Some of you may know the Silverwing series. (If you don't, you really should read the series!) Kenneth Oppel, the author, seems to take great interest in bats, because he has now made 4 books that are quite thick all about bats. Of course, it is fiction. I admit, writing 4 full books that are non-fiction about bats and their habitat and diet would be pretty boring.
Anyways, Darkwing is sort-of but not really a sequel to the Silverwing series. It is sort of like a prologue, except it's a whole book, and it doesn't have the same characters in it.
So, Darkwing, unlike the Silverwing series, takes place in prehistoric times, where raptors were still lurking around. Dusk is the main character in the story. He is a chiropter. A chiropter pretty much looks like a bat, but it has fur on its wings, and it can't fly. It can only glide. But you see, Dusk's wings are very much bare, and ever since he was pushed off a branch and taught how to glide properly, he had felt the urge to flap, like a bird. But he resisted, not wanting to be any more a freak than he already was. With his bare wings, he felt like a shameful naked newborn.
But he was the first bat of his colony. Now, we all know bats for their ability to see clearly in the dark with their echo vision. Dusk is the only one in his whole colony that can see in the dark. Dusk first figured out that he could see in the dark when he was hunting for a midnight snack. He had sent out his hunting clicks towards a firefly instinctively, and a world etched in silver returned to him.
So he had bare wings, could use his hunting clicks to see in the dark, and he could fly. Sound familiar?
He is a bat. Not a chiropter, but a bat. A completely different kind. Meanwhile, the world starts to change. Beasts start to hunt each other. Birds attack beasts. Can Dusk lead his colony out of distress, in a stressful time?
