Title: Fourth Wing
Series: The Empyrean, #1
Author: Rebecca Yarros
Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Publication date: May 2, 2023
Length: 528 pages
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Purchased

Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Yarros

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

Unpopular opinion time: I liked Fourth Wing, but didn’t love it. Based on the hype, as well as its dominance of the bestseller lists, I guess I just expected… more.

In Fourth Wing, Violet Sorrengail is the youngest daughter of the feared General Sorrengail, who heads the Basgiath War College and also directly oversaw the execution of the members of a failed rebellion six years earlier. Violet’s older brother and sister both ended up as dragon riders, like their mother, but Violet — petite and with painful joints prone to injury — seemed destined to join the Scribe Quadrant, like her father. In fact, Violet longed to become a scribe, but after her father’s death, her mother had other plans for her.

Forced into the Rider Quadrant. Violet undergoes challenge after challenge, where failure means not merely disqualification from rider status, but death. Ultimately, as our heroine, it’s not surprising that she overcomes the odds, stays alive, and finds a way to triumph. Her journey from frail misfit to powerful rider and wielder of magic is a story of perseverance, strong allies, determination, and intelligence.

Meanwhile, Violet almost immediately becomes embroiled in a sort-of love triangle. She’s thrown together with her childhood best friend Dain, who cares for her but doesn’t seem to fully see her — but then there’s Xaden, the dangerous, fiercely attractive son of an executed rebel leader. Xaden is Violet’s wingleader, and Violet thinks he wants her dead. Or does he?

First, what I enjoyed about Fourth Wing:

• DRAGONS: The dragons here are awesome. The rider candidates must be chosen by a dragon. Those not chosen to bond often end up dead. The dragons themselves are terrific characters, and (trying carefully not to give anything away), the dragons that feature in Violet’s story are particularly spectacular.
• The overarching plot: Once the dragons enter the picture, the plot itself picks up and becomes engrossing. The challenges, Violet’s journey, the struggles, the dangers — all of it escalates and intensifies in the latter half of the book.
• The hints at a larger story to tell: We only learn about the history of Navarre through what Violet sees and knows. What we do find out seems like it could be fascinating, but clearly there are secrets that she isn’t privy to.

My overall enjoyment of Fourth Wing was broken up by elements that either annoyed or distracted me.

Spoilers ahead!

My quibbles:

• Info-dumping: Early on, to keep her mind off the life-threatening danger of her first challenge, Violet recites the history and geography of Navarre** in her head. It’s a strange way for readers to learn the basics, and in fact, felt too transparently like the author was saying, oh hey, I know y’all need to understand the backstory here, so I’m going to shoehorn it in while Violet’s in mortal danger.
• World-building: Related to the point above, the world building is incomplete and unsatisfying. We get spoon-fed bits and pieces of information about the rebellion, about border skirmishes, about the continual threat to Navarre (and hence the need for an army of dragon riders), but it’s all a little loose and ill-defined.
• Love triangle: Ugh. Need I explain this one? Fortunately, the triangular bit is resolved fairly easily, but the push-pull between the gorgeous bad boy and the (also gorgeous, but in a more expected way) boy next door feels very been there, done that. Is there any question at all about who wins in this equation? Not for a second.

Plus a few other issues that bothered me:

Is this YA? What even is this book? It’s on the adult fiction bestseller lists and is marketed as adult fiction. But honestly, it reads very heavily as YA. Other than the fact that the characters are in their 20s and that there are explicit sex scenes, this could be a variant on typical YA tropes: A magical school/college, the underdog discovering great powers, magical creatures, powerful adults forcing younger people to potentially fight to the death…

I found the writing good during action sequences, but then certain phrases and word choices pulled me straight out of the story — simply too modern to fit in a fantasy world:

Even the diagonal scar that bisects his left eyebrow and marks the top corner of his cheek only makes him hotter.

Sometime in the last year, Dain Aetos went from attractive and cute to gorgeous.

With a name like Sorrengail, I bet you were the first to volunteer this year.” “I was more like volun-told.”

And especially:

“I know, right?”

I think my biggest issue with Fourth Wing is the life-or-death stakes facing students in the Riders Quadrant. Every step of their journey — including their literal first steps, across a narrow parapet to gain access to the quadrant — has a strong risk of death involved. The stakes are explained as a winnowing process: Someone who lacks the physical skill and strength to survive the college is unlikely to be chosen by a dragon or to survive the intensity of riding, wielding channeled magical powers, and aerial combat.

Part of this winnowing includes the risk of death at the hands of fellow students: These people fight to hurt, to maim, and at times, to kill. And it’s all allowed, with few exceptions. Cross the parapet, or fall to your death. Win at sparring, or potentially have your neck snapped. Make it up the vertical obstacle course, or (again) fall to your death. As a certain other fantasy book puts it, you win or you die.

And I kept asking myself: Why? This is a county in a constant state of war. Why allow this waste of resources? If someone washes out as a rider, why is death the only option? After all, the college also includes training for healers, scribes, and infantry. Wouldn’t it make more sense to demote people to a different path rather than have so many of the country’s youth simply end up dead?

Quibbles aside, I did find myself — somewhat unwillingly — pulled into the story and unable to put this book down. After an uneven start, Fourth Wing hooked me by about the 30% mark, and of course, dragons make it all so much better.

The YA-but-with-sex nature of the storytelling and the success-or-death stakes continued to bother me throughout, but once I stopped paying attention to these annoyances and just went with the plot, it really flowed. I enjoyed the character development, the battle scenes, and especially, Violet and the interplay with dragons.

The book has an extremely open-ended ending — it just stops, and nothing is tied up. As the first in a series, I suppose that’s not too surprising, but I still wasn’t expecting it when I turned to the next page after a cliff-hanger chapter ending and saw that I was done. Fortunately, the next book in the series, Iron Flame, will be released in early November — and according to Goodreads, there are expected to be five books in all.

Hopefully, the next book(s) will expand on the world-building and add more structure and information to what we already know. I may have had mixed feeling about Fourth Wing, but I certainly want to see what happens next! As of now, I’m definitely planning to read Iron Flame as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.

**Reading note: I read Fourth Wing in Kindle format. There’s a map of Basgiath provided at the start, which is somewhat helpful. BUT, when I visited a bookstore this week after finishing the book and happened to pick up a hardcover edition (because PRETTY), I saw that the end papers include a map of Navarre and its surrounding areas. That would have been so helpful to have before reading the book!! Why isn’t it included in the Kindle edition? Here’s an image (via Amazon) of the inside cover of Fourth Wing — haven’t found an officially available PDF of the map online yet, although plenty of fan sites and Etsy sellers have copies available.