Fourth Wing | Book-Review

 

AUTHOR - Rebecca Yarros

RATINGS - ☆☆☆☆

TROPES -

✔️ Dragons
✔️ Academia setting (war college)
✔️ High fantasy
✔️ Chronic illness rep
✔️ Enemies to lovers
✔️ Slow burn

AMAZON INDIA LINK

SYNOPSIS

Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Yarros.

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 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.

MY REVIEW

"A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead."

I was genuinely afraid to start this book owing to its hype on social media platforms, but a few friends convinced me to read it, and now I'm here with a brutally honest review.

Did you like Divergent as a teenager? If the answer is yes, this book is for you because this book is Divergent in a Fantasy setting with dragons. This book's basic plot-line and world-building system have been "inspired" by Divergent a lot. You have a world divided into 4 quadrants (factions) and an FMC (female main character) who chose a faction she wasn't supposed/meant to choose, which also happens to be the most dangerous one, and then being in a romantic situation with the wingleader / faction leader who appears to be her enemy and hating her but in reality, he's doing all that to "protect her". 

With that being said, there are a lot of original ideas, aka the dragons. The entire dragon system was what really made me continue reading and not stop it halfway through. Their communication system, bond, powers and everything relating to the dragons were terrific. Tairn, the most powerful dragon, was my favourite character in the whole series, no arguments. He was witty, smart, sarcastic, powerful, very easily bored and hated everyone on the first site (lowkey reminded me of myself.) Adarna was really sweet and cute and the way Tairn was like a dad to Adarna in the book was just hilarious and really did the magic for me. Without these characters, I wouldn't have given this book a 3-star rating.

Talking about favourite characters, we have everyone's new obsession Xaden Riorson. He's a rip-off version of Rhys from ACOTAR, but then again, most guys are, so I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Violet, our FMC, had excellent character development throughout the book, which was nice. She's a nepotism baby, and I think she might be my favourite one yet. I can't talk about certain side characters without spoiling the book, so I will refrain. 

Xaden and Violet's chemistry, which every single person loved more than anything, seemed a little non-existent to me. It was there, sure, but was it off the charts? not at all. I felt like the book would have been better for me personally if the romance was a subplot, but then again, the reason the book went so viral was because of the romance. 

Another issue I have with this book is that it's a normal length for a fantasy book, but the pacing was a little too fast, specifically at the end. A lot of things are revealed in the end of the book, which I feel should've taken more time because this is supposed to be a 6 books series. I have what can be termed as, a fear that the plot of this book would run for too long till the point it will seem like a drag. Exhibit A is From the Blood and Ash series by Jennifer L Armentrout, which got so much hype for the 4th book release but turned out to be massively disliked. The next book called The Iron Flame is set to be released on 7th November 2023 which will give a little more insight as to what is happening.