The Wingfeather Saga, Book 4, the Conclusion

I’m having to dig a bit into history for this review, because it’s a book we finished about five months ago. I don’t normally do this, of course, because if I let too much time slip away between my reading and my reviewing a book, my thoughts might come across as disingenuous (even though I always take plenty of notes). I always want to share my honest opinions and, when applicable, my kids’ feelings about a book quickly, while they’re fresh in our minds. That this fourth installment to Andrew Peterson‘s The Wingfeather Saga sat steeping in my notebook for so long, well, that itself is part of the story I want to tell in this review.

Do you ever come across books that you want to have read but don’t really want to read? This often happens with the so-called “Classics.” I mean who seriously wants to read Ulysses? Or who actually looks forward to sitting through another long, depressing look at 19th Century London with Charles Dickens? Few of us, if any. But to be able to claim that you’ve read these books? Well, that’s a badge of honor, which is why the disparity between “want to read” and “want to have read” is so interesting to me. This book definitely fell into my “want to have read” category.

In previous reviews, I’ve belabored the fact that Andrew Peterson’s fiction is hard to read, which is why we sought books 2-4 on audio. He’s a great reader, and he’s familiar with his own pacing, so that simple switch made this series much more palatable to us.

Because we were renting these books through the Libby app, though, we had quite a wait from book to book. In fact, more than 6 months passed between our completion of Book 3, The Monster in the Hollows, and our access to The Warden and the Wolf King, so even what mild anticipation we might have felt to read the concluding book dissipated over time. When the book finally showed up in my queue, I thought: “Finally! We can get this thing done with!” And that’s where my “want to have read” totally overpowered my “want to read.”

We enter this final book knowing that there’s a war afoot in Ban Rona. The winged Fangs are on a rampage, and the Wingfeather children join the Hollowsfolk in their fight for survival.

One thing I liked in this installment was the inclusion of entire sections devoid of the main protagonist children. For example, we spend many pages watching Sarah Cobbler and Artham Wingfeather fighting their own battles in their own corner of the kingdom, while the three main characters are all separately fighting elsewhere. This was a clever twist of writing that kept the story moving, and perhaps it was also a nod to future books where Sarah Cobbler might play a bigger role (and not just as Janner’s Bride).

New readers of this series obviously shouldn’t jump right in with Book 4, but if they did, they might be surprised by the vast numbers of different creatures and species described throughout. Of course, few of these species are the result of another conversion-turned-ugly like in the cases of Artham, Janner, and their father—or obviously in the case of Fangs. Ridge-runners, trolls, sea dragons, and cloven all join the toothy-cows to populate this strange world. At one point, Peterson acknowledges that the Maker is master of other worlds too, and I imagine he’s talking about ours as well as Middle Earth, Narnia, or whatever other fanciful world God’s children can create with their God-given imaginations.

This story’s not horrible, of course (perhaps I’ve been too harsh), but fantasy-epic has to be your thing—and it’s not really ours. As the series-clincher, though, I felt that the conclusions were mostly satisfactory—even with Kalmar’s strange end. I think my kids were as happy as I to finish, and we probably would have accepted any ending, just as long as it finally came.

We’ll never return to the book series, I’m betting, but we’re sort of excited to check out the free animated series produced by Angel Studios. It just might take us another 5-6 months to get excited enough to try it.

©2023 E.T.

Read More from Andrew Peterson:

• On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (2008)
• North! Or Be Eaten (2009)
• The Monster in the Hollows (2011)
• The Warden and the Wolf King (2014)
• Adorning the Dark (2019)
• The God of the Garden (2021)