Fourth Wing

by Rebecca Yarros

Hardcover, 528 pages

English language

Published June 3, 2023 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

ISBN:: 978-0-349-43701-9

(6 reviews)

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 …

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.

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.

6 editions

Simon reviewed Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (The Empyrean, #1)

Gripping and fun, but perhaps not actually good

3 stars

It's a magical school with a constant danger of death! There are dragons! Imagine if Naomi Novik's two series (Temeraire and Scholomance) were mushed together and you would have..... not quite this.

It's its own thing, and aside from the existance of dragons the magic is fairly background, most of the time. The murderous school^Wmilitary training college is the focus.

It's mostly the story of the protagonist making her way through that. It's also slightly a romance, and it's also a bit about somebody with a chronic illness / disability managing the above against expectations, sometimes due to assistive technology.

It's a magical school with a constant danger of death! There are dragons! Imagine if Naomi Novik's two series (Temeraire and Scholomance) were mushed together and you would have..... not quite this.

It's its own thing, and aside from the existance of dragons the magic is fairly background, most of the time. The murderous school^Wmilitary training college is the focus.

I found it gripping and fun to read, and also... not actually good? The writing isn't bad, but isn't great either. The characters didn't feel well developed except for two or three central ones. It didn't seem to have huge depth (or I missed it). The premise of the school and how it works doesn't seem to completely hold together. But, how much does that matter when i enjoyed reading it.

One neat trick that I really liked: dragons can read the thoughts of their riders, and the author showed this by having the dragons interrupt the first-person narrative to comment on it. It blurs the distinction between what is dialogue in the world, and what is narrative in the book, which ought to jar, but it works really nicely.

I don't feel that I need to seek out the rest of the series... but I probably will the next time I'm looking for a light but gripping story.

Manu reviewed Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (The Empyrean, #1)

Review of 'Fourth Wing' on 'Storygraph'

No rating

Ugh. Where do I even start. Yes, the premise of the book is very promising. But the prose is so poorly written. It's as if the author just kept filling up her word count for the day. Also, there are many plot holes. I can accept flawed characters, but the MC couldn't get any more generic and cliché. I tried to give it time to see if it improves but no it just the same over and over. I really wanted this to work for me but unfortunately it didn't.