Was getting ready to write a review for Iron Flame when I realized I hadn’t reviewed Fourth Wing yet. Still working on catching up on some reviews from last year, but feeling good momentum so far. While I do sometimes combine series books into one review, these deserved their own spaces.
About the Book
Title: Fourth Wing
Author: Rebecca Yarros
Series: The Empyrean #1
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 500
Edition Read: Kindle eBook
Dates Read: August 1 – 6, 2023
Blurb: 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
Review
This book had been getting a lot of hype. Like, a crazy amount. You couldn’t open any social media site that talked about books without seeing it. It was all over BookTube, all over BookTok, all over the blogosphere. After a while, it felt inevitable to jump onto the bandwagon and I’m so glad I did. This book was so much fun!
This book combined my love of boarding schools with my love of sarcastic dragons (Basigath is a bit more than just a boarding school, but if you’ve read the book, you know what I mean). I really like Violet. She’s stubborn and fiery, knows that she is working from a disadvantage, but still figuring out a way to take down her enemies. You don’t see too many female protagonists in this genre who have disabilities. In this case, Violet has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (it’s not explicitly called that in the book, but she has the same symptoms – Yarros has confirmed that this is in fact what Violet is dealing with).
In so many stories with disabled characters, they are often only shown as a stereotype of their disability or, even worse, only there to be an *inspiration* to other characters. I appreciated that, while Violet does have major challenges dealing with her symptoms, she is also a badass in her own right and doesn’t let anything stand in her way. She’s the romantic lead, for heaven’s sake! How cool is that!
Overall, I loved the atmosphere of Basigath War College. It was a constant state of suspense because even though it is a school full of students, you could be killed at any moment, either by one of the dragons, one of the challenges, or by one of your fellow students. You never quite knew what to expect, and that made it so fun to read.
I have things to say about Xaden (oh boy, do I) but most of that will go into my review for Iron Flame. He’s an enemy, he’s a revolutionary, he’s a mentor, he’s a lover. An extremely complicated character and one that is not easy to like, but that’s what makes him fun to read. He’s the type of person who always has multiple back up plans, plots and alliances all going on at once.
Overall, this book was a fun, sexy read (oh yeah, did I mention that it was spicy? because it’s pretty spicy). In my humble opinion, it lives up to the hype.
GoodReads rating: 5 stars
Categories: Books I've Read
Life With No Plot 
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