Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

When was the last time you read a book that struck a cord with you? For me, that was the Fourth Wing. Let’s start with a brief summary of this book.

Synopsis

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.

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Goodreads

Characters

Violet Sorrengail is small and fragile. She has spent her life preparing to become a scribe like her late father. However, when her military general mother throws her into Dragon Rider training at the war college, Violet isn’t the only one that worries she won’t make it out alive. Amongst those that worry for her safety is her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, is a second year leader at the war college.
Dain is a by-the-books kinda guy, but he spends a large amount of time trying to find a way for Violet to sneak out of the Dragon Riders training and return to her chosen Scribe training. We learn pretty early that Dain has the ability to read memories by simply touching someone’s face. Dain’s main goal is to protect Violet from those that would try to kill her for revenge or to make a name for themselves. People like Xaden Riorson.
Xaden is the son of a notorious traitor, but he also happens to be one of the best students, strongest fighters, and most powerful magic wielders. And he has his eyes set on Violet before her training even begins. Which doesn’t bode well for Violet, as he also happens to be a third year wingleader, directly in command of her squad.

Pros

Within the first leg of Violet’s training she has to cross over a parapet that’s narrow and is 200 feet in the air during a blustery thunderstorm. Many candidates aren’t strong enough or coordinated enough to make it across this parapet, falling to their death. This is Violet’s first challenge. Being smaller and weaker than her siblings and most other candidates, she is very uncertain of her success. It is during this test, that another cadet hopes to throw her from the parapet, making a name for themselves as “someone who killed a Sorrengail”. In her mad and daring dash across this death bridge, Violet falls and crashes onto her knee. Afterwards, she is tending her knee and makes the narrative comment “The one on the left is swollen. If anyone else had taken that stumble, they would have ended up with a bruise, maybe even a scrape. But me? I have to fix it so my kneecap stays where it’s supposed to. It’s not just my muscles that are weak. My ligaments that hold my joints together don’t work for shit, either.” I have to tell you, I haven’t double, then triple read a passage so fast in my life. I live with a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), a connective tissue disorder that can result in similar ways. Upon looking it up, I discovered not only is it confirmed that Violet has EDS, but so does that author. I’ve never been a big advocate for “ooh I deserve/demand representation” because I think that’s a slippery slope, but it was cool to see my condition primarily represented correctly. (I say primarily because with there being 13 varieties of EDS, they can and do vary.) This actually led to a couple of my favorite quotes in the book, amongst them is “not all strength is physical.”
Another thing I enjoyed about this book, and it kind of still goes along with the previous point, is that Violet wasn’t immediately, or sometimes EVER, able to overcome struggles. While there are a few instances where I wish we’d have gotten to be apart of her struggle to overcome obstacles, I was very pleased to see that there were some things she struggled with that other people found to be “basic” tasks. This was very intuitive of life with EDS. I liked how the author often times had Violet either work harder than others to achieve mediocre skills or she had to entirely go about these tasks in another way. A primary example of this comes when they are running the Gauntlet and one of the final obstacles is physically impossible for Violet, between her disability and her size. While she struggles and struggles, she is unable to overcome this obstacle in a “conventional” way. I also love that she struggles with hand to hand combat. Personally, minor impacts bruise and cut me if I don’t sublux first. I love how the author spent a good chunk of the book having Violet train and go through strength exercises to get to “subpar” fighting ability. She doesn’t just magically become kickass or anything. I think it’s too easy for authors to loose some of the relatability of their characters by making them superhuman and generally with little to no character building. So the fact that this author didn’t rely on that trope as a crutch, I can appreciate.

Cons

There was SO much swearing! I was getting a little tired of how many times the f-bomb appeared while reading. It was a ridiculous amount. And in the same wheelhouse, the sex scenes were… a bit much (to put it mildly). I don’t love those scenes, and they immediately rule out books I can recommend to my students, which makes me sad because in instances like this book I think they’d enjoy the plot and characters. I simply don’t feel right recommending such adult content to children that are not my own, or even ones I claim for that matter.
If I HAD to complain about anything else, it’s that as of right now some of the “villains” are a little one dimensional. The primary antagonist in this book is a fellow first year named Jack. His reason for hating Violet initially is pretty flimsy, he wants to earn some street cred for killing a Sorrengail… but if we know anything about her mother, while Violet is the weakest link and she basically sentenced Violet to death by sending her to the war college, I don’t think she would “ooh and ahh” someone who killed her child. Plus with Violet being so “weak and fragile” I don’t feel like it’d be much to brag about. So that felt a little eh and to make matters worse, he never got any character development… he was just a tool to help build Violet’s storyline, which makes me a little sad.

Favorite Quotes

• Don’t borrow tomorrow’s trouble.
• Not all strength is physical.
• You’re leaking.
  
  • Violet was bleeding and her dragon wanted her to remedy it… quicky.
• I love the days when my body cooperates.
  
  • ​Relate to this more than I'd like to admit.
• I’m almost always in pain.
  
  • ​Relate to this on a spiritual level haha
• Lies are comforting. Truth is painful.
• There is no me without you.
• Funny how people rename everything that makes them feel uncomfortable.

Conclusion

I loved this book. I loved the characters, the world, the concept. It reminded me of Embers in the Ashes, with How to Train Your Dragon, with Throne of Glass, but it still felt unique. While I still don’t feel like storming all publishers demanding equal representation, Violet’s struggles helped me connect with her in a different way than most female leads in similar books. I was very pleased to give this book my first 5 star review of the year! I am even more ecstatic that the sequel in this duology is coming out in November, so I don’t even have to wait as long as normal before diving back into this world! I definitely recommend this book, but I will warn there is a lot of swearing and some pretty intense sex scenes. Still… best book of the year!