Scan barcode
A review by walenchao
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
adventurous
emotional
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.75
Hope you like 2010s YA books but with graphic sex 3/4 into it. Page 400 of 500 is not the place for the first explicit sex scene in a romance novel, yet somehow it’s the only non-boring sequence in this overwrought, plodding tale.
The “world building” is a flimsy Potemkin city of cardboard cutouts and embarrassing tropes and cliches, with the only redeeming feature being the dragons themselves, something there are precious few moments with outside of the usual Joss Whedon dialogue and snarky remarks. Lots of “chuffing” as a catch all expression for dragon-y displeasure.
In this medieval inspired Harry Potter meets dragon ROTC knock-off you will read phrases like “for the win” and “he is absolute love” and punctuation, that. Always. Does. This. Because. That’s. How. The. Fanfic. Community. Writes. I. Guess? Seems. Rude. To. The. Fanfic. People.
Needless modern swearing, somehow people still use the middle finger as an insult here and turns of phrase that don’t make sense, a will they/when they romance between pretty insufferable characters billed as “enemies to lovers” that is paper thin and one of the worst protagonists I have ever read as your only POV.
The heroine spends most of her time objectifying the boys in her class, being buffy-style snarky, poisoning her classmates (!!!!) and talking about how she’s so weak and frail and small (tiny, he could crush me, oooh these big huge strong men oooooh) while somehow constantly being able to take an incredible amount of damage and abuse in comparison to her classmates. Everyone is stronger than her at all times except when she needs to do something and it would be inconvenient to fail. This is mostly because every test and trial results in the death of other students, supposedly to “cull the weak” but the narrative is that they have fewer and fewer eligible riders every year and that they’re losing the war at the border so I don’t really know why they’re just… letting everyone die or kill each other at a school?
This goes from mild curiosity to a absolutely tedious chore by about page 275. Lots of sloppy trope-bait writing, in all honesty it seems like it could have really used another editing pass because the sentence to sentence structure is a rickety mess.
This gets 1.75 “smiles curling up her face” 😏out of 5 “arched eyebrows”.🤨
The “world building” is a flimsy Potemkin city of cardboard cutouts and embarrassing tropes and cliches, with the only redeeming feature being the dragons themselves, something there are precious few moments with outside of the usual Joss Whedon dialogue and snarky remarks. Lots of “chuffing” as a catch all expression for dragon-y displeasure.
In this medieval inspired Harry Potter meets dragon ROTC knock-off you will read phrases like “for the win” and “he is absolute love” and punctuation, that. Always. Does. This. Because. That’s. How. The. Fanfic. Community. Writes. I. Guess? Seems. Rude. To. The. Fanfic. People.
Needless modern swearing, somehow people still use the middle finger as an insult here and turns of phrase that don’t make sense, a will they/when they romance between pretty insufferable characters billed as “enemies to lovers” that is paper thin and one of the worst protagonists I have ever read as your only POV.
The heroine spends most of her time objectifying the boys in her class, being buffy-style snarky, poisoning her classmates (!!!!) and talking about how she’s so weak and frail and small (tiny, he could crush me, oooh these big huge strong men oooooh) while somehow constantly being able to take an incredible amount of damage and abuse in comparison to her classmates. Everyone is stronger than her at all times except when she needs to do something and it would be inconvenient to fail. This is mostly because every test and trial results in the death of other students, supposedly to “cull the weak” but the narrative is that they have fewer and fewer eligible riders every year and that they’re losing the war at the border so I don’t really know why they’re just… letting everyone die or kill each other at a school?
This goes from mild curiosity to a absolutely tedious chore by about page 275. Lots of sloppy trope-bait writing, in all honesty it seems like it could have really used another editing pass because the sentence to sentence structure is a rickety mess.
This gets 1.75 “smiles curling up her face” 😏out of 5 “arched eyebrows”.🤨
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, War, Violence, Bullying, and Forced institutionalization