Fourth Wing

Rebecca Yarros
Completed 3/18/2024, Reviewed 3/19/2024
5 stars

Wow!  What a well-written book!  This first installment of the Empyrean series took my breath away, after getting over hating half the characters in the beginning.  It is a dark fantasy; a cadet school for fighting on dragons where a large percentage of the students die before graduation.  It is also a steamy romance.  A little research showed that Yarros wrote a lot of romances before turning to adult fantasy.  I think my mom would have liked this book for that part of it.  It’s very fast paced, and the writing simply holds you in its grasp.  I surprised myself by how much I loved this book club selection.  It will be interesting to see what the reaction will be from the group.  I bet this will be a love it or hate it book. 

Violet is the youngest daughter of the General who runs the Cadet school.  Despite being an adult, her mother forces her to abandon her lifelong dream of becoming a scribe like her father to enter the dragon cadet training program, a program that can end in death before graduation.  She accedes, despite being frail, unlike her tough older sister and the superstar older brother who died in battle.  Also at the school are the sons and daughters of rebels who were executed after the rebellion was squashed.  These cadets are still bitter about their parents’ deaths which were overseen by Violet’s mother, the General.  So Violet begins her first year with the additional trouble of them wanting to kill her for her mother’s actions.  All this is complicated by Violet’s powerful attraction to Xaden, the son of the leader of the rebels.     

The plot is very dark.  Violet is warned to make allies, not friends, because it’s basically every person for themselves.  Think a “survival of the fittest” type Hogwarts for twenty-year-olds.  Emotions and passions rage.  And if they survive, they get to be picked by a dragon to be its rider.  But even the dragons are dangerous, often killing cadets who are unworthy of being riders.  So if the curriculum doesn’t kill you, the dragons and your classmates might.  But Violet is tougher and smarter than she thinks.  She finds ways to survive.  In that, she is a very strong female character.  Her one weakness is her uncontrollable feelings toward Xaden.

The characters are very complex, at least the cadets are.  Violet, as the narrator, has a wide range of strength, weaknesses, and emotions.  Xaden, who starts out as a two-dimensional bad guy, expands into a fleshed-out character.  Dain, Violet’s best friend growing up and possible paramour, comes off as fully realized, but still hides secrets from her.  Secrets is actually the name of the game with the interaction of the characters, despite Violet’s demand that everyone be truthful to her.  All the secrets unravel at the climax, nearly destroying just about everyone.  By that time, you care and empathize with almost everyone.  It’s remarkable.

There are a lot of secondary characters and a ton of minor characters.  I did surprisingly well remembering them all.  Rhiannon is Violet’s best friend at the school and, contrary to the warning about friends, is honest and true, at least in this first book.  Liam, who is a son of a rebel, starts out stoically and ends up just as important as Rhiannon.  There’s really only one despicable character with no redeeming qualities, Jack.  Once you get used to the idea of surviving a ruthless school, you just want Violet to kill him before he kills her.  However, Violet doesn’t want to kill anyone, even a homicidal classmate.  

The whole dragon plotline is very interesting.  Just like Pern dragons, they bond with their riders.  Once they bond, the rider channels their magical power.  Each dragon provides a different primary power.  In addition, they link psychically to their rider.  And mated dragons can link to both riders.  And if the dragon dies, so does the rider, and sometimes, vice versa.  It’s all very interesting, as if Yarros took the Pern dragon mythos and extrapolated it into her violent, dark fantasy world.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  I was completely taken with it, despite the dark nature.  The characters, the snappy prose, the gripping tension, the relationships between the cadets and with their dragons.  I even thought the steamy parts were well paced and well written.  The ending isn’t exactly a cliffhanger, but it clearly intends to continue. There are four more planned books in the series according to some discussion I saw.  I’m raring to get the next book, which is already out, but will hold off a little bit as I have a monster novel coming up in May for in-person book club.