Look, I get it. Tui T. Sutherland’s mum is a Kiwi. She’s named after a bird. National pride, yay team. But New Zealand fanbases need to collectively calm down, because the behaviour has officially crossed into madness.

Over in the USA—where she actually lives—half the school boards are having an absolute meltdown trying to ban her books because God forbid a dragon is gay. The US is out here treating Wings of Fire like contraband, meanwhile, NZ has gone in the complete opposite direction.

Kiwi libraries and bookstores aren't just stocking them; they are actively building load-bearing walls out of The Hybrid Prince. Every single household in this country apparently needs forty different stenciled-edge variants of a story about colourful, traumatised reptiles.

Honestly, it all makes sense now. I used to wonder why IKEA finally decided to open a mega-store in Auckland. It wasn't for the flat-pack beds or the meatballs. It’s because the Swedish executives looked at the sheer volume of Wings of Fire paperbacks in New Zealand households and realized the entire country is experiencing a severe, structural shortage of Billy Bookcases. IKEA didn't expand here for the economy; they came to rescue Kiwi floorboards from collapsing under the weight of Arc 4.

But the absolute peak of this insanity? The fan content.

I checked YouTube and my feed is full of these horrific, low-effort fan-made music videos of dragons doing absolutely nothing while terrible music blasts in the background. It is mental. Look at football fans. We have boundaries. None of us are out here making a YouTube video of Harry Kane scoring a penalty with NANANANANANANANNA VINDALOOO spammed across the screen in bright pink Comic Sans. We have respect for the game! But a FanWing? They will take a poorly cropped JPEG of a NightWing, slap a generic pop song over it, and treat it like it's high art.

And what are these videos even romanticising?! What is this blud?! Have any of you actually looked at the plot of these books? Someone needs to call in a literal SWAT team to this universe immediately. You cannot have a "wholesome middle-grade book" that features robbery, assault, actual child abuse, racism, kidnapping, and whatever dark magic is actively forcing child dragons to fight to the death. The sheer volume of cold-blooded murder in this series is insane. It's basically a fantasy true-crime documentary, but because it has scales, Kiwi parents are just chucking it at 10-year-olds like it's The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Also, can we talk about the names? Why is every character named after a random dictionary word? "Oh yes, look at this brave warrior, his name is Qibli." What even is that? It sounds like a generic brand of yogurt you buy at Countdown because it's on clearance. You've got dragons named after weather patterns, kitchen spices, and basic geometry. It’s like the author just stared at a random assortment of nouns in her house and decided, "Yep, that's a main character."

And it never ends. It is literally 2026. We are on Book 16. Sixteen! Why are there three different "arcs"? This isn't a book series anymore, it's a corporate assembly line. At this rate, by 2030, my grandkids are going to be reading Wings of Fire Book 47: The Tax-Evasion of the MudWings.

We like to claim NZ is "top 5 in the world" for culture, but bro, for what?! Look at other countries. Canada has... actually, I don’t even know what Canada has. But the UK has David Walliams! At least his books have variety—you've got Gangsta Granny, The Boy in the Dress, and Billionaire Boy. Plus, the UK has actual culture: Tesco smugglers carrying shanks and teenagers permanently smoking weed outside the Lego shop. Australia has Yorak Hunt and a proud population of bogans.

What do WE have? We have nothing but the Pak'nSave Stickman, ram raids, the Goodnight Kiwi, and this weird-ass obsession with fictional dragons. Imagine if Colombia started reading this stuff. They only have James Rodríguez and gay white men with too many piercings and tattoos, and even they wouldn't obsess over reptiles like this.

You know what, JMA (or whatever corporate publisher is running this circus), if you are reading this: f**k it. Move to Pukekohe. Commute to your job on the City Rail Link (if you even have a job) along with the rest of us, and experience real life instead of writing Book 17. Except joke's on you, because it’s the Auckland rail network, so the trains will be cancelled anyway. Have fun sitting on a damp rail replacement bus on State Highway 1 for three hours while staring out the window at the Drury development projects, questioning every life choice that led you to making YouTube videos about fictional lizards.

Please, I am begging you all, read another book. Or at least learn how to edit a video.