Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros Review

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.
 

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.
 

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.
 

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.
 

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.
 

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.

Normally I start reviews with a brief recap and overall impressions before getting into my general thoughts and impressions, but you have to be living under a rock to be unfamiliar with Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series’ first novel Fourth Wing. Also, quite a few of my book friends have been dying for me to read this series and to hear my thoughts on it. Having heard very mixed receptions and reviews for the series (Iron Flame in particular being the most polarizing) and being a fairly inexperienced romantasy reader, I went in preparing myself to be disappointed. While I did find myself agreeing with many of the common criticisms highlighted in other far more detailed reviews for the book, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the ambition and generally great plotting of the story (apart from when the story goes a bit astray at the two thirds mark).

If there’s one thing that’s consistent in Fourth Wing, its the entertainment value and accessibility of the story for all sorts of readers, romance and fantasy alike. An early note I had written down said “Sure I can critique and nitpick the book and call out its lack of details and world-building, but does it really matter when the book is so entertaining?”. Incorporating elements from popular YA novels such as Divergent, Eragon, even some loose magic inspirations like Harry Potter (okay maybe that one’s a stretch), Fourth Wing grabs the reader’s attention from the get-go with its 24/7 survival game setup where any challenge or confrontation with fellow cadets could result in death. Yes the life or death premise is rather overdramatic and there are aspects of it that frankly don’t really make logistical sense in terms of limited manpower, resources or quelling of a past rebellion, but it sure is a lot of fun!

For most of its nearly 700 page run, Fourth Wing perfectly balances its surprisingly ambitious fantasy epic with its spicy, opposites attract romance. From Violet’s inception at Basgiath War College, her cadet challenges, and dragon pairing event referred to the Threshing, Fourth Wing is quite compelling when it focuses on her training arc that smoothly incorporates her romantic interests and lingering gaze well. Yes, the story has a habit of conveniently info-dumping periodically via Violet reciting world-building facts as an anxiety-soothing technique and yes, its magic system and dragon lore is vague and convoluted, but I was so into it that it that I could look the other way. Up until around the 60% mark, I was thoroughly impressed and debated giving Fourth Wing an unexpected 5-star rating.

Unfortunately, from that point onward until the final 1st year challenge that occurs at the 90% mark, things start to unravel and stagnate. Once Violet participates in the Threshing and a notable incident at her life occurs soon after, the story starts to drag and the life-or-death page-turning momentum starts to feel a bit silly and overblown. While I was reading this section, I originally felt that the story’s sharp pivot into its very romance-heavy 3rd act was a misstep and Yarros ran out of material to work with. However, after taking some time to reflect on the overall story and plot, I believe what happened is that the fantasy action side of the story peaked too early. With the fantasy training arc already hit a narrative high, the romance element was just heating up (literally) and was likely intended to carry the rest of the story. While I felt the romance and chemistry were good, I felt that Fourth Wing‘s fantasy story was actually far stronger narrative material while the romance story, while solid, was not exceptional enough to do such heavy-lifting. Additionally, I felt like this section was simultaneously wasting time as Violet’s flying and training classes were handled vaguely and fast-forwarded, akin to background filler between romance scenes. This lack of evenly-paced world-building was particularly noticeable when the book’s ending sequence plot twists come through and the final battle commences. While I enjoyed the ending and thought the plot twists were excellent, the last hundred pages or so felt like it was trying to cram in way too many new details required to make the surprises and confrontation work. The inter-country(?) relations, settlements, and folklore definitely could’ve been foreshadowed or expanded upon far earlier during all the romantic shenanigans (there’s some there but enough) and is likely one of the main reasons why many hardcore fantasy readers find Fourth Wing‘s world-building to be weak and thinly constructed. The content and world exists on paper, but the execution makes all the difference.

As far as characters go, I quite enjoyed the FMC Violet, the dark and dangerous Xaden, and their fellow Fourth Wing squad members. Although romance novels seem to be required to always have such small female main characters compared to the huge, broad, chiseled love interests which usually makes me roll my eyes, Fourth Wing at least commits to it and give it purpose. Violet’s small stature and frail body serves as a major physical roadblock to being a flying soldier and dragon rider and actually fits the story well outside of steamy scenes that obviously make sure of the size gap. While some other readers negatively critiqued how Violet seemingly cheats her way through her training arc, I actually thought Violet’s solutions (and by extension Yarros’s plotting) were clever and refreshing compared to the frequent “chosen one powerful one” trope overdone in fantasy. While it can be seen as contrived or laughably silly, I also liked how Yarros used certain dragon interaction mechanics as an unorthodox style of forced proximity to segue into Fourth Wing‘s spicy scenes and romance.

Admittedly I did find that the other squad members, friends and side characters had thin personalities and character development (which causes occasional character deaths to be far less impactful or dramatic than the novel clearly intends them to be), but they’re good enough to serve their purpose as fodder expendable material. The intentional contrast between Dain and Xaden, while good on paper, also has the subtlety of a car crash and lacks nuance that could’ve made Violet’s conflicting feelings and loyalty far more tense and compelling. Whether it be a purposeful decision or not considering its female-leaning readership, but the side male characters seem to have far more “screen time” and development compared to the female side characters; including Violet’s best friend Rhiannon who is often present yet isn’t developed very well and doesn’t contribute much to the actual story. 2^nd year Imogen also has just as many appearances as Liam yet not even half the amount of effort and time spent with Liam is afforded to Imogen, whose unclear motives could’ve made great story material. That being said, despite being stereotyped for being a “for the romantasy girlie” kind of read and a clear preference for its male characters, Fourth Wing still has surprisingly great crossover appeal, mostly thanks to most guys finding Dragons go brrrr~ always fun to read.

Although I’m sure some of my friends would’ve found it amusing to see me tear this book apart or to shockingly love it to pieces, overall I fell somewhere in-between. While I loved the first 60% of the book, its underwhelming section after brought down my initially high impression to a solid, yet there’s room to improve opinion (4.5 rating rounded down to 4 for platforms using whole-star ratings). However, I still found Fourth Wing to be a very impressive fantasy outing for an author primarily known for exclusively writing romance and crossover contemporary drama, and it pretty much met my expectations of what a good romantasy read should be (I previously read Callie Hart’s Quicksilver prior to Fourth Wing which was a far more baffling and confusing outing). And despite the back half of the book not really being my cup of tea, I really liked the direction Fourth Wing was heading with its plot twist ending, and I’m optimistic that the 2nd book will hopefully expand and pace the world-building better now that the partial squad is basically in a new world/territory (yes I’m well aware of the Iron Flame hate club, I’m going in with an open mind). While I’m still not entirely sure if the romantasy genre is for me, against all expectations I liked Fourth Wing! (it’s also been a long-running meme that I had a libby waitlist hold for this book for over a year and half that I kept postponing, only to eventually cancel the hold and read it on Kindle Unlimited via my recent jump to a new Kindle ereader from Boox, what a wild ride)