My thoughts on "Flight" -
So this continues right where "Wings" stopped, which is cool. We learn a few more things through exposition, it's great.
One thing that is slammed over the head is the "secret" that Melchior is Edward's father. (I mean really it's not a secret the Jackal friggin said it in the first book)
To be fair, that did happen, but his dad is currently this weird ugly blend of porcupine and human, so it's less of "Hooray my dad" and more of "Ugh really that's my dad?"
But still. His dad did come to rescue him from Scruggs. So that's great.
But after the grand reveal, Scruggs and a gaggle of goofs show up and are like "Hey Ed I'm gonna take you now to be killed" and everyone else is like "Oh heeellllllll nah!" so Edward, Bridgette, Spines(Melchior, whatever), and one of the Guardians that showed up named Tabitha, run off to this lake, they get on a canoe, bad guys show up, Tabitha does some cool loop-dee-loops but the bad guys are too much, so our boy Ed blasts off a "Histalek" and passes out, losing his precious deck of cards.
Which aren't really mentioned for the rest of the story? Like, they're mentioned briefly when he's learning how to fly (I wouldn't consider that a spoiler because what else is he going to do with the gigantic wings on his back that sprouted out not even a week ago?), but other than that there's really nothing to remind me of the fact that they exist.
In this book, we get more insight into who Bridgette was before she came to Woodbine. Turns out that nearly dead people can also come here, not just completely dead people.
She accidently set herself and her baby sister on fire with a kerosene lamp. Her sister died, but she got severely burned and fell into a coma. She said that sometimes she can hear her parents back on Earth talking about her and to her, and she overall feels hella guilty, which makes sense.
The whole burn thing makes her sensitive to compliments, because at one point Edward compliments her appearance and she gets all up in arms about it. But I must clarify that she is not a tsundere, which is great. Because that would be annoying.
Bridgette is aware that Edward likes her, but she doesn't want to allow herself to like him back, because there's a chance that she could wake up from the coma and not be able to go back to Woodbine until she dies for real, (I have a feeling she wouldn't be able to come back if she committed suicide but idk this is a middle school level book from 2009 it's not going to touch on suicide) and so all the things she experienced in Woodbine (such as a potential relationship between herself and Edward) would be taken away, and she would only be left to remember what happened, but know that she probably would never be able to go back.
It's kind of tragic or whatever, but so far it isn't annoying. Edward doesn't seem set on anything other than seeing his mother again and rescuing her. There are side goals for him, of course, like learning how to fly and how to be a proper Guardian and stuff, but it's mainly about seeing his mom. Which means that the romance is essentially lots of bloosh and stuttering.
Speaking of stuttering! There's one point where Bridgette, Tabitha and Edward go to this Quite Very Spoopy place called "Specter's Hollow" (which honestly just makes me think of the Specter family from the Sims 2), where any and all of your worst fears come true. Tabitha explains that this is where poltergeists come from. They are constantly haunting others and being haunted themselves.
So they get separated (because writing about multiple character's fears at once is hard) (also plot and character development), and we follow Edward who ends up in the one place he never wants to go back to, and also the first place we met him: back at the Foundry in the Care and Maintenance of Sewer Pipes class. He is sent to demonstrate, and as he is to be hoisted into the pipes, who else but Scruggs shows up with his rude scissors! (Dun dun dunnn)
But then Edward basically says "gtfo bitch I'm not scared of you" and manages to escape.
And in the process, he mostly gets rid of his stutter. I don't know what the point of that whole thing was, if it was for Edward to solidify the idea that he is the Bridge Builder (which is what the prophecy claimed him to be), or because Lethcoe was tired of warping dialogue with a stutter (that honestly working the way that stutters work in books but not really in real life), or what.
It's not completely gone, but it's mostly gone.
Part of me hopes that his stutter was there because he was supposed to speak in a completely different language, kinda like the dyslexia and ADHD thing in Percy Jackson, because I think that's a cool idea, "You're bad at this thing because actually meant to do something else". Idk.
But after the victory of Edward flying for the first time, we go back to the Jackal, who has both Sarah (Edward's mom) and Melchior, and he's waiting for Edward to fall into his trap. I can kinda already imagine how it's going to play out, with Sarah and/or Melchior being like "No Edward it's a trap!" but Edward is so focused on his singular goal of seeing his mother again that he falls squarely into the trap.
But it also pans over to Scruggs, who apparently is scared of a lot of things, and was too wimp to even consider going into Specter's Hollow, but he did unleash these weird centaurs that really wig him out.
And that's kinda where the book ends.
Edward did not go extremely out of his established character, he's still a weird, gangly, socially awkward fourteen year old in a situation that he never could have imagined. He's still enthusiastic about seeing his mom (but not a lot. It's only mentioned a couple of times. There are other things on. Thank goodness), learning to fly and becoming a Guardian, all that.
I just wonder if any points are going to be made about him having black wings. Apparently Melchior used to have gold wings before he was Corrupted, Tabitha has "pearly pink" wings. There was this other Guardian who was training Tabitha, but he honestly had so little to do with the story that I honestly cannot remember his name. I think it started with a "J"? I dunno. But I do remember that he had silver wings.
Hopefully there won't be a point where Melchior's been cleared of the Corruption, and he gets his Guardian form back (yay) and in the process, Edward's wings also change color, because I really like the idea of black wings. It suits his character.
That's all.