By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Review
This review is also on Reedsy Discovery.
Spoilers: J. Bruno's, The Amazing Flight of Aaron William Hawk vol. 2 Wings of Emifra is another in the trend of a Magical Boarding School but unlike Miss Mabel’s School For Girls by Katie Cross, The Fearghus Academy by I.O. Scheffer, The Peacebringer Series by Raymond W Wilkinson, or their most famous cousin Harry Potter, which teach different magical skills and talents, this one is more specialized. It is laser focused on one particular special skill, the gift of flight.
In the previous novel (unread by me), Aaron grieves the death of his father in a flying crash and is treated as an outcast in his seaside village. He discovers a pair of metal wings and a map to an island called Solistasia. His mentor tells them that there is a place where he can learn how to fly. Not with an airplane, he can build a pair of wings and fly with them.. Aaron takes the wings and map and heads straight for Solistasia.
In this volume, Aaron wakes up on the island and is welcomed to the School of the Skies. Aaron takes many classes taught by some really cool teachers, has some great friends, receives a bully/rival, and tries to fit in this strange place. The students study, train, and practice hoping for the day when they can show their academic excellence by flying a dangerous route to Mt. Emifra, which is a great distance from the school. The mountain is surrounded by unpredictable wind currents, enormous land masses that obstruct flight paths, and unidentified species that live on the mountain.
There are many standards that The Amazing Flight of Aaron William Hawk follows. It carries the usual tropes found in many school stories: the newcomer protagonist, the close friends, the potential love interest, the snobbish arrogant bully, the academic lessons that fit the theme, and the life lessons. The tropes exist and some of them don't do anything new here, but others provide some interesting twists and deviations from the normal procedures in these books.
One of the more interesting aspects to the book is the school’s central focus on flying. They revere Icarus from Greek Mythology who in this version survived his plunge to the earth and taught a younger generation the secrets of flight with wings. The School of the Skies teaches classes on how to construct wings. They learn how to use the wings properly, how to let gravity be their accomplice, how to avoid obstacles, and how to manage their speed and distance from the ground. It’s a fascinating curriculum unless you have aviophobia or acrophobia. But if you ever had dreams of flying with wings and without the assistance of aircraft it brings those fantasies to life.
The teachers know their craft and how to share it with their students. Tarras, a young teacher whom Aaron meets on his first day in Solistasia, acts like a cool big brother mentor figure to the new recruits. Professor Thunderstruck is a thrill seeking aviation instructor who teaches students the basics of flying including the excitement and potential dangers that come with it. Professor Guildenstein not only teaches the students how to make their wings but how to incorporate their own personalities into them like increasing their speed, giving it a more airy design, or increasing elevation properties. Then there’s mysterious Professor Mangus, an export on wind charting whose Glamour AKA Shape Shifting ability seems out of place in an aviation school but proves to become a key talent later on.
Aaron makes some friends including Eno who shows him the ropes and gives him and the reader much needed exposition before fading into the background,Trevin, his goofy roommate, and Alya, who like Aaron is an outsider invited to Solistasia and acts as the moral center but still can be one of the gang. She is the potential love interest and some of the book falls into a
“Will-they-won’t-they” subplot. They are good loyal friends but there isn’t much that separates them from other similar characters in other similar stories.
What is unique to this book is how the arrogant bully character is written. Drake Corvus at first appears as the typical rival challenging Aaron every chance that he gets. He mocks his background, his deceased father, and his mistakes. He appears jealous of his achievements and potential for success. He is a walking stereotype, almost too much like a stereotype.
There are moments where Drake shows vulnerability like crying when he is alone, quietly analyzing Aaron’s movements, and showing concern for his plight, usually covering it up with a sarcastic remark. In one moment, he actually saves Aaron’s life when he is in a tight spot. It shows more depth to his character, leads to an interesting reveal about his origins, and answers questions about his arrival at the School.
There is a long section where Aaron is left on his own and explores many darker issues from his past, most of which were probably elaborated upon in the previous book so don’t make any sense if you haven’t read it. It also puts the book into another territory which started out as a school story but became a fight for survival in a fantasy landscape.
This section has some interesting aspects to it particularly the arrival of Emberly, a witty saucy fairy who occasionally saves Aaron’s life while bantering with him making his attractions clear. There are also some interesting cliffhanger suspense like when Aaron faces an opponent who knows more about him than she should. But it all seems to belong to another type of book than the one that we were given so far. It flirts with Fantasy while the academic aspects flirt with Steampunk Science Fiction.
Despite the complexities of the survival subplot, The Amazing Flight of Aaron William Hawk is an excellent YA novel that really takes flight.
