Scan barcode
A review by alienor
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
1.5
Warning: there will be spoilers
Say you're in a Fantasy setting. What would be your first thought if you saw a dragon three times smaller than the other ones, who can't fly well and who has paws instead of claws?
... that's a baby dragon, am I right? Except no, the book is adamant it is most definitely *not* a baby dragon and screams at you that it's actually a special breed of dragon, that's just how they are!! huh. okay. At this point you're willing to go with it, so whatever. Now let's fast forward a couple hundreds pages, because our main character just learned something very important and so very unexpected!!!!!!!
//it was a baby dragon all along.//
GASP.
Well, that's Fourth Wing for you : a book that can't foreshadow for shit but needs to spell everything out for you because its main character can't pick up on anything, apparently—and even when you think something has been resolved, YOU'LL BE WRONG: trust these characters to rehash something over and over again, with no regard whatsoever for the fact that they should know better now. Need a conflict? Create it out of thin air!!!!
I can't even say the way every single plot point was force-fed to us was my main complain, and that should tell you something :
- I'm sorry I can't sugarcoat it, but the writing was really bad : the sentences were clunky more often than not, the dialogue was either cheesy or acted as a conduit for infodump (when the MC didn't straight out recite random points of world-building : yes, that's a thing that happens in this book. Repetitively) ;
- There's no sense of time in this story because apparently the author got bored with it (I mean, I get it) and decided to include random jump of time every ten pages, and who cares if some scenes get cut off in the process?
- The premise was interesting (military/magic school!!! dragons!!!), but the actual plot doesn't work once we understand that its foundations make no sense : listen, if me, who's fundamentally anti-military, can pick up on the fact that killing off your youngs (including before they even got any training) when you're in the middle of a perpetuate war is SO BLOODY STUPID, that should say something about the way this world works (it doesn't);
- Enter my main problem with the sheer abundance of (meaningless) deaths: fake high stakes. People are dying left and right, and I don't care, because most of the time I do not know them (like at all), and at some point I just started giggling nervously every time someone died and Violet was like, oh no ☹ he's dead??? that dude the reader never met and I barely know is dead?? now that's so sad ☹☹☹
- The characters as a whole are underdeveloped and flat. When I started this book I was so happy that Violet was disabled, because we don't get enough disabled characters in fiction, and fantasy especially. Unfortunately, her characterization suffers from the same flaws than the rest of the book: there's nothing of consistence in it, a whole bag of telling rather than showing. I didn't hate her at all, I just didn't care about her whatsoever, or anyone else.
Okay, at this point I've said why Fourth Wing didn't work for me as a fantasy novel, but we cannot ignore that its main selling point was its romance. So, alright. I like romance. I read romance regularly. Let's look at this enemies-to-lovers romance that promised to change my brain chemistry.
Well, it didn't, because first we have two dudes competing to remove Violet's agency (ew), and if Xaden is the best option out of the two (Dain can choke), that doesn't make that shit attractive either (I'll admit though: he gives good advice). Then we have insta-attraction that's never given the time to develop into a real relationship (they don't know each other, even Violet seems to realize this at some point) and a bond that's being forced on them (their dragons are mate, isn't that practical) (doesn't mean Violet won't worry over and over again about the next year when they'll be separated ☹) (even though it's been stated REPEATIVELY that they actually cannot be separated for more than 3 days). The first sex scene was alright, I guess, if you don't mind shit exploding. The second one started with a "I need sex right now and I can't help myself so if you're not willing you should leave" statement and I love it so much when men are written as animals, don't you?
I did like the dragons, though. They were highly underdeveloped, and that's a shame, because they could have—let's not say saved the book, but made it better. The last 30 pages were very action-packed all of a sudden and I mean nice, but it actually pissed me off: no, you don't get to write 450 pages of nothing and then ends on action and a cliffhanger in the hope that it makes everything worth it. It just doesn't.
Final rating: 1 to 1.5 stars
Say you're in a Fantasy setting. What would be your first thought if you saw a dragon three times smaller than the other ones, who can't fly well and who has paws instead of claws?
... that's a baby dragon, am I right? Except no, the book is adamant it is most definitely *not* a baby dragon and screams at you that it's actually a special breed of dragon, that's just how they are!! huh. okay. At this point you're willing to go with it, so whatever. Now let's fast forward a couple hundreds pages, because our main character just learned something very important and so very unexpected!!!!!!!
//it was a baby dragon all along.//
GASP.
Well, that's Fourth Wing for you : a book that can't foreshadow for shit but needs to spell everything out for you because its main character can't pick up on anything, apparently—and even when you think something has been resolved, YOU'LL BE WRONG: trust these characters to rehash something over and over again, with no regard whatsoever for the fact that they should know better now. Need a conflict? Create it out of thin air!!!!
I can't even say the way every single plot point was force-fed to us was my main complain, and that should tell you something :
- I'm sorry I can't sugarcoat it, but the writing was really bad : the sentences were clunky more often than not, the dialogue was either cheesy or acted as a conduit for infodump (when the MC didn't straight out recite random points of world-building : yes, that's a thing that happens in this book. Repetitively) ;
- There's no sense of time in this story because apparently the author got bored with it (I mean, I get it) and decided to include random jump of time every ten pages, and who cares if some scenes get cut off in the process?
- The premise was interesting (military/magic school!!! dragons!!!), but the actual plot doesn't work once we understand that its foundations make no sense : listen, if me, who's fundamentally anti-military, can pick up on the fact that killing off your youngs (including before they even got any training) when you're in the middle of a perpetuate war is SO BLOODY STUPID, that should say something about the way this world works (it doesn't);
- Enter my main problem with the sheer abundance of (meaningless) deaths: fake high stakes. People are dying left and right, and I don't care, because most of the time I do not know them (like at all), and at some point I just started giggling nervously every time someone died and Violet was like, oh no ☹ he's dead??? that dude the reader never met and I barely know is dead?? now that's so sad ☹☹☹
- The characters as a whole are underdeveloped and flat. When I started this book I was so happy that Violet was disabled, because we don't get enough disabled characters in fiction, and fantasy especially. Unfortunately, her characterization suffers from the same flaws than the rest of the book: there's nothing of consistence in it, a whole bag of telling rather than showing. I didn't hate her at all, I just didn't care about her whatsoever, or anyone else.
Okay, at this point I've said why Fourth Wing didn't work for me as a fantasy novel, but we cannot ignore that its main selling point was its romance. So, alright. I like romance. I read romance regularly. Let's look at this enemies-to-lovers romance that promised to change my brain chemistry.
Well, it didn't, because first we have two dudes competing to remove Violet's agency (ew), and if Xaden is the best option out of the two (Dain can choke), that doesn't make that shit attractive either (I'll admit though: he gives good advice). Then we have insta-attraction that's never given the time to develop into a real relationship (they don't know each other, even Violet seems to realize this at some point) and a bond that's being forced on them (their dragons are mate, isn't that practical) (doesn't mean Violet won't worry over and over again about the next year when they'll be separated ☹) (even though it's been stated REPEATIVELY that they actually cannot be separated for more than 3 days). The first sex scene was alright, I guess, if you don't mind shit exploding. The second one started with a "I need sex right now and I can't help myself so if you're not willing you should leave" statement and I love it so much when men are written as animals, don't you?
I did like the dragons, though. They were highly underdeveloped, and that's a shame, because they could have—let's not say saved the book, but made it better. The last 30 pages were very action-packed all of a sudden and I mean nice, but it actually pissed me off: no, you don't get to write 450 pages of nothing and then ends on action and a cliffhanger in the hope that it makes everything worth it. It just doesn't.
Final rating: 1 to 1.5 stars