Sarah Swanson's Reviews > Fourth Wing

If I had a million dollars for every cliche in this book, of which there are a multitude, I'd still regret spending $20 on all 498 pages of this mess.


Spoilers to follow :)

Let's start with the worldbuilding!
Now, this book had two things I love dearly: dragons, and an academic setting. Yarros, however, explains almost every element of her world so poorly and sporadically that the entire story feels as though it were concocted page by page. The hierarchy of squadrons and sections and wings is so unnecessarily confusing. The whole "war" going on along the border is so vague, it was obvious from the start that some twist was going to reveal the good guys were actually the bad guys all along. The author's primary method of exposition is dropping pieces of information into conversations that feel forced and completely unnatural. No one talks like that. No one shares information like that.

Now, the writing!
The sentence constructions alone were enough to give me a headache. I can't tell you how many times I had to reread entire paragraphs because of poorly written and run-on sentences. As for the dialogue, let's discuss the fact that everyone talks like it's 2023, despite the medieval setting. I'm not kidding, the female character asks herself at least twice, using these exact words, "Is it toxic that I like this guy even though he can kill me?" Yes. Yes it is. And so is all this internal monologuing. Please, end my suffering. Apart from the sentences and dialogue, the descriptions were severely lacking. Every location felt like a vague impression rather than an actual place. I don't think I've ever encountered a book suffering from white room syndrome quite like this one.

Now for the characters. Oh, the characters.
Starting with the main event, we have frail young Violet who is SO relatable because she's SO clumsy and SO bad at things! Simultaneously, she is SO smart (like smarter than everyone) and SO unique that she gets not one, but TWO dragons to bond with her! And of course, they're both the rarest kind of dragons that exist!!! And naturally, everyone wants her dead for... reasons. But does her life being in danger give her any sense of self control? Absolutely not! She argues with everyone and throws her sass around to both peers and superior officers with little to no consequence. This woman has the survival skills of a fruit fly!! Additionally, her moods go back and forth quicker than an Olympic ping-pong match. First she hates Xaden because he's a traitor. Then she loves Xaden because she decides to trust him. Then she hates Xaden because he's a traitor. I'm expecting the cycle will continue in Book 2. Also, she starts off wanting to be a scribe and gets pissed when she's thrown into the Rider's Quadrant, then she decides she desperately wants to be a Rider because... because? The decision is given hardly any explanation or emotional weight.

And then there's discount Rhsysand. Oh wow, the moody black-haired rebel with tattoos is actually the good guy. Shocking. He's hard on the outside, but a softie on the inside. Groundbreaking. Also, the way that Yarros writes his character from Violet's perspective is downright sickening at times. From the very first scene with him, Violet's internal thoughts about Xaden are grossly objectifying. Everything is about his body, and how hot he is, and how badly she wants to sleep with him. There's an entire scene spanning two pages where Violet and another woman are straight-up ogling shirtless Xaden while he's sparring with another guy. It's disgusting. If the roles were reversed, if a male author wrote about a male character viewing a woman in the same way, heads would be rolling. It's gross, and frankly one of the most disappointing things about this book.

Honestly, none of the other characters were interesting enough to write about. The dragons were fine, and probably the most likeable. Sawyer was the only human I found tolerable. Dain was just annoying, as he was clearly meant to be.

Now, the plot.
The majority of this book was consumed by Violet being horny and a random series of challenges. There was no explanation anywhere of what the academic year would look like, which makes me think the author was just making up more challenges and battles and war games as she went along. All of this, of course, leading up to a real challenge where we find out information that was abundantly obvious from the start. Oh no, the good guys are the bad guys. The bad guys are the good guys. The dead brother is actually alive. I wish I cared about any of this, but I don't because it's been so blatantly obvious since the first chapter. The pacing of this book was tedious in a lot of places because there wasn't really any kind of looming threat beyond the vague allusions to bigger attacks along the border. Nothing in this book surprised me. Nothing came even remotely close. Everything was so over-ridden with cliches and ideas from other books (mainly Divergent, and a little bit of Red Queen with the not-dead-brother ending) that nothing felt original or creative at all.

I have searched earnestly, to the farthest hills on the horizon, for something good in this book. Alas, I return to my homeland empty-handed.

And here's the thing: I so desperately wanted to enjoy this book, which makes it all the more disappointing. If you've made it this far, I want you to know I did not approach this book with the intention of feeling this way. If you enjoyed this book, kudos to you. Feel free to keep on enjoying it. These are just my thoughts and opinions, and I'll content myself to be the cranky grandma of Goodreads if need be. But good heavens, am I glad this is over with.