Clare L. Deming

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is a book that I had not heard of until a few months ago. Thanks to TikTok, it was propelled to prominence and became a best-seller as part of the newly coined “romantasy” genre. It had a pretty cover and also featured dragons, so I had to check it out. Fourth Wing is the first book in the Empyrean series (paid links). Read on below to see what I thought.

Here is the 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.

This book felt like a mashup of several other series: The Dragonriders of Pern, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and maybe a little bit of Outlander. It was completely entertaining and I read it in about two and a half days and then ordered the next book, Iron Flame (paid links).

As someone with a disability that results in frequent injury, Violet was a sympathetic character. I’ve heard that she has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, although her condition isn’t specifically named in the book. No one expects her to be able to survive the harsh training or the assessment of the dragons in Basgiath War College. However, one of her advantages is that she is used to dealing with pain.

This is also a romance and Fourth Wing features an initial rivalry between Violet’s best friend from home and the bad boy who might want to kill her or kiss her. When the relationship heats up, it gets quite spicy.

I enjoyed the twists in the plot and the sense that more was going on behind the scenes than the people and even the dragonriders have been told. I guessed one aspect of the ending a few pages before it was revealed, and I have some other guesses about where the story is going. I’m planning to start book 2, Iron Flame soon (paid link).

Have you read Fourth Wing yet? What did you think about the ending? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.