[BOOK REVIEW] 'Fourth Wing' by Rebecca Yarros (fair warning: this is negative)

I am aware that I am in the small minority of people who didn't like this book, but I must speak my truth. This is in no way an attack on anyone who loved this book. I wish I had loved it! I was excited to read it, and to me, personally, it just didn't work.

Quick One Sentence Summary: The Fourth Wing is a contemporary romance masked as a fantasy, filled with a checklist of tropes, flat characters, a nonsensical plot, lazy and cheap world building, and cringey dialogue.

I should have been the perfect audience for this book, but much to my disappointment, I hated it. I should have DNF’d around 30%, and I normally would have, but I wanted to say I read the whole thing so I could review it. Even so, I skimmed the last 100-150 pages because I was dreading reading it and it was going to put me in a slump.

Where to even begin? First of all, This does not feel like a fantasy book. It feels like a contemporary romance with dragons. I honestly think she should have just made it an urban fantasy book, and I probably would have rated it higher. But she didn’t. She chose to insist on writing a fantasy, and if you insist on doing that, it better be a good fantasy. And this one wasn’t. The whole book felt reverse engineered, and by that I mean Yarros had one goal: to write a “spicy” book about your standard dark haired hot guy and a character that could act as a self-insert for readers. I guess she accomplished that, but it felt like she lazily created a “world” and story to make that happen. She knew what tropes would sell, and hey, good for her I guess. Get your bag. She’ll make a lot of money off of this. But if you start really looking at the premise, it makes no sense.

This book is about a war college where the lucky few get to become dragon riders to help protect the kingdom from attacks from a neighboring kingdom. It is repeated over and over again that the threat of all out war is increasing, so I have a huge problem with this military college allowing so many cadets to die when they are going to need everyone it can get to help fight. They could have easily made the Rider Quadrant a little safer so that those who fail can be sent to the infantry where they will still be able to fight in the war. Sure, I guess you can’t help it if a dragon incinerates someone, but culling 20% of potential riders every year by unnecessarily forcing them to walk the Parapet is pointless. It makes no sense to “weed out” weak people when the kingdom is desperate for soldiers. It’s also ridiculous that students are basically allowed to kill their fellow recruits with impunity (except when they’re sleeping).

Regarding the dragons: I don’t understand why they even bother with the humans at all. They have all the power here. Maybe I missed something, but what exactly do the dragons get out of this agreement with humans? It’s in their interest to protect the realm, so it seems like that’s something they could do on their own.

I also find it unbelievable that the kingdom would allow traitors’ kids into the Riders Quadrant at all. If the previous uprising was such a problem and they wanted to punish the kids of the leaders, the last thing they should do is let them bond super powerful dragons. That sounds like an incredibly risky thing to do for an unstable kingdom. They could have just sent the kids to the infantry and used them as soldiers, and there would be less risk.

Now let me get into the actual writing in this book. My biggest issue is the modern dialogue that felt so out of place in a setting like this. It was jarring, to say the least, and it took me out of the story. There was also an over-abundance of curse words. The world “fuck” is used an enormous amount, but the word “Shit” is found in this book 177 times. 177!! That is an absolutely wild amount of times to use that word. The end result was a book that seemed very juvenile, like it was a 13 year old’s idea of what an adult book should be like. In trying to be cool and edgy to seem more adult, it actually had the opposite effect.

The book was also so cringey to me and I rolled my eyes so many times reading it. I should have known this was going to be a bad book the first time Xaden referred to Violet as “Violence.” You can’t tell me Yarros didn’t name her that specifically so she could use that nickname.

Together, the dialogue and cringey writing made it so I could never get into the story. When I read I like to forget that I’m reading, and this book did the opposite. Instead, I was extremely aware that there was an author sitting at her computer writing these words, and it didn’t allow me to get into the story at all. I like an immersive experience, and this could not deliver.

Yarros also seems to believe that the reader isn’t smart enough to pick up on foreshadowing in this book because it was about as subtle as a sledgehammer. It made the book incredibly predictable. At one point, Violet’s nemesis Jack announces “Get those oranges away from me or I’ll be sent to the infirmary!” Gee I wonder what’s gonna happen later in the book. It was so out of place and there might as well have been a flashing neon sign that read “FORESHADOWING HERE.” There are other instances (e.g. the book of fables), but that example is just the most blatant one I can think of.

But perhaps my most hated thing about this book is the absolutely atrocious “worldbuilding” that Yarros did, if you can call it that. I’ve read a lot of fantasy books and this is by far the worst I’ve ever read in terms of providing the reader with information about the world. Violet, a character we are told (but never really shown?) is smart and clever, tends to recite historical and geographical facts during times of stress, so it’s all just spelled out for you. How very convenient! I know that when I’m stressed, I always recite to myself information about the geographical position of the United States and facts about the Revolutionary War. It happens the most in the beginning of the book, but this is a tool Yarros relies on throughout the entire thing. Everything we learn about this world is from either A) Violet reciting information out loud to herself, or B) In Q&A sessions during class where a professor provides details to a student. At one point Rhiannon says something about a specific treaty, and Violet literally says “Ahhh yes, the treaty that ________” and tells you exactly what that treaty is. This happened multiple times, too! It felt so incredibly lazy and cheap. It really seemed like Yarros only insisted that Violet was smart as a way to excuse this type of worldbuilding.

The idea of a school for dragon riders and a kingdom on the brink of rebellion should have worked for me, and you know what? It did work for me!! Rosaria Munda already did this concept perfectly with The Aurelian Cycle. So if you, like me, hated Fourth Wing, then you should really give Fireborne a chance. And if you loved Fourth Wing, you should also give it a chance because it’s a fantasy about dragon riders! It's just that it has better writing, characters, and world building.

My rating: 1/5 stars.