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A review by shivani_n
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
2.0
"Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight? If not, I'm a fool because you are magnificently beautiful."
Fourth wing is like if The Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight, Harry Potter, and How to Train Your Dragon all had a fivesome and somehow produced a weird, smutty baby. As you can imagine, the result was not pretty. What with all the hype around this book, I was expecting a cool fantasy universe with a good enemies to lovers romance. What I got, however, was a sloppy, unoriginal insta-love book with a boring plot.
Let's get into my main problems with Fourth Wing:
1. THE LACK OF WORLDBUILDING?? OH MY GOD it pissed me off so much... why was NOTHING EXPLAINED??? I was lost. I feel like the author was trying desperately to pack the novel with a bunch of lore about the dragons and its kingdoms within the dialogue and the overall backdrop of the novel plus the quotation marks at the beginning of each chapter, but it ultimately was not useful or interesting at ALL. In fact, I just did not have a good understanding of the kingdoms and its customs. So many of the rules were confusing, didn't add up or make sense, and there were a few plot holes. For example, Navarre is supposed to be at war, yet they are willing to let multiple young, physically fit citizens die during training at the war college rather than during real battle. Yes, I know that the riders make up a small percentage of the overall college but it also made no sense how the professors just let the kids murder each other and basically do whatever they wanted? It just seemed unrealistic to me (yes I'm aware it's fantasy so obviously it is not going to be rooted in the real world, but to me this is just a flaw in the writing and structuring of the book as a whole).
2. Literally nothing in this book is original. Main character whose dad died, has a sister and a not-so-present mother, and has to fight in a battle she never wanted to in the first place? Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. The silver hair? Paedyn Gray from Powerless. The training and obstacle courses in order to prove yourself worthy of being accepted/strong? The Hunger Games and Divergent. Childhood friend who the main character lowkey has a thing for but not really because she meets a better, cooler love interest later on? Idk sounds a lot like Katniss and Gale from The Hunger Games to me! The divisions/sections of the college such as riders, healers, scribes, and infantry which all have distinct jobs and personality traits? It's LITERALLY DIVERGENT. The "chosen one" type character who is "brilliant" and super smart and cunning but no one expected them to be so powerful? Harry Potter. Characters accidentally breaking the bed during sex due to their special powers that make their orgasms just oh so earth shattering? Twilight!
Everything was so damn cliché and it felt like reading a bundle of different tropes and plot lines copied from other popular novels of this genre. The dragon concept was cool but the execution just fell so flat because there was, as I mentioned, no real worldbuilding. As a result of this, every "plot twist" was ridiculously predictable.
3. This is marketed as an enemies to lovers book, but this is simply not the case. Violet and Xaden were never really enemies. They pretty much wanted to get in each other's pants from the moment they saw each other. There wasn't even any development of them "hating" each other to them loving each other because it was so clear they were always obsessed with each other and all their encounters were flirty. Sure, they bickered in the beginning, but there was always an attraction which was VERY explicitly voiced in Violet's internal monologue lmao. Even though I do think the romance was probably the best thing about Fourth Wing (the bar is low), it was WAY too insta-lovey for me.
4. Rebecca Yarros's writing is SOOOO CRINGEY, to the point where there were multiple times I physically recoiled in disgust. Like what do you mean Xaden's nickname for Violet is Violence? I'm throwing up as we speak. Every time he called her that it was so cringey and stupid. Also, the use of the F word was just unnecessarily frequent. The amount of times the author would punctuate for emphasis was very annoying. For example: "Fuck. Him." or "Brilliant. Fucking. Woman." I was ICKED OUTTTTT. Also this is just a small nit-picky thing but why were the names in this book so weird and inconsistent? First you have weird shit like Tairneanach and Xaden and Ridoc and Jesinia and Andarna, and then there's just... Jack and Dylan lmao. It was just kind of strange to me; if the author was going for a specific vibe she should have just stuck with it in my opinion.
Here are the only two things I somewhat liked about the book:
1. SOME of the scenes between Violet and Xaden were pretty cute. Xaden fell first AND he fell harder for real. The smut was not bad. Nothing toe-curling or anything, but not bad.
2. The dragons and the side characters were kind of funny sometimes.
If you just want to read a mildly smutty book involving dragons, go for it, but I would not recommend this to anyone. There is such a large variety of better fantasy out there!
Fourth wing is like if The Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight, Harry Potter, and How to Train Your Dragon all had a fivesome and somehow produced a weird, smutty baby. As you can imagine, the result was not pretty. What with all the hype around this book, I was expecting a cool fantasy universe with a good enemies to lovers romance. What I got, however, was a sloppy, unoriginal insta-love book with a boring plot.
Let's get into my main problems with Fourth Wing:
1. THE LACK OF WORLDBUILDING?? OH MY GOD it pissed me off so much... why was NOTHING EXPLAINED??? I was lost. I feel like the author was trying desperately to pack the novel with a bunch of lore about the dragons and its kingdoms within the dialogue and the overall backdrop of the novel plus the quotation marks at the beginning of each chapter, but it ultimately was not useful or interesting at ALL. In fact, I just did not have a good understanding of the kingdoms and its customs. So many of the rules were confusing, didn't add up or make sense, and there were a few plot holes. For example, Navarre is supposed to be at war, yet they are willing to let multiple young, physically fit citizens die during training at the war college rather than during real battle. Yes, I know that the riders make up a small percentage of the overall college but it also made no sense how the professors just let the kids murder each other and basically do whatever they wanted? It just seemed unrealistic to me (yes I'm aware it's fantasy so obviously it is not going to be rooted in the real world, but to me this is just a flaw in the writing and structuring of the book as a whole).
2. Literally nothing in this book is original. Main character whose dad died, has a sister and a not-so-present mother, and has to fight in a battle she never wanted to in the first place? Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. The silver hair? Paedyn Gray from Powerless. The training and obstacle courses in order to prove yourself worthy of being accepted/strong? The Hunger Games and Divergent. Childhood friend who the main character lowkey has a thing for but not really because she meets a better, cooler love interest later on? Idk sounds a lot like Katniss and Gale from The Hunger Games to me! The divisions/sections of the college such as riders, healers, scribes, and infantry which all have distinct jobs and personality traits? It's LITERALLY DIVERGENT. The "chosen one" type character who is "brilliant" and super smart and cunning but no one expected them to be so powerful? Harry Potter. Characters accidentally breaking the bed during sex due to their special powers that make their orgasms just oh so earth shattering? Twilight!
Everything was so damn cliché and it felt like reading a bundle of different tropes and plot lines copied from other popular novels of this genre. The dragon concept was cool but the execution just fell so flat because there was, as I mentioned, no real worldbuilding. As a result of this, every "plot twist" was ridiculously predictable.
3. This is marketed as an enemies to lovers book, but this is simply not the case. Violet and Xaden were never really enemies. They pretty much wanted to get in each other's pants from the moment they saw each other. There wasn't even any development of them "hating" each other to them loving each other because it was so clear they were always obsessed with each other and all their encounters were flirty. Sure, they bickered in the beginning, but there was always an attraction which was VERY explicitly voiced in Violet's internal monologue lmao. Even though I do think the romance was probably the best thing about Fourth Wing (the bar is low), it was WAY too insta-lovey for me.
4. Rebecca Yarros's writing is SOOOO CRINGEY, to the point where there were multiple times I physically recoiled in disgust. Like what do you mean Xaden's nickname for Violet is Violence? I'm throwing up as we speak. Every time he called her that it was so cringey and stupid. Also, the use of the F word was just unnecessarily frequent. The amount of times the author would punctuate for emphasis was very annoying. For example: "Fuck. Him." or "Brilliant. Fucking. Woman." I was ICKED OUTTTTT. Also this is just a small nit-picky thing but why were the names in this book so weird and inconsistent? First you have weird shit like Tairneanach and Xaden and Ridoc and Jesinia and Andarna, and then there's just... Jack and Dylan lmao. It was just kind of strange to me; if the author was going for a specific vibe she should have just stuck with it in my opinion.
Here are the only two things I somewhat liked about the book:
1. SOME of the scenes between Violet and Xaden were pretty cute. Xaden fell first AND he fell harder for real. The smut was not bad. Nothing toe-curling or anything, but not bad.
2. The dragons and the side characters were kind of funny sometimes.
If you just want to read a mildly smutty book involving dragons, go for it, but I would not recommend this to anyone. There is such a large variety of better fantasy out there!