Wings of Starlight

Before Tinker Bell and her friends, there was Queen Clarion. Clarion, the soon-to-be queen, is preparing with her mentor, Queen Elvina, and the rest of the Warm Season fairies prepare for her coronation. Clarion tries her best, but feels unsure about her ability to govern, which is made worse by her lack of control over her magic. Matters become worse when a dark threat, called Nightmares, escapes from their ancient prison in the Winter Woods and wreaks havoc across Pixie Hollow. 

Reports of a monster crossing from Winter into Spring make their way to the palace. Clarion is determined to prove her worth by defeating the monster. But instead of finding a monster at the edge of Winter, she finds Milori, the young guardian of the Winter Woods. The two of them recognize each other as kindred spirits, and a romance blossoms. They decide to work together to figure out how to defeat the Nightmares, which directly defies Elvina’s orders. However, only in disobeying does Clarion discover her own abilities, as well as a way to end the reign of the Nightmares and unite Pixie Hollow.  

Readers will be enchanted with Princess Clarion, who struggles with confidence but has a compassionate heart and an earnest desire to help. Queen Elvina would have Clarion be an objective and aloof ruler, but Clarion has a warmth that drives her to connect with her fellow fairies. Readers will relate to Clarion’s fight to forge her own path forward. Clarion tries to mold herself into the ruler Elvina wants her to be. However, following Elvina’s block of Clarion’s governing magic. Once she starts to follow her heart, she finds the strength and magic within her to lead Pixie Hollow and fight the Nightmares. Clarion’s all-encompassing love and wish to do right by all those who believe in her make her an endearing hero and the perfect lead for this tale of love and “hope, even on the darkest and coldest of nights.” 

While at times lonely due to her position, Clarion is still surrounded by love in the form of her friends and Milori. Petra the Tinker fairy is a brilliant inventor and worrywart who acts as a voice of reason but eventually clashes with Clarion over her dangerous adventures with Milori. Artemis, loyal to a fault, became Clarion’s bodyguard after she defied orders to save a friend. Milori, solemn but sweet, gives Clarion the push to believe in herself after showing his own unwavering belief in her abilities and heart. Each of these characters is unique and adds dimension to Clarion’s journey of self-growth, because even though she has to find her own way, Clarion is by no means alone. 

Wings of Starlight is a perfectly paced book that balances terrifying threats with the quieter moments of Clarion and Milori’s romance. Saft creates captivating characters, whose flaws only make them more relatable. Clarion and Milori’s fight to end the terror of the Nightmares is not just a fight to save the fairies but to ensure a new future for Pixie Hollow. Winter Fairies have become effectively separate from Pixie Hollow over the centuries and are highly mistrusted. Queen Elvina even tries to sever them from the rest of the Warm Seasons. However, Clarion and Milori are able to stop her and the Nightmares, thus “welcom[ing] in a new era of a unified Pixie Hollow.”  

The conclusion is slightly melancholic because while the Warm Season and Winter Fairies are now unified, Clarion and Milori recognize that it is too hard to watch over Pixie Hollow and the Winter Woods if they stay together. This comes as a result of Milori sacrificing one of his wings and his ability to fly in order to save Clarion. Even so, Clarion, Milori, and Pixie Hollow are still able to move forward into a brighter future. Clarion’s story is one of courage, belief, love, and sacrifice, through which she learns to follow her heart, even when things are dire. Wings of Starlight teaches that when all is not as it seems, the best course of action is always to trust yourself, trust in your “talents,” and in the love of those around you. 

Sexual Content  

• Clarion first meets Milori at the border of Spring and Winter. When Clarion hears his voice, “It made a shiver pass through her, one that had nothing to do with the cold.” 
• Clarion and Milori meet up again. “They sat almost knee to knee in the darkness, close enough to touch. The very thought prickled along her skin like electricity. . . Somehow, this felt far more vulnerable. Especially when he was looking at her like this. Clarion could not name what exactly she saw there, but it made a terrible longing rise up within her.” 
• As time progresses, Clarion and Milori both start to realize their feelings for each other. “There was no mistaking the wide-open yearning in his eyes…She wondered exactly how long he had wanted to kiss her. . . His hand came to cradle the side of her neck, and although his touch chilled her skin, warmth flooded her. Clarion leaned fully into Winter and kissed him.” 
• After their first kiss, Clarion has a fight with Elvina and then comes back to the border to see Milori. He tells her that he hasn’t slept well, and Clarion realizes it’s because of their kiss and how quickly she left afterwards. “The sense memory of their kiss awakened, skipping across her skin in heated trails and stoking her glow to a rose-colored blaze.” 
• Clarion and Milori are very close together as he invites her to a ball the Winter Fairies will be holding in her honor. While they are close, Clarion thinks, “It would be a simple thing, to rise onto her toes and kiss him as she had the other night, to thread her fingers into his snow-white hair.” 
• After the Winter Ball, Milori takes Clarion back to the border but they both are reluctant to part because of the finality of the moment. “Then, his lips parted beneath hers, and Clarion felt herself catch flame.” 
• However, because a Winter Fairy’s wings cannot tolerate the heat of the warm seasons and Warm Season Fairy’s wings would freeze in winter, Clarion and Milori must remain apart, but that does not stop their love. “They crashed together, and his mouth was on hers with a desperation that left her breathless. She met him with equal fervor. Her world narrowed to this: His hair, slipping through her fingers like water, His hands, skimming down the ridge of her spine and spanning the curve of her waist.” 
• Artemis comes to visit Petra in the hospital after the Nightmares’ magic is broken and Petra wakes from her slumber. “The scout placed a kiss on her forehead, then, more tentatively, to her lips.” Artemis also tells Petra to never “scare [him] like that again.” 
• Clarion and Milori give each other one final goodbye kiss as they face their new futures forever apart. Clarion “took his face in her hands and kissed him—briefly, selfishly, if only to commit him entirely to memory. The feeling of his lips, soft against her own. The way his breath hitched, no matter how many times they had done this.” 

Violence  

• Throughout the book, Nightmares attack the fairies at various times and send some into deep slumbers where they face their own nightmares. Clarion’s close advisor, Rowan, the Minister of Autumn, is attacked by the Nightmares, and it is trapped in a magical slumber: “[Clarion] scrabbled to her feet and flew to him. He did not stir at her approach, but his chest rose and fell. Alive. Clarion nearly wept with relief. She knelt at his side and shook him. His expression contorted—not with pain, exactly, but…fear? His eyes flickered behind their closed lids. It almost looked as though he was having a nightmare.” All the fairies affected by the Nightmares stay asleep until Clarion defeats the Queen of the Nightmares, and the spell is broken, with all the fairies unharmed. 
• Artemis, Clarion’s friend and bodyguard, tries to protect fairies from the Nightmares. Artemis “loosed her arrow. It soared through the air and into the beast’s open mouth. Although it skewered the back of its head, the serpent did not even flinch.” This fight lasts six pages and ends when the Nightmare serpent disappears into the forest. The fight is not without casualties as many fairies are under the Nightmares’ magic, like the Minister of Autumn, Rowan.  
• When investigating the Nightmares, Clarion and Milori are attacked, and Clarion is injured. “A bright pain seared through her, but the Nightmare’s talons drove into the spot where she’d been lying.” 
• The main attack occurs during the Winter Fairies’ ball for Clarion’s coronation, and many people are injured fighting the Nightmares, like Artemis and Petra. Clarion gets up after dodging something just in time to see her friends get injured: “she scrambled to her feet—just in time to see the beast sink its teeth deep into Artemis’s shin. Artemis screamed in agony. It shook its head viciously, thrashing her; Artemis’s body snapped back and forth like a rag doll…As Petra struggled to nock another arrow into the bow, the Nightmare swiped at her. She went soaring, then slammed into the trunk of a tree. A sickening crack split the silence…Petra lay very still, her red hair splayed out in the snow like a bloodstain.” This fight lasts a full chapter.  

Drugs and Alcohol  

• When Clarion and Milori fight the Nightmares, Clarion is injured and goes to the healing fairies for help. One of the healers, Yarrow, gives Clarion “a poultice of juniper, usnea, and linseed wrapped in a leaf parcel” and “balsam and wintergreen [that] will help with healing and inflammation.” 

Language  

• None 

Supernatural  

• Wings of Starlight is set in a supernatural world where fairies live in Pixie Hollow, have magical “talents,” and help the seasons “arrive” on the mainland. All fairies are born with an innate talent, and “they almost always intuitively knew what to call it.” There are light-talents, garden-talents, water-talents, animal-talents, tinker-talents, and many other types of talents. They work with their same talents and all the other talent groups to create the changing of the seasons on the Mainland where humans live. 
• Their world is sustained by the Pixie Dust Tree, a source of pure magic that is sometimes sentient. “The Pixie Dust Tree had put out new growth over the last few days; in the language of flowers, it said, I am here for you. Clarion marveled at how attentive it was being lately.” 
• Additionally, the Nightmares are children’s nightmares in corporeal form, that can shapeshift into any animal and have venom. For example, Milori and Clarion are attacked near the Nightmares’ prison and Clarion becomes injured. “The smokelike form of the Nightmare writhed and bubbled until it took recognizable form: a raven. One by one, ten violet eyes blinked open on its body.” 

Spiritual Content  

• None