. Every twist has been done before.
This was just a series of predictable twists. One after the other. But then the whole the author just had to pull the “kids who thought they were normal but are actually lost heirs to a kingdom and now everyone wants to kill them” cliché. And that was the nail in the coffin for me.
Bad Pacing
“Pacing is a fundamental part of any story. It’s the rate at which your book moves forward and how long each scene lasts. So you need to make sure that you have a proper balance from beginning to end.”
I don’t know what to say guys. This book was boring from beginning to end. There were a lot of unnecessary scenes and unnecessarily long scenes. Even the action was boring.
Usually, you can just tell if your pacing is good if every scene is useful and changes the story or the characters somehow. Also, usually, books follow the “Freytag’s Pyramid” structure. Basically, the plot just needs to rise in suspense with conflicts, obstacles, changing goals, and whatnot. It keeps building up on top of each other, which makes it seem like stuff is happening and that characters are doing stuff.
Nothing changes in the story.
The suspense never rises.
There is never really any danger.
Also, around the middle of the book, when there should be the “great midpoint turn around” and when the suspense should be high, what are our main characters doing? Well, around page 152, right in the middle, all three kids are peacefully sleeping in their room. And this was all Leeli had been “captured” by another incompetent Fang and saved by another miraculous dues ex machina.
Flat Dialogue
Seriously, the dialogue in the book just felt like it came straight from a kid’s picture book. Not to mention, it was painfully obvious that a grown man was trying and failing miserably to write the dialogue of kids.I cringed so much reading the dialogue.
Exposition Dumps
Yep. I said this before, but there was a lot of this.Humor
This book tried so hard to be funny.But it just came off as childish and immature humor.
Waste of Potential
Like I said, the book actually starts out pretty interesting. Introducing these black carriages that come in the middle of the night and whisk people away.(not to mention the epic cover)
So, obviously, I thought this book was going to be about some kids who get whisked off in said carriage and shipped away to a different land and maybe even torn apart from each other. There, they need to fight to stay alive, escape, and find their way back to each other, along the way, trying to make sense of this new world and meeting new and strange people.
Honestly, that would have made for a really interesting story, plus open up the story to be able to follow the Hero’s Journey. Plus, the more danger a character experiences leads to more character development. Suffering produces good character and all that.
But instead, what do we get?
It’s actually a repetitive plot about kids getting into trouble and then getting saved either by luck, deus ex machina, or by their ex-pirate grandpa.
I really can’t wrap my head around the idea that people can read this book and actually think that it’s a well-written piece of literature. Rather than a poorly put together piece of garbage.
Continuing the Series
So maybe the rest of the books in the series are better? But really, if the author failed to hook me in the first book, I don’t see a reason to keep going.I have no desire to keep reading these books.
This book ):
- Boring and 1-dimensional characters who are weak and just rely on other people to save them
- Repetitious, contrived, cliché, and boring plot
- Deus ex machina around every corner
- Waste of potential
- Weak bad guys
- Unmysterious mystery
- Unrealistic emotions
- Confusing and unnatural character actions
- Least action-packed adventure story I’ve ever read
- Terrible and childish humor
- And more 🙁
Sooo…
So what do you guys think of the Wingfeather Saga? Do you like it? Why? Please help me understand?Or do you agree with me?
I just need someone to help me understand the hype of this book….?
Flawless and handsome (as ruled by my grandmother.)
@anne-of-lothlorien @christi-eaton @gretald @elishavet-pidyon @koshka @keilah-h @anatra23 @joy-caroline @devastate-lasting @elfwing @elanor @e-k-seaver @trahia-the-minstrel @william-starkey @abigail-m @whoever-likes-the-trashfeather-saga
Okay. I’m going back to the gym now. This was way too much nerdy book stuff for one day.
IT’S LEG DAY BABY LEZZ GOOOO!
Flawless and handsome (as ruled by my grandmother.)
Flawless and handsome (as ruled by my grandmother.)
@not-so-secret-secret-assassin Never read before, no comment. Good luck on leg day.
Lately, it's been on my brain
Would you mind letting me know
If hours don't turn into days@devastate-lasting Your silence speaks volumes. You HAVE read it before, Linyang. You just chose to give yourself amnesia so you didn’t have to continue having nightmares about it. Smart choice. Any tips for self induced amnesia? Oh yeah, you wouldn’t remember.
And thanks for your blessing. I’ll need it.
Flawless and handsome (as ruled by my grandmother.)
@not-so-secret-secret-assassin While I do choose to forget a lot of things, one thing I will remember is that I haven’t read any books, much less middle-grade fiction, for years. And I don’t remember reading much fantasy, at all. And honestly books with dragons in them are pretty much all the same (where’s my Eastern Dragon representation, eh?)
Lately, it's been on my brain
Would you mind letting me know
If hours don't turn into days@not-so-secret-secret-assassin
I understand how you feel about the first book in terms of its plot, but I have to say I always found it quite funny. The three introductions made me laugh out loud, just his whole whimsical writing style in general, and his deliberate use of redundancy. (Gnag the Nameless, the Dark Sea of Darkness, etc)
I also enjoyed his worldbuilding and the footnotes, I felt they made it feel real. And loved Leeli and Podo and Nia. That being said, I do understand your frustration — the first book has very little plot. My older brother read it and had the same problem as you. He said to me ‘man. Even your book is better than that—’ before pausing, and realising just how much that didn’t sound like the compliment he meant it to be😂
However, if you can get to the 3rd book, especially the end of the 3rd book, it’s such a huge payoff, and so heartbreaking.
The end of a story, a beautiful picture; a feeling of longing yet hope~
That’s my wish to create.@not-so-secret-secret-assassin
The first book reads like a bedtime story. It’s not the deepest. It’s not necessarily high-quality literature. But it’s fun and it kicks things off. (And I personally enjoyed the footnotes; I found the writing style amusing.)
The second book I don’t remember real well except that I wasn’t a big fan of it, but it’s a necessary link between the first and later books and it starts off some of the more significant plot pieces.
And then you get to book three. And book three is where things start to get really deep. It’s where you really start to see the struggles of the main characters (unless those showed up in book two, in which case I just don’t remember because that book really is a blank in my mind), it’s where they really become relatable, it’s where you start to see more of the world, it’s where the plot becomes more interesting, it’s where it gains a great degree of emotional depth. I almost never cry at books; the ending of book three choked me up.
And all of the strengths of book three carry over and are even deepened in the final book. The themes, the character growth, the ending, they’re all spectacular. I bawled at the end, it was such a skillful emotional payoff and such a moving ending.
I can understand missing the appeal of book one; it does rely on personal taste. And I can understand not liking book two, though I don’t remember enough to tell you why. But I promise you that books three and four are worth it. It’s worth seeing through to the end.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Singer. Worldbuilding enthusiast.
@not-so-secret-secret-assassin
I understand if the series isn’t for you. We were actually very sceptical of it at first, especially of the fangs. I also see where the first book could be cliche or slow. He uses many plot points we are all too familiar with, and there are a few things that are a bit unrealistic. Then, why do I like them? Well, let’s see….
I personally loved the whimsical style of the first book, and all of them for that matter. The footnotes, his purposeful redundancy, and his word play: it’s actually got us to read it at all. Yes he did take his time, but he made it interesting along the way.
Yes, book two is where you really start to see the real Janner (and he sees it too). I personally love the second book, although it does have it’s issues. The brokenness, mercy, and loyalty evident in that one establish themselves in the later ones. My favorite is most likely the last, but I read it most recently.
I don’t know if I read too much between the lines, but his characters felt real enough to me. Their internal struggles do become more evident later on, untill in the last book when all the world around them reflects those inner wars. The last books reveal a much deeper story under all the fur and dust.
Janner’s struggles might not be “profound”, but they are things we all deal with, so we find ourselves in his shoes. It is worth noting how many readers have said they felt like they were Janner exactly. He is flawed, but he wants to be better, and like us, he doesn’t always make the right choices. (When he finally sees through all the confusion in the last book he reminds us that we have a choice to make and a Saviour to emulate.)
But the best part was the lessons. Honestly, if it weren’t for those parallels and shadow-types, Wingfeather would be unhealthy for me to read. The Fangs are incredibly weird unless one sees beyond into the aplapplication. On that point, it’s like The Princess and the Curdie by George MacDonald where people turn to animals as a metaphor for backsliding/rebellion/sin.
The characters are relatable, the plot is unique in its way, and the symbolism whispers to look farther than what eye can see. No, they’re definitely not flawless, but we need more books with themes like selflessness, loyalty, servanthood, identity, brokenness, purpose, and redemption.
I believe God has used them to teach some of us about Him, and that is why we love them. (Other than for the fantastic world building) 😉
You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan
@not-so-secret-secret-assassin Book one isn’t that good. Even Peterson himself has expressed displeasure for it. I wasn’t a fan until books three and four. Those were solid and the worldbuilding was complete enough that it’s where the story was fully in swing.
The pen is mightier than the sword, but in a duel, I'm taking the sword.
ekseaver.wordpress.com@not-so-secret-secret-assassin
yeah, just get to the third book and you will be amazed. =O
what we do in life echoes in eternity
-gladiator, 2000I think the message is clear: READ ON. IT GETS BETTER AND IS TOTALLY WORTH IT!
🙂 😉
And considering this was his first venture into fantasy, and the last book was written after ten years of thought, the series definitely gets better.
You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan
First book. You either enjoy or you don’t. I liked the writing style, the world, and the characters, but I will admit the plot could have been stronger. (Although I personally enjoyed it.)
Second book. Developes the character flaws we got a glimpse of in the end of the first book. Stepping stone to the next books yes, but this is where the story really starts flowing.
Third book. If you’re hooked already, this book will swallow you. The plot struggles have been smoothed out, and the characters are rapidly developing. Things start moving fast. The world plays a huge part.
Fourth book. These last two books are my favorite. The emotion and depth of this book is heartbreaking. I LOVE THE END!
First Grand Historian of Arreth and the Lesser Realms (aka Kitty)
Fork the Gork@not-so-secret-secret-assassin At first, I was like, “How DARE you call it ‘trash!’ It’s a good series!” Personally, this series is one of the only Christian fiction stories I’ve read, and to me it’s pretty good. But I get what you said with the first book–if you ‘re an adult (which I’m assuming you are for some reason) the first book seems kinda childish. It was written for kids. To me, the first book reminded me of the How to Train Your Dragon books, which have a lot of plain silliness. They’re good, but they’re silly. But the next books get better, in case you want to know. They move away from that and go more into the message. I agree with the idea that the plot was just jumping all over the place, but that happened–to a worse extent–with a story I wrote. It started out as a fanfiction, but it bent in all sorts of weird directions (and inadvertently created a creature my brother hates). So I think because it was his first-ever writing, he wasn’t able to get it right. The rest of the books are better. Just read them. And if you still hate them, I won’t judge.
Where'd I get ya this time? The liver? The kidney? I'm runnin' outta places to put holes in ya.
And there is one other thing. It was a Christian series, with good dragons. I love the idea of dragons, but since the dragon is almost always the antagonist in European folktales (and is associated with evil in other places–just look at Revelation) I thought Christian writers didn’t like using dragons as good characters or protagonists. But in this series, it portrays them more like the Leviathans of Psalms and Job–big reptiles, yes, possibly good or possibly evil, yes, but just huge animals. Other members of God’s creation, like dogs or cows or beetles.
Where'd I get ya this time? The liver? The kidney? I'm runnin' outta places to put holes in ya.
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