Description
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
High fantasy, dragons, and an enemies-to-lovers romance in a world wrought with war? YES PLEASE! Okay, let’s start at the beginning, the part before I even start reading the book. Fourth Wing is everywhere: Bookstagram, BookTok, everyone and their mother AND brother have read Fourth Wing. I was interested. I had been putting it off for fear that it would disappoint. Well…when I started reading, I was thinking “Yeah, a nice new young adult fantasy with dragons. I hope it’s as good as Eragon!” Yes, I know I know…I found out very quickly that this is an adult fantasy and definitely NOT young adult. I could tell by the type font and layout, as if the sexuaI innuendos weren’t enough right from the get-go! And man…were some of then so cringy. What force on this planet made me even think it was young adult?!
Some of the innuendos and just the bickering, bantering type of dialogue was so cringy and awful that I had to read parts aloud to my husband for a serious laugh. It was like twelve-year-olds who have heard about $ex but haven’t experienced it trying to talk about it. It was awful. Cringy. So terrible that I was affronted that I was still enjoying the book! One of the lines I remember most was something like “I want to climb him like a tree.” Okay. I get what she means…but if you picture that particular simile…what DOES that even mean? There were better choices out there than…a tree.
Cringe aspect incoming: While I love a good enemies-to-lovers trope, in fact one of my favorites, the way this was set up made the characters feel flatter than paper. We have our main character, Violet, whose small size is constantly emphasized for a good portion of the novel. Yes, thank you for telling us for the FORTIETH TIME that she is small and petite. Point taken. Cool. She is also warned early on about the traitor son, Xaden Riorson, who from the moment he sees her, emphasizes his need to kill her. Except…every time he has the chance, there’s some dumb excuse as to why he didn’t. And then all of a sudden, he’s saving her from death MUTIPLE times, and then they are kissing. โ๏ธ This is all well and good, or would be, IF there was more to the enemy aspect. There should have been more time taken to explore Xaden’s own hatred of Violet, and vice-versa.
At least it gets better. After about halfway through the book (roughly page 250), the cringe isn’t there anymore. It’s like the author became a better writer AS she was writing. The (human) characters finally started getting some dimension to them, and the cringe-worthy dialogue (with one exception about measuring size, though it’s placement wasn’t too bad) was no longer present. We finally get a little bit of Xaden’s hatred-turned-passion toward Violet, but still not enough to see why he would want to kill Violet, as opposed to attempting to kill her mother, the main responsible party for his misery, instead. I know there will be more books to explore this later, but to make the true enemies-to-lovers feel, and for it to feel genuine, there should have been a bit more from the start.
What truly makes this book shine is the dragons. Absolutely everything about the dragons. The series is named after their mysterious governing council (or what it is perceived as, though may be something else entirely), the Empyrean. The dragons are intriguing characters who all deserve more page time, especially Andarna and Sgaeyl, as well as the secondary characters dragons, which we don’t get to see a whole lot of. With the dragons having their own governing system and being respected as the highest of beings, they certainly deserved more. The dragons also channel magic into their riders, and each rider manifests their own unique power based on their inner self. The magic system is enjoyable and works well for this world.
There are two parts about the book that absolutely make it phenomenal: Threshing, and the last 50 pages of the novel.
โ Genre: ย Fantasy, Romance novel, Romantic fantasy.ย
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