My sister and her husband wanted me to read Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros – neither of them read much (if any) fantasy, so I was curious what had made them pay attention to this novel. After thinking long and hard about it, I believe it was two things:
1. Hype
2. Accessibility
First, the publisher’s description: “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.”
I’m not really on social media, but I did know that this book was popular in two key places: TikTok and Goodreads. And those sites had hyped this book to a ridiculous degree. On Goodreads, it currently has a 4.62 / 5 score, and close to a million ratings. And (in my opinion) the reason for this hype is how accessible this book is to literally anyone. Unfortunately, I think it turns out to be an odd and poor addition to the fantasy genre.
The good: there is a real sense of action, momentum, and emotion that carried Fourth Wing along. Yarros is great at propelling the readers from scene to scene in a mostly clear-cut way. She was also able to keep a real sense of danger in the plot – many times, these types of fantasy books will kill like two characters in the first couple of chapters and then you know that the rest have plot armor. Not so here – Yarros kept me guessing about who would survive until the very end.
The odd/bad: Who is this book for? Specifically, what age group? It’s riddled with old tropes and cliches. Violet is the most Mary-Sue that has ever Mary-Sued, down to having different colored hair; (spoilers) the most powerful dragons and abilities; and a love triangle including the hottest bad boy in school. Finally, it’s got a surprising amount of smut, the sort that I believe teens and younger should not read. So Fourth Wing ends up in an awkward place – it screams YA in its plot and characterizations (read the publisher’s description again!), but its sex scenes are way too mature for that audience, and I found as an adult that the constant tropes made the plot predictable and the main characters downright boring.
Writing this review, though, I’ve warmed up to this book in one key regard. I think that it’s an excellent way to get readers into the fantasy genre if they have previously had no interest in it. If they have never been exposed to all of the tropes that made me dislike it, wouldn’t these new fantasy readers just think that Fourth Wing is an exciting ride? While I personally found it deeply lame, I feel I’m in the minority, and I respect those that loved it.