This book made my scalp prickle.
Oh wait—sorry, no, that was Violet’s scalp. Every time that Xaden looked at her.
In all seriousness, Fourth Wing is really difficult to rate. There are some things that I did love about this book. But also others that I hated.
Let’s start at the beginning—with some vital information that didn’t affect my rating but that might make a huge difference in whether this book is for you or not.
Fourth Wing Review
Fourth Wing is marketed as a New Adult and Epic Fantasy. It feels like neither.
Although there’s some spicy sex scenes near the end of the book, the overwhelming majority of the book up until that point feels like a YA novel, not New Adult or Adult. I actually really love YA, just as much as I love New Adult and Adult, so the YA feel by itself wasn’t really a problem for me.
However, the writing style of the author is also very juvenile, and at times, this felt really exhausting to read.
The world building also was just thrown at us in a series of facts that the main character recites to herself in order to calm her fears, rather than being cleverly woven into the narrative in a more natural manner. It was so jarring to hear Violet constantly stating the world history to herself while doing things like trying not to fall to her death. It was so awkward to read and felt so forced.
The first half of this book also feels more like dystopian fiction or even urban fantasy than epic fantasy. It felt a bit like Divergent or Hunger Games, in that sense. If you love those types of novels, this probably won’t be a problem for you, but if you’re expecting an elaborately built fantasy world full of dragons, you’re going to have to sit tight until the second half of the book, when things actually start to feel more like fantasy. The first half of the book is mostly just the main character trying to complete (and survive) obstacle courses and such before she ever even gets the chance to see a dragon for the first time.
The language used by the author is really modern and full of slang. You hear the main character say things like “Is it toxic that I like him?” and this can be really jarring and pull your head out of the fantasy setting if you are not used to reading this type of dialogue in a high fantasy world.
The author also repeats so many different expressions and descriptions of facial movements, to the point that I actually started counting them in my head. Until there were so many that I actually lost count.
If you want an example of what I’m talking about, take a shot every time Xaden raises his eyebrow at Violet, and take another shot every time Violet’s scalp prickles every time she sees him.
No, really. For chapter upon chapter, Xaden raises his eyebrows EVERY SINGLE TIME Violet looks his way. He is an eyebrow raising machine, and I’m honestly surprised his eyebrows did not get stuck that way.
I know I’m picking on him, but I’ll be fair and say that I actually really love Xaden, nevertheless. I am a sucker for broody, angsty, arrogant, moody, misunderstood, tortured hero bad boys, so I did love him, despite him falling into such a cliche trope. It’s a trope for a reason—because it works.
But I think the author could have developed him a little better and—for the love of the gods—given him a couple other facial expressions besides just that one eyebrow that was always in perpetual motion, raising and lowering like a damn gate.
Also, enemies to lovers is one of my all-time favorite tropes (second only to villain romances), but this did not really feel like enemies to lovers at all. They liked each other way too quickly, fell for each other way too quickly. Even if they didn’t admit it until later, it was obvious to readers from the start how they really felt. And I never believed for a second that they ever hated each other. I would have liked to feel a little more actual hatred, but all I felt between them was attraction. From the very beginning, Violet talked about how hot he was every second she got it seemed.
This book was also marketed as brutal, and while it’s true that there were a lot of deaths, those deaths never felt brutal. The way it was written felt very YA. There was no gore, no graphic scenes or graphic deaths. All of the danger and dying felt very YA, as if it were written for a younger audience. It lacked the type of grit and darkness I’m used to seeing in New Adult and Adult Fantasy novels, and especially in Epic Fantasy novels. This was this author’s first time writing fantasy, however, so I imagine she’s still figuring this genre out.
To be honest, I was ready to give this book just one star when I’d made it a third of the way through. I was completely bored by the plot, the silly obstacle course, the juvenile writing, lack of dragons, and annoying side characters that made the academic setting feel like a bad day of high school drama rather than a high stakes fantasy novel.
But then the dragons finally showed up. FINALLY! And things got so much better.
I also LOVE that there is disability rep in this book. And I love the messages the author sends about disabilities through her handling of Violet’s situation. Rather than have Violet overcome her disability and suddenly start kicking ass, she continues to struggle with it throughout the book and kicks ass by ultimately learning to acknowledge that it’s okay to be different and accept accommodations for being different when those accommodations are necessary to live a better life. As someone with a disability and chronic illness myself, I can attest that this is often one of the hardest parts about having a medical condition—admitting to yourself that you can’t always do it all on your own and that you’re not supposed to. It can be really difficult to admit that sometimes you need help and that asking for it is okay. Seeing this initial stubbornness and eventual acknowledgment in Violet was really refreshing for me. Seeing her ride her dragon with a saddle rather than have her being written to suddenly be an expert rider is part of what endeared her to me when all of her modern slang grated on my nerves.
I also really like the rider/dragon dynamics and the way they all communicate with each other.
But I feel the need to point out that this author is not the first to do it this way.
Author Anne McCaffrey began publishing her Dragonriders of Pern series in 1968, and she was the first to do this.
In her books, dragons speak in the minds of their rider, just like in Fourth Wing, but she was the first to write them this way.
In her books, dragons typically can only speak to the human they are bonded to, just like in Fourth Wing.
And in her books, humans who are bonded to mated pairs of dragons will also feel the lust of their mating dragons and become drawn to each other and feel compelled to seek out each other to relieve those sexual urges. Just like in Fourth Wing. Yes, that sexy scene where their dragons are going at it, and Xaden and Violet can’t keep their hands off each other because of it—Anne MCCaffrey wrote that in her books all throughout the late 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s as well.
I point this out only because I’ve seen so many people talking about how Fourth Wing is one of a kind and that the author invented this unbelievable way of communicating and bonding between dragons and humans. But sadly she did not invent this. This communication style is the exact same as Anne McCaffrey’s famous books from the late 60s and onwards.
And those books went on to win multiple awards for the unique methods and world she created. Anne MCCaffrey was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction and the first to win a Nebula Award. She was so famous that she was known as the Queen of Dragons, but that was over 50 years ago now, so it seems a lot of teens and twenty-something year olds are too young to have ever heard of her now.
But please—do yourself a favor and go read Dragonflight by Anne MCCaffrey. That book is true epic fantasy.
Fourth Wing is a fun read though, despite its many flaws. I’m giving it 2.5 stars for the disability rep, the adorable personalities of Violet’s dragons, and the sexy Xaden that I couldn’t help but love and want to see more of in book 2. The ending twist was something that I’d predicted since nearly the beginning of the book, but I still can’t wait to see where it takes us in the next installment. I’m hoping book 2 will be better than the first and maybe I’ll be able to give that one 3 or 4 stars instead of the 2 I’m stuck at for this first one.
Raise your hands in toast to Xaden’s eyebrows!
Fourth Wing Review Originally Written on January 11, 2024
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