Published: 2023
Series: The Empyrean, Book #1
Author: Rebecca Yarros
Illustrator: N/A
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Romantasy, Dragons, Fiction, Audiobook, Enemies To Lovers, Fantasy Romance, Book Club, Magic
Audience (Grade Levels): Grades 11-12
Number of Stars: ⭐⭐
Goodreads Link: Fourth Wing
Triggers / Content Warnings: Graphic sex, Violence
Review By: Gina Iorio
Publisher’s Summary:
Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from #1 New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros. 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. The Empyrean series is best enjoyed in order.
Review:
Fourth Wing has over 80,000 reviews on Amazon, and 88% of them are five star reviews and for the life of me, I cannot understand why. It’s a fast-paced book with cool dragons, but it contains every young adult trope. To make matters worse, the author is horrible at building the world her characters live in. There was a civil war and the two love interests have parents that fought on opposite sides. Sounds interesting, but the lack of details describing the civil war that shaped this world is nonexistent. That is just one example of where the book lacks details. The dragons are interesting, and well developed, but I need more than dragons to like a novel.
I never felt connected to the characters. Every character felt one dimensional. As soon as the author introduced a character, you knew what role they would play in the book.
Also, the author wrote the enemies to lovers arc badly.
To make matters worse, the entire book was predictable. Not once was I surprised by any twist or turn. I thought I would get a richly built world, but this book felt like a first draft, or a poorly written piece of fanfiction. I found out the author has written many books, but they are mostly romance. Her lack of experience in writing fantasy novels shows. However, I think people enjoyed Fourth Wing because it was a mindless, fun, beach read. I will not be reading the sequel.
Librarians, there is a lot of graphic sex in this novel.
Classroom & Curricular Connections:
- ELA (English Language Arts): Can be used as a comparative text for high school students to analyze tropes and character archetypes. Students can evaluate what makes an “enemies-to-lovers” narrative arc successful or flawed, contrasting it with classical literature examples.
- Creative Writing: Serves as a strong case study for examining world-building. Instructors can use passages from the book to highlight the difference between “telling” world history and “showing” it through organic exposition and prose details.
- Media Literacy: Offers an excellent springboard for discussing viral book marketing, online hype cycles, and analyzing the disparity between algorithmic commercial success versus critical literary execution.
- Extension Activity / Library Application: Ideal for high school library programming or book club debates. Librarians can coordinate a “World-Building Workshop” where students map out the missing geopolitical context of the Navarrian civil war. Using the text’s scarce clues, students can flesh out the history, local cultures, and socio-economic motivations of the opposing factions.
- Diversity & Representation: The novel features a protagonist dealing with chronic physical frailty and joint brittle weakness, offering a window into navigating a punishing physical environment with a disability. However, the narrative framework minimizes the systemic complexity of this representation, prioritizing predictable young adult romance conventions over a deeply nuanced exploration of marginalized perspectives.
