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.
While I have attempted to remain as spoiler-free as possible, there may be references to certain plot points below. Please read at your own risk!
I feel like a 3 star rating looks pretty low for me. I loved reading this book as much as I loved reading books that I rated 4-5 stars. I think for me, I loved this book so much, but there were so many questions I wanted answered on the page that it docked it down to a 3. But because I loved it so much, it never crossed my mind to be a 1-2 star read. I enjoyed reading this book so much that I wanted it to be an even better version of what it already was. Read on for more of what I loved, and for what I wanted more of.
To start, I can absolutely see why this book is making the rounds as the newest hyped book of the year. The writing is addicting; once I picked up Fourth Wing, I couldn't stop reading, and wanted to sneak reads of it between other things I was doing. A large part of this, in my opinion, is Yarros's decision to write in more modern-day vernacular. It's explained at the beginning that Fourth Wing is a translation, and honestly that disclaimer is enough for me to validate writing in a more relaxed way. I think that makes Fourth Wing more accessible to fantasy readers who don't want to slog through difficult writing. I think that makes Fourth Wing what it is. While there no doubt were some cringey moments of internal narration and dialogue, the relaxed writing makes Fourth Way a great entry point for readers of all kinds. I don't typically read fantasy because I can find it hard to stay focused because the writing can be higher level, so I was pleasantly surprised by the addictive, relaxed style of writing here.
Fourth Wing is incredibly action-packed. There is always something happening on the page, and there is always a threat to be eradicated. I found it difficult to lose interest in what was happening, even when I had moments of confusion. If you like books that are jam-packed with adventure and action, then Fourth Wing definitely has that.
What also adds to Fourth Wing's appeal is the shorter chapters. I'm a huge advocate for short chapters, because it gives a book more of a page-turning element, and I definitely found that here. I also enjoyed how each chapter began with a quote from a Navarrian text. While they could have been organized better, or maybe all from the same text for cohesive/clarity sake, I genuinely enjoyed how each provided a little hint into the chapter to come. Sometimes, they provided more world building context than the narration did, which was much needed. I hope this continues throughout the series.
Fourth Wing is marketed as an enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance. First of all, I have to say that I love how the two main characters didn't actually get together and act on their feelings into later in the book. I think there's a lot of discourse that makes this book sound spicier than it is, and that there's this perception that this book is only about the romance, and not about the war, or dragons, or any of the fantasy elements. That's just not true, even if the romance is a huge draw.
Unfortunately, this book just isn't an enemies-to-lovers romance. While Violet perceives Xaden to be her enemy for very valid reasons at the beginning, she very quickly loses sight of why she should hate him because of how attracted she is to him. Since we don't get Xaden's point of view, we also aren't sure how deeply he considers Violet an enemy outside of the obvious reason he hates her. While they certainly have contentious banter, they never truly felt like enemies once Violet lost sight of Xaden's role in her brother's death. I would instead categorize Violet's and Xaden's romance as a slow burn, and a very well-done one based on the timing and beats of their interactions and relationship.
I have seen the point floating around that Xaden is objectified by Violet throughout the book, and it is a point I would like to echo. Violet is attracted to Xaden pretty early on, and doesn't end up together with him until at least 300-400 pages of the way through. While it is instant attraction, I appreciate how Violet's sentiments of love don't come until she knows a bit more of his character (just a bit, though). Unfortunately, I wish that Violet had made more of an effort to get to know Xaden more as a person earlier, rather than always focusing on his looks and clothing choices, etc. While it could be argued that Violet doesn't want to get to know him early on because he's her enemy, I pose the statement that they don't act like enemies (previous paragraph), so the only reason Violet didn't work harder to get to know Xaden earlier is because she was blinded by his apparent hotness—but if she was truly attracted to him, wouldn't she want to know more about him, his past, his likes/dislikes, etc.? Every crush I've ever had has always worked like that, at least. Something about the early bits of their romance don't sit well with me, and I think it speaks to the larger problem of lack of characterization. More on that later.
Next, dragons. The dragons were probably my favorite part of the book. Once Tairn and Andarna were introduced, I knew I was going to love every single interaction on the page. I sort of got How to Train Your Dragon energy from the book, insofar as Violet and Tairn having to learn to work with one another's personalities and abilities. It was very fun to read about how Violet, Tairn, and Andarna worked together during adventure sequences, and I honestly could have used more dragons (hopefully we'll see more of that in the second book)!
Unfortunately, while I loved our named dragons so much, I was helplessly confused by the way dragons were positioned in the world. I wanted to know more about how dragons and humans teamed up to eradicate the threats to their species. I wanted to learn more about how the different types of dragons were able to give riders specific types of powers—did one dragon always manifest the same signet in all their riders? While the signet always speaks more to the type of person the rider is, clearly there's a zillion signets, and some more common than others—why? Is there any correlation to the type of rider to the type of dragon? I would have settled for having a dragon and signet glossary at the beginning of the book. For signets, at least, I felt like Fourth Wing suffered by having so many signets listed. Leigh Bardugo in the Shadow and Bone trilogy does this well—she has clearly defined orders of Grisha, and each order has different people who have different powers (ex: The Etherealki Order of Grisha are composed of Squallers, Inferni, Tidemakers and Sun/Shadow Summoners—an order of people who can control the different elements). I didn't feel like there was a clearly defined order of dragons, and the different types of signets distributed. This would have helped me feel so much more grounded in this world, and help me understand the hierarchy of riders and dragons.
I believe this speaks to the larger problem of the lack of world building. I cannot stress enough how displaced I felt in Navarre. I was constantly texting my friends asking what the point of the war was. Violet could never seem to provide an answer, despite literally growing up on the war school's grounds. Who are the enemies? Why do we hate them, other than the fact that they're attacking us? Why was there even a rebellion? Despite us being at a war school for the entirety of the book, I had no clue what the war was about, why any of the characters (except for the rebels' kids) were even dedicated to war training. The big twist of who the enemies really are wasn't even satisfying because I didn't have any understanding of how they stood against the original enemies. The war school setting was incredibly insular. There was no understanding of what the cadets were up against, and no understanding of what was motivating these cadets in the first place. I didn't even understand why the riders were grouped into wings/squads/etc., or the ordering/purpose of all these war games they compete in (although I appreciated how that vocabulary made war school feel authentic—another thing a few little charts at the beginning of the book might have helped readers visualize!).
Not only that, but I didn't feel like I understood Navarre's history at all. It seemed to me that there was this whole religious system, this whole respect towards history, this whole idea of what their country was and stood for, and no explanation of any of those things ever made it onto the page. Rather, Yarros had a tendency to drop details into dialogue when it was convenient for the readers to know a particular detail, but that detail was never extrapolated to tell us more about the culture or history of Navarre. Again, understanding more of this background would have helped the other big twist at the end about Violet's folklore book feel even more powerful, because we'd have been better placed to understand how folklore was perceived in this world versus the history of war the characters have been raised in.
Circling back to characters and characterization, this book was only told in one POV—Violet's—and in first person. I personally liked this. I believe it goes back to the accessibility of Fourth Wing, and the addictive nature of the read. It's easier to grasp on to one person's story in a fantasy world, even though the genre probably begs to include more POVs so that the reader has a better understanding of the world and how it can be experienced differently by different characters. I personally would have loved chapters from Tairn's POV, or Rhi's and Liam's, although I didn't feel like that would have been necessary if the relationships Violet developed with them were more nuanced on the page. Having Xaden's POV be the final chapter in the book was jarring, and the whole time I wished we were in Violet's POV because I wanted to see this interaction through her eyes, since that's what we've known the whole time. I also just wasn't sure what, by having this interaction in Xaden's POV, was adding that couldn't have been in the chapter in Violet's POV.
While I enjoyed reading through Violet's POV, I did feel that it was a flawed, incomplete look at the world. I need to reiterate this point: despite growing up at war school, her POV didn't lend a lot of insight to readers what it was like to grow up in war, what the war was about, or anything related to the world.
I also never understood why she was so blasé about joining the riders as a cadet when she'd been training her whole life to be a scribe. It seemed to me like her mother ordered it, and rather than fight back, that she accepted her fate being handed to her by a woman who doesn't care about her. I felt that Violet's POV would have operated much better if we'd gotten to see her being a scribe at the beginning, to learn more about the war through her work as a scribe, and then have the inciting incident be the moment she was forced into being a rider (literally just 1-2 full chapters of this would have been perfect). Since Violet never expressed any hidden desire to be a rider, it would have been more shocking (and thus more rewarding) to see her thrust into war school against her will and find her own place in this very violent world.
One last thought, preceded by a disclaimer: I am able-bodied and don't have any experience with joint issues. I was excited to see that while Violet is "not like other girls," it's not the same brand of "not like other girls" as my youth. Rather, she has a physical condition that makes it substantially more difficult to do the types of physical activities that are required by riders. Obviously, in war school, not very many concessions are made to Violet because of her disability, so she has to find creative ways to sneak around and win (absolutely love the loophole she finds for the one-to-one combat sessions). However, I would have liked more background to her disability, and her relationship with it—does she like that she has an excuse to be a scribe, or does she feel hindered by joining the rider quadrant because of it? Violet often describes suffering a lot of pain as "just another Tuesday" which seems to be an accurate descriptor of chronic pain. What I struggled with is how Violet's pain was only ever mentioned whenever she was already suffering something else—for example, how when she breaks a bone, how she's used to it, makes the pain worse, etc. I was more curious about her day-to-day living with the chronic pain, and I didn't feel like we got much of that. Did she have to wrap her joints up every day, and how did that change her experience (did she have to wake up much earlier than other people? how did she even get the wrapping materials, and what did she do with them when they got bloody/muddy from training?). I didn't feel like we got a good understanding of Violet's chronic pain when she wasn't already experiencing pain that anyone can experience, liking getting cut or breaking a bone.
I also didn't feel like it was a very empowering representation, either. Violet clearly survives against all of the odds, and that is empowering for sure. But when people/dragons start to accommodate her needs to help lessen any addition to her chronic pain, Violet expresses shame and sometimes even embarrassment at being treated differently. While that must certainly be normal (because who hates standing out/not being able to fit in), I felt like Violet's consistent and constant shame/embarrassment about it wasn't very empowering. Don't we want to create a dialogue where people who need extra support feel empowered to take it? I just didn't appreciate that this book doesn't fit that narrative, since it wasn't like those accommodations were excuses to cheat or get ahead—they were very seriously to help Violet make the tasks of a dragon rider less painful for her. While the author does mention that she has a connective tissue disorder in the acknowledgments, and probably does use much of her own experience to inform Violet's experience, I just wanted more from this representation.
Whew! If you've stuck with me this far, you might be surprised to find that I'm actually looking forward to reading the next book in the series, but it's true! I feel like it's been a long time since I've been as engaged with a read the way I was engaged with Fourth Wing. I really did enjoy the read, and found it difficult to turn away from. I loved that it was more fantasy than romance, and I loved that I expected more from it, because I loved it so much (you know the feeling?). I'm sure I'll have just as many thoughts to share when I finally get my hands on Iron Flame in November, so stay tuned until then for my review!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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