Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
The Empyrean series, book 1
(2023) 498 pages
New Adult/Adult fiction

Final Rating: 1/10Blurb:
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 was one of the cheesiest books I’ve ever read. Here’s the list of all of the problems I had with this book:

1. Violet Sorrengail.

Yes, the main character is my first, and biggest problem with this book. She is stubborn, stupid, and just all over obnoxious. She has spent her entire life training to be a scribe, but her mother, the commanding general, forces her to apply as a rider, where she will be trained in deadly tests of strength, endurance, intelligence, and more to see if she is suitable for bonding with a dragon and for fighting in a war. Despite being extremely unfortunate, she had six months of intense training to try to survive as a rider. Immediately, she is described to be short and frail, barely capable of carrying her rucksack, but for some reason, she’s very quick. Above average quick. Better than most of the riders who have been training for their whole lives kind of quick.

She goes to Basgiath War College upset and nervous for her life, but she keeps her chin up and tries to survive. In the back of her mind, she consistently wishes she could switch to the scribe quadrant, the quadrant she had been working so hard for, but she knows her mother would just send her back to the rider quadrant if she tried anything.

A tenth into the book, Dain, Violet’s childhood friend who is also a rider, is begging Violet to go to the scribe quadrant, even against her mother’s wishes, because he knows she can’t survive as a rider. And honestly, if she wasn’t the main character of this story, she would’ve died as soon as she made it to the mats for one-on-one combat, especially with the amount of enemies she has because of her mother’s fame and power, and also because of her aggravating decisions. Even though Dain is raising a perfectly good point, that Violet will DIE if she stays at Basgiath War College as a rider because she has spent her WHOLE LIFE training to be a scribe, instead of understanding where Dain is coming from, Violet gets ANNOYED at him for worrying about her literally DYING. She thinks that he called her weak.

Despite her having a point that it doesn’t matter if she goes to the scribe quadrant because her mother would just send her back, there is no reason for her to get so pissed at Dain, even if he isn’t helping her by just worrying about her instead of helping her survive. Violet never grew up to be a fighter, so I don’t understand why she is acting like she has, especially with Xaden Riorson, a top fighter, and wingleader, who has every reason to want to kill her since her mother killed his family, has literally SAID that he is going to kill her.

Even after Dain finds a way to get her into the scribe quadrant without her mother finding out, Violet STILL doesn’t agree right away. She STILL gets pissed at him. This is her argument for not saying yes to his proposal:

“I raise my chin and glare at him. ‘I was there, and I’ve survived almost two months in this place, which is more than I can say for a fourth of my year!’
‘Do you know what happens at Threshing?’ he [Dain] asks, his tone dropping.
‘Are you calling me ignorant?’ Rage bubbles in my veins.”

This is how their conversations always go. Yes, I know that Dain should be helping her survive more than telling her to just escape her problems, but he found a way to get her into the scribe quadrant without immediately getting sent back. What happened to Violet wishing she could switch to the scribe quadrant? She thinks she can survive as a rider because she survived almost two months already. She didn’t survive on her own. She survived because she had a TON of help, allies, and the luck to not have Xaden Riorson decide not to kill her for whatever reason. In fact, he even decides to help her survive?

Yeah, I think I need to talk about that for a second.

2. Xaden Riorson.

So, here’s the love interest. This is all you need to know about him. That he’s…

“Flaming hot. Scorching hot. Gets-you-into-trouble-and-you-like-it level hot.”

Apparently, he wants to kill her. But oh! He and the main character finally have one conversation that sounds like they are trying to sound like the coolest kids on earth even though they’re in their twenties. For whatever stupid reason, Xaden doesn’t kill her even though he has every single chance to. In fact, he helps her survive by teaching her how to fight. And she still calls him a:

“F*cking. A**hole.”

Oh yeah, and then, a couple dozen pages later she also calls him a:

“Beautiful. F*cking. A**hole.”

And then he nicknames her “Violence”? Why? Because she provokes everyone that hurts her pride even though she’s as frail and clumsy as a guinea pig? (Sorry, guinea pigs, I needed something to compare her to.) It doesn’t make her look cool and powerful, it makes her look stupid. How is that attractive?

Oh yeah, Violet poisons all of her opponents on the mat before they fight one-on-one. She does this in the most obvious way ever. She does it to every single one of them without break or surreptitiousness. I’m sure someone is going to be suspicious once they realize that all five of her opponents were sick right before the fight.

But for some reason, when Xaden finds out and confronts her about it, she replies dumbly,

“‘How did you know?'” I finally ask. My muscles lock, including my thighs, which just happen to still be bracketing his hips.
His eyes darken. ‘Oh, Violence, you’re good, but I’ve known better poison masters. The trick is to not make it quite so obvious.'”

3. The Writing.

The writing was incredibly bad. Especially the dialogue. Every time each character talks, it makes me think about what my younger brother sounds like when he tries to say something cool. Exactly. It’s that bad.