The Hidden Kingdom (graphic novel)

(This is the page for the graphic novel adaptation of The Hidden Kingdom. You may be looking for the book instead.)

The Hidden Kingdom (graphic novel) is the graphic novel adaptation of the third Wings of Fire book, The Hidden Kingdom. The art is done by Mike Holmes. The book is written from the point of view of Glory. It was officially released on October 15th, 2019.

Synopsis

In the rainforest, danger is everywhere …

The Dragonet Prophecy didn't call for a RainWing dragonet, but Glory knows she's far more powerful than she gets credit for. So it's devastating when she finally finds the rest of her tribe and discovers RainWings do seem a little lazy. They nap every day, no one really wants to be queen, and worst of all, only a few have noticed that RainWings are disappearing - mysteriously vanishing from the safety of the rainforest without a trace.

Glory is determined to find the missing dragons, even if it means dragging her peaceful tribe where they never wanted to be: right into the middle of the war.

The #1 New York Times bestselling series Wings of Fire climbs to new heights in the third graphic novel edition, with art by Mike Holmes.

Plot

Prologue

The prologue begins with the false dragonets, who were mentioned in the epilogue of The Lost Heir. They are Squid, Flame, Fatespeaker, Ochre, and Viper. Nautilus and Morrowseer converse, ending with Morrowseer deciding to train the dragonets personally, disapproving of what the Talons of Peace have done so far.

Part One: Rainforest Monsters

The dragonets and Webs are traveling through the borders of the Rainforest Kingdom. Before they have left the Mud Kingdom, they come across two murdered MudWings, who evidently were patrolling the border. As they progress into the rainforest, Starflight notices that Sunny is missing. One by one each dragon goes missing until Starflight hides and Glory dodges something. It turns out that she has avoided a tranquilizing dart, and that all of her friends have been knocked unconscious. Glory orders the mystery dragons, that still remained hidden, to show themselves. The "mystery dragons" turn out to be RainWings. Glory meets the two of them, Liana and Jambu, who offer to take them to the village. While her friends are unconscious from the darts, Glory takes her first sun time nap in the rainforest. When she wakes, she finds a sloth lying on her back, which she eventually names Silver. Jambu then shows her the village and they learn that they are related using a venom test. They return to find their friends waking and they go to meet Magnificent. While waiting in line, she meets Mangrove, a grumpy RainWing, who mentions that his partner Orchid is missing as well as at least twelve other RainWings, and Bromeliad, a venom trainer, who mentions that a dragonet named Kinkajou has also gone missing. Glory suggests that they go to the queen together since they are both there about missing dragons. When Mangrove, Bromeliad, and Glory see Queen Magnificent, Glory suggests someone investigates, and Mangrove says Glory should find the missing RainWings, and Queen Magnificent agrees. When Mangrove and Bromeliad leave, Tsunami, Starflight, Clay, Webs, and Sunny come in and ask for help for Webs, which Queen Magnificent is reluctant about. After some prompting from Sunny, the queen directs them to the RainWing healers. After they leave the queen's treehouse, Tsunami, Webs, and Sunny head off to the healer's hut, and Starflight and Clay join Glory as she sets out to find the missing RainWings. They speak to Mangrove, and he leads them to a giant fallen tree. Glory picks up a horrible stink and asks Starflight if he can identify it since he seemed to have a stronger sense of smell. They find a dying sloth as the source of the smell, and Clay kills it to put it out of its misery. Glory looks around and discovers an animus-made tunnel to the Sand Kingdom in a boulder. Starflight and Mangrove return to the village, while Glory and Clay stay to watch the tunnel overnight. While they watch, something comes by, eats the sloth, and disappears. In the morning, Sunny, Tsunami, Starflight, and Jambu arrive, and they discuss what to do about the tunnel. They settle on Glory and Clay going in with vines. When they go through, they find themselves in the Kingdom of Sand, within sight of Burn's stronghold.

Part Two: Sand, Ice, and Smoke

Glory and Clay take a look around from the mouth of the tunnel's end in the Kingdom of Sand and return to the rainforest. The dragonets and Jambu talk over the missing RainWings and the tunnel. Then Mangrove suddenly dashes out of the trees and into the tunnel and flies off to the Ice Kingdom to try to find Orchid.

After flying for the rest of the day, they settle down for the night in rocky terrain. In the morning, Glory flies ahead, sights Princess Blaze's fortress, and sees a NightWing assassin named Deathbringer settling down. Using an IceWing disguise based on Fjord, she questions him on what he is doing.

Then Glory and Jambu, disguised as IceWings, go meet Blaze who is staying at the Ice Kingdom. Deathbringer then attempts to kill Blaze after she is brought to the Dragonets.

Blaze's neck gets cut by one of the two "sharp silvery discs" and Tsunami's wing, after shielding Blaze, also gets cut. Glory attacks Deathbringer when they hear the IceWings coming and takes his weapons, using one to cut him somewhat. This makes Deathbringer surrender. In fear of getting imprisoned again, the Dragonets leave, with Blaze's neck healed. Later, when they return to the rainforest, Glory is kidnapped by the NightWings. She escapes with the help of Clay, Deathbringer, and another captured RainWing named Kinkajou. When she gets back, she tells Magnificent about what happened. Seeing that the NightWings have the missing RainWings, Magnificent refuses to save them. As a result, Glory challenges Magnificent to the throne.

Part Three: A Throne in the Treetops

The RainWings have a system of picking a queen without killing, where there are competitions for the throne. Magnificent and Glory each assemble their teams. Jambu and Exquisite compete in the tree gliding and Exquisite likely cheats, nearly killing Jambu. Tamarin, a blind RainWing, and Fruit Bat compete in the flower finding hunt. Tamarin wins by finding the winning flower with her extremely good sense of smell. Glory and Magnificent compete in a camouflage contest, and Glory loses because Silver gives her away. Mangrove and Dazzling compete in a fruit scavenger hunt and even though Dazzling cheats, Mangrove wins by a point. The last contest is between Grandeur and Kinkajou, in venom shooting. In the first part, Kinkajou loses. However, in the second part, Grandeur accidentally shoots at a sloth, and Kinkajou shields it, so the venom hits her instead. Glory panics and tries to do the venom test. This reveals she is related to Grandeur, so she successfully saves Kinkajou. Grandeur, who was the original queen, realizes Glory is the rightful queen, forfeits and Glory becomes the Queen of the RainWings. Then suddenly Clay crashes in and tells her that Starflight had left and may have warned the NightWings that the RainWings would attack.

Epilogue

Fatespeaker and the false dragonets are upset about being brought to the Night Kingdom. There is no food, it is dark, hot, and smelly, and every one of her friends is fighting. Fatespeaker spots some NightWings carrying an unconscious dragonet to the fortress. Fatespeaker believes the dragonet is an important part of her destiny.

Variation from the novel

• The NightWing Guide to The Dragons of Pyrrhia is missing. The other Wings of Fire graphic novels share this trait.
• The graphic novels do not include chapters.
• The prologue is shorter and changed dramatically.
• In the prologue of the original novel, all of the false dragonets are fighting. In the graphic novel, only Flame, Viper, and Squid are fighting, while Fatespeaker is making a prediction and Ochre is eating a pig.
• In the prologue of the original novel, Morrowseer says, "Well, […] They are … energetic." In the graphic novel he does not say this. Instead, he says, "So, these are the dragonets you raised as alternatives in case something … happened … to the real ones." This replacement dialogue was never in the original novel.
• In the original novel, Morrowseer never says, "I'm disappointed, Nautilus. I expected more from the leaders of the Talons of Peace. The SandWing and SkyWing are brainlessly violent. All MudWings are dim, but that one is … exceptional. The NightWing I sent you seems to be deluded. I don't even know what to say about that pipsqueak SeaWing. You shouldn't have put him in just because he's your son. However, since they're all we have, I will take them to the Night Kingdom, and train them myself."
• Fatespeaker never makes her prediction that Morrowseer brought her and the other false dragonets something great for breakfast.
• Squid never calls Morrowseer "nonagoshabibble."
• Nautilus, Squid, Flame, Tsunami, Glory, and Webs are missing their wing membranes.
• While in the original novel, it was described that the dragonets were making comments to Glory that she should love the rainforest weather because she is a RainWing, it was not specifically said that Tsunami said "You must love this weather. Right, RainWing?"
• In the original novel, Starflight never helps Sunny move on top of a log and says, "Here you go, Sunny."
• Sunny never says, "Oof. Thanks, Starflight." in the original novel.
• Clay never says, "Put more weight on me, Webs." in the original novel.
• Glory never says, "Still hilarious. Keep it up."
• One of Webs' lines was changed. Originally he says, "Can we stop?", but "Clay" was added to the beginning of the sentence.
• Sunny never says, "Wow, Clay. SandWing venom really is nasty." in the original novel.
• One of Clay's lines was changed. Originally he says, "I hope the RainWings can help him, […] This isn't exactly like their venom. But maybe they'll have more ideas than we do." In the graphic novel, this was changed to, "I hope the RainWings can help. Their venom is different, but they must have ideas."
• Glory never yells at Webs in the original novel.
• Glory never says, "First, Webs can't fly. Now he needs to stop every ten steps. Do you even want us to get to the RainWings?" in the original novel.
• Sunny never exclaims, "Glory!" after Glory yells at Webs, which she also did not do in the original novel.
• Glory never says "Webs was going to let our guardians kill me. Am I the only one who remembers that? Well, Webs, as long as we're stopped, why don't you tell us about the RainWing Kingdom? You stole my egg there. You must know something." in the original novel.
• Starflight does not shove fruit down to Clay.
• In the first chapter portion of the Graphic Novel, Glory changes her scales to red when thinking about their prisons in the past. In the original book, she changes her scales to yellow thinking about how the RainWings will not care that she is in a Prophecy and that she'll find somewhere where she will belong.
• Liana and Jambu never offer to knock out Glory and Starflight for easier travel.
• The part about the screaming monkeys is left out.
• The dragonet that was brought with the older RainWing in line to see Queen Magnificent since they were shoving berries up other dragons' snouts is green, yellow, and pink and appears to still think it is funny. In the original novel, this same dragonet was sad and grey because they were being punished.
• The RainWing that brought the dragonet with them to see Queen Magnificent for shoving berries up other dragons' snouts is green. In the original novel, the dragon is pale orange.
• The animus tunnel to the SandWing Kingdom was not described to have purplish-black mist around it in the original novel.
• In the regular novel, Sunny never exclaims in delight when in the desert.
• Glory and Jambu never use the aliases Penguin (for Jambu) and Storm (for Glory) as they did in the original novel.
• Blaze is never mentioned to specifically be wearing a white cape, a tiara, and hoop bracelets on her right forearm.
• When Blaze asks if she would be able to change color if she had a coat of RainWing scales, Sunny says "Yuck." In the original novel, she does not say this. Instead, Glory is internally horrified, while Blaze twists Jambu's wing around, as if "trying to figure out how to take the scales off him."
• When Glory is held captive by the NightWings, a NightWing wearing glasses shows up with the guards to take notes on her. This dragon was never mentioned in the original books as wearing glasses.
• In the original novel, Part Three starts right after Glory challenges Magnificent for the throne. In the graphic novel, Part Three begins with Glory training for the royal challenge.
• While Ex-Queen Scarlet dreamvisits Glory, the side of her face that had been sprayed with venom does not show up when her body flickered like it was in the original novel.
• After Ex-Queen Scarlet concludes her dreamvisit to Glory, a shadow of where she was at the time (Burn's Weirdling Tower) was not depicted at the end like it did in the original novel.
• During the Flower Hunt portion of the Royal Challenge, the elusive variety of the cinnamon orchid is described as orange, not red.
• In the original books, Kinkajou's eyes are described to be dark green, however, in the graphic novel, Kinkajou's eyes are a dark shade of pink.
• Fatespeaker never mentions her walrus prophecy in the epilogue.

Mistakes

• When Jambu does the venom test with Glory, he tells Glory to hit the same spot. However, the spot is burned completely through, so Glory cannot spit venom in the same spot.
• Throughout the graphic novel, Tsunami's pearls are missing, when it is stated in the original book that she is still wearing them.
• Glory's ruff and horn are not entirely colored in.
• In the scene where the dragonets and Jambu are flying towards the Ice Kingdom, Tsunami is missing.
• When Glory imagined her scales changing to an IceWing's color, one of her legs is missing.
• A part of Glory's speech bubble is not colored in white.
• The tapestry does not have a large dragon on the front, but is then shown on the next page's tapestry.
• When Sunny says, "Yuck!" her tongue was not forked.
• Deathbringer's pouch changes color several times throughout his attack on Blaze.
• The cut on Tsunami's wing is missing.
• Deathbringer's eyes are not colored properly.
• Kinkajou still has her band around her neck. However, it disappears later.
• The tail of Kinkajou's speech bubble is not colored in white when she asks, "Where should I meet you?"
• Tsunami and Sunny's tongues are gray.
• When Glory sprays venom on a leaf to heal Kinkajou, the leaf does not start to sizzle or melt. It is later said venom melts anything living.
• Jambu's dart pouch camouflages even though it is not part of his body. It also appears and disappears throughout the book.
• In one panel, Mangrove has five legs

Trivia

• The hardcover version of this book has a different picture on the back; the paperback copies have a picture of Glory practicing fruit identification and her team behind her, while the hardcover copies had a picture of her flying towards the sky.
• In one panel, some of the spines on Deathbringer's back are detached from his body.

Gallery

Click here to see the cover gallery.

International Releases

• French: Les Royaumes de Feu en Bande Dessinée. Au cœur de la jungle (June 2020)
• Korean: 불의 날개와 비밀의 왕국 그래픽 노블 (September 2022)

References

fr:Au Cœur de la Jungle (Bande-dessinée) ru:Скрытое королевство (графический роман) de:Das bedrohte Königreich (Graphic Novel)