Championing The Wind on Fire Trilogy

I wasn't sure about entering this challenge at first as I wouldn't say fantasy is my main genre and I assumed there would be many stories about the more mainstream fantasy series I like such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. I went to check my bookcase and that's when The Wind On Fire trilogy jumped out at me. The nostalgia hit me like a big yellow school bus friends. I was a big Point Horror and Goosebumps fan as a kid but this is the first connected book series I remember being so into that I was hanging out for the next before it was even published. Remember the hype on Harry Potter launch day, when bookshops used to open at midnight & then lots of people had finished reading by the following morning? That was me with The Wind on Fire trilogy. I'm not good at getting rid of books anyway but I think that's why these still have a place on my bookcase.

I don't think I've ever met another human who has read this trilogy so I'd love you to read it so we can talk about it. For that reason, I'm going to attempt to sell you on it without revealing too much of the plot. To whet your appetite here's the blurb from the first instalment:

In the walled city state of Aramanth, exams are everything. When Kestrel Hath dares to rebel, the Chief Examiner humiliates her father and sentences the whole family to the harshest punishment. Desperate to save them, Kestrel learns the secret of the wind singer, and she and her twin brother, Bowman, set out on a terrifying journey to the true source of evil that grips Aramanth.

I think the trilogy came out at the wrong time to hit peak popularity. It came out the same year as the fourth Harry Potter book and just before the first film so I think it was overshadowed. I remember waiting with bated breath as a few years ago they seemed to be adapting virtually every YA fantasy book series into films, I thought it was finally time for The Wind on Fire trilogy to have its day. Although film adaptions are never as good, I hoped it would raise its profile and drive people to the books. When I looked up whether there was anything in the works I found something that made me love the author, William Nicholson, even more. He turned down an offer of $1million for the rights to make a film because: "The minute a film is made, a book dwindles away and becomes nothing," he said. "I want it to be a book that people can make the movie in their heads."

So why should you read it? Well, first of all the main characters are a pair of young twins that most children, and indeed adults, can relate to. The first in the series came out twenty-one years ago when I was ten, and concluded when I was thirteen so me and the main characters grew up together. I liked to pretend I was carefree, rebellious, brave Kestrel but really I knew I was fearful empath Bowman (although aren't we all a little bit of both really?).

Plot wise, Nicholson does a great job of drawing out the tension and keeping you on the edge of your seat. Considering its aimed at children it's really quite scary. The stakes and scares increase with each book as the oppressed Manth people deal with a dictatorship and a journey across a harsh land, then vicious slavers, then something less human. The evil army are relentless, and almost immeasurable, and definitely not something you want children up against. In one scene that's particularly stuck with me, they walk into water and die because they know there's enough of them so eventually they'll stack up and enable the rest to walk on a bridge made of their bodies without making a dent in their size. There's very few adult horror books I've read that are that dark.

It really has everything you want in a fantasy series is what I'm trying to say. You'll cheer the characters on, you'll be scared for them, you'll cry with them. It's set in a time and land similar to our own but under an oppressive regime. There's magic of sorts, and telepathy, and a lot of responsibility for the young characters to bear.

So please do yourself a favour and read the series, and then do me a favour and tell me what you thought of it.