Fourth Wing | Review

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.

Divergent meets Goblet of Fire meets Red Queen in this new adult fantasy full of adventure, romance, and death.

One thing I loved about this book was the pacing of it all. It’s a fairly long novel, but I was never bored. Usually, especially in fantasy novels, there’s some point where we have downtime from the action. Sometimes during this time, I get bored or just wanna skip ahead to the “good parts.” I never felt that way with this book. I was interested in every page and every scene.

I was also surprised to find out this fantasy world is actually more extensive than simply having dragons. There are powers and gods and wars and other creatures. It’s fascinating and exciting without being overwhelming.

The love triangle was reminding me of Adam and Warner from Shatter Me for a minute. Dain was the obvious choice, the nice guy, but he was overprotective of Violet and didn’t trust her strength. Xaden was the obvious villain turned love interest that pushed Violet to be stronger and live up to her potential. I loved seeing these relationships play out and love that we didn’t sit in the love triangle portion of this for very long.

It was a lot of fun to get to hear the dragons talk through our characters’ minds. It made things more exciting to hear each dragon’s personality and see how they fit with their rider.

Something I didn’t love was that we were consistently reminded how small and weak Violet was. I know that was part of what made her not particularly suitable to be a rider, but we didn’t need to hear about it every other page. Plus, there was no rhyme or reason for it. The way it was written, it almost sounded like she had some kind of health condition or something that made her bones weaker than most or made her smaller than the average person but…no.

Additionally, there were moments where the writing wasn’t amazing. I could tell sometimes that this is a small publisher who doesn’t have the best editors in the world.

Overall, a fantastic book that has me on pins and needles wanting to read the next book.

Rating

To check out my other reviews, click here. Or to check out more books by Rebecca Yarros, go to her Goodreads profile or visit her website.