Fourth Wing

• Author: Rebecca Yarros
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: May 2, 2023
• Publisher: Entangled
• Series: The Empyrean #1

CONTENT WARNING: war, violence, blood, brutal injuries, death

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’d like to announce to the world that I finally started reading this series, and OMG all the hype is well-deserved. Initially, I was reluctant to start this one, but all the hype wore me down. And despite having the book on hand, it took me until this month to finally read it. Special shout out to Julie @ One Book More for buddy reading this one with me, coming up with the most accurate random prediction, and making me crack up every time. If you’re on the fence about reading this one, let me tell you why you need to prioritize this one immediately.

Violet, the MC, is one that I instantly identified with. Despite her original plan to become a scribe, she is pushed into training as a dragon rider by her mother, who is a ruthless general. I felt like there was a lot of conflict underlying the relationship between Violet and her mother. Or maybe not conflict as much as a lack of commonality. Since Violet takes after her father, who was also a scribe, that might have been responsible for the lack of closeness between Violet and her mother. However, we learn that her siblings and she were very close, but that her older brother and sister also have more in common with their mother, they always knew that they were heading to the war college. 

On the other hand, Violet finds herself thrown to the wolves for real. She’s smaller than the other cadets, she has EDS (Ehler-Danlos Syndrome), a connective tissue disorder. This means that she has to be especially careful not to subluxate (partially dislocate) her joints, involving her wrapping various joints and basically avoid all of the activities she has to do in order to survive Basgiath war college. I really felt represented as someone with a chronic illness that affects my joints, flexibility, and mobility, as well as dealing with chronic pain. Yarros even nailed the heart-melting (or should I say panty-dropping) move where the love interest makes an adaptive tool for Violet without her ever having to say anything and projecting as much power as she can, so she rarely shows her weakness or pain. Xaden offers her a new sense of independence and confidence that she never expected. And she can’t ever show vulnerability because entering Basgiath has painted the biggest target on her back. At a school where half the students want to kill her because of her mother’s actions, and more than half want to improve their chances at graduating by thinning the herd, Violet has to project strength and find allies without becoming too vulnerable. 

Speaking of heart-melting, this is one of the most incredible slow-burn, enemies to lovers romances that I’ve read in a long, long time. The way the relationship morphed slowly over time from enemies to enforced proximity and eventually the romance. There’s lust, but as the two of them are forced to cooperate, there are deeper feelings of trust, willingness to become vulnerable, and slowly love. My personal favorite thing about him is his nickname for her, ‘Violence.’I love that while there were some scenes dripping with lust, there were more showing Violet and Xaden actually building a partnership. Julie and I have nicknamed Xaden ‘Shadow Daddy’ because of his signet, a power that each rider develops, and that varies in intensity and level of usefulness. 

I’m always a sucker for an underdog story, and this absolutely fits the bill. It is rare that I say a really hyped book is worth all the hype and then some, but this is one of those rare unicorns. This gave off echoes of Jewish storytelling, with Violet resorting to using brains over brawn, and thinking of crafty solutions to overcome a stronger foe. After that, I liked Violet even more than I had before. Even the side characters are all fully fleshed out—everyone at the war college has their own level of moral gray-ness, and there’s always a few villains to deal with, but I was pleasantly surprised by the addition of a found family amidst a select few riders. 

This was a fast-paced, exciting, and romantic read. I was surprised at how much I loved it, and it gave me The Will of the Many by James Islington, but with more dragons and less Roman-influence. I was really proud of Violet, especially the farther she progressed in the college, and developed more confidence in herself. The school is brutal, and there are a lot of violent scenes, but I thought they paired well with the scenes of relationships between Violet and the people closest to her, to show a softer and more vulnerable side of the characters. I was so captivated by this story that I raced through it. In fact, I even listened to some of it on audiobook because I couldn’t possibly be expected to stop reading to do things like, you know, driving or cooking. One word of warning though—there are some very steamy scenes, and they could be awkward to have blasting out of your car speakers at a stop light. It had a little bit of everything—romance, war, intrigue, DRAGONS (!!), fantasy, and one heck of an underdog—making this an ideal book for anyone who enjoys any of the above.

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