I don’t purchase books from physical stores, least of all the supermarkets, because I read everything on the Kindle, but sometimes, the shelves alert me to novels I don’t know exist. This happened with Harry Potter, which I found in a random bookstore when visiting the US. This time, it was the Fourth Wing and Iron Flame books.
After seeing them repeatedly for weeks during my grocery shop, I finally purchased them on the Kindle.
What is this thing?
I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with Fourth Wing. I knew it was about a military college of dragon riders, and that was it. It’s a bizarre mix. It feels like a clashing together of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.
It’s Harry Potter because it follows an educational structure, albeit a military college rather than a boarding high school, so every character is an adult rather than a young teenager. They’re a bit like Harry Potter in the final third when they became more adult. It’s The Hunger Games in that it’s a young adult romance mixed with a crucible of danger and action.
It’s a combination that could work, but does it? A lot of people think so. It gets 4.6 on Goodreads, and it’s sold over 2 million copies. So let’s see.
Crash write what you know
I read Fourth Wing without any knowledge of the writer, but it’s interesting to put the novel into context now that I’ve looked into it.
Rebecca Yarros didn’t write fantasy novels. She wrote romance novels. However, she wrote romance novels orientated to military families and protagonists. She is a military wife herself. She also has Ehlers–Danlos syndrome an inherited condition that affects your connective tissues — primarily your skin, joints and blood vessel walls. This makes sense as the novel is a young adult romance in a military crucible, and the protagonist suffers from a condition that creates problems in her connective tissue.
The book was also crash-written two months after Yarros sold the idea to her publisher, a complete break from her contemporary romances. She then wrote Iron Flame, released in November of the same year. They’re not small books, so they were crash-written, especially the first book.
You can tell, but I guess the question is, does it matter?
Enter, Mary Sue
Fascinating. You look all frail and breakable, but you’re really a violent little thing, aren’t you?
– Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing
Is Violet, the main protagonist, a Mary Sue? Good question. I suspect she might be. It’s interesting to compare Violet to Katniss Everdeen.
Katniss is ordinary; she just happens to have learned some bow skills to get through life. She doesn’t feel special. She feels like she’s just been thrown into the Hunger Games and is trying her best to get through life with some skills, compassion and people around her helping on the marketing front. Katniss gets more confident as the books go on, but this makes sense. I’d even argue, by the last book, you occasionally want Katniss to stop being the pawn of others and stand the fuck up.
It feels different with Violet.
Violet isn’t an average person thrown into events she has a web of things both internal and external to herself that make her the centre of attention and, let’s face it, unique.
- Her mother runs the college
- Her sister is a renowned dragon rider
- The good love interest’s father is a prominent colonel
- Her joints are shit, but it rarely hinders her that much
- She’s clever, but she also becomes a proficient fighter
- Two things happen that mark her as special (but spoilers)
She is the center of attention and everything that happens draws her further into being citically important to events and inexoriably woven into them. The story’s protagonist should be the centre of events, but it feels overburdened, and the web of issues is just a bit much. Even her physical disability is something that comes up, but it rarely causes her any genuine problems; she accounts for it (as she’s clever).
It does feel a bit much at times. It’s not any one thing it’s when all of it comes together.
The romance, so typical
There’s nowhere in existence you could go that I wouldn’t find you, Violence.
– Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing
The romance is pretty eye-rolling, primarily because it’s the standard Young Adult romance setup. You have the good guy who is the friendzoned one, who may well turn out to be both a bit of simp, over protective or turn out to be more of the bady guy rather than the good guy he presents as originally. Then you have the emo figure who is the bady boy, and exudes sexual energy and may even present as a villain, but the female protagonists falls for the ‘bad boy’.
I don’t think I’m revealing any spoilers in the above paragraph because the book isn’t very opaque in this regard. In terms of its broad strokes, I can see how it’d have some people throw the novel in the trash. The romantic setup didn’t fully engage me. Neither did it lose me.
You’re probably asking why I got to the end of the book? Well, the package is warpped up in some interesting setting, political and adventure elements and it moves to draw you in immediately.
It draws you in
One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.
– Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing
One of Fourth Wing’s key strengths is its opening and the fact it doesn’t lean into the romance craziness too early. It also doesn’t start slow by dealing with all the back story up front. It goes straight into an argument between Violet, her mother and her sister as her college direction is abruptly shunted from being a scribe in college to a dragon rider.
The first entry test to the college begins shortly after, and you’re thrown into the brutal world of Basgiath War College.
Fourth Wing is a breezy read, probably helped by the fact it was crash written. It moves along at a pace. I found reading it enjoyable. I never found myself zoning out or skipping over paragraphs. It also handles the educational structure well and doesn’t drag it out. It moves from one college challenge to the next without needing to pad out the academic year with all the minutia.
Learning about the world was interesting, albeit it’s not astoundingly original. The inevitable big reveal in the final act isn’t surprising as the groundwork has been put in. Still, when it happens, it has the suitable ‘hell yeah’ feel for me, with people standing up to be counted in desperate measures with some okay layers.
It is a great situation and had me wanting to go straight into the Iron Flame.
Setting, themes and action
But I will not run. I wouldn’t be standing here if I’d quit every time something seemed impossible to overcome. I will not die today.
– Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing
The setting isn’t astounding, original, or profound, but it is gripping. If I were to level set the setting, you’re looking at something relatively simple. The college continually enthralls. The mystery and conspiracy are intriguing enough. The dragon riders are undoubtedly badass in a good way. They’re like the fantasy equivalents of combat pilots, special forces and X-Men and it’s interesting to see young people moulded into that through a lite, fantasy lens. They even wear leather and carry lots of small sharp objects.
The themes are also cool, but I would like them as I’m a bit of a fan of this type of story. The book is woven the themes of friendship, trust, loyatly, self-belief, persererance. and consequences It makes sense, these things are military values which goes back to the authors background. I don’t take them as military backgrounds, but they share similarities with things I like, such as a good neo-western.
The action scenes are also cool and brutal, whether on dragons or otherwise. A cool mixture between action heroes and almost superheroes, with people unleashing signature magical powers or jumping from one dragon to another and fighting on their backs. It sounds crazy, but the brutal consequences of things add just enough grounding.
For these reasons, I can enjoy the book while remaining interested in the dragon riders’ plights and the story’s central conspiracy.
And, Finally…
Would I recommend Fourth Wring? Yes, but you have to know what you’re getting into. I don’t expect every book I read to be something existentially clever, profoundly meaningful or to the heights of literary fiction. Sometimes it just has to be a rollickingly good yarn even if it was written in two months and full of hot mess college romances and sex complete with uncontrolled magical eruptions.
I enjoyed Fourth Wing, and I read it in 24 hours. I could wax lyrical about the specifics but that pretty much says everything. While not surprising, the set-up, the fast-paced nature of the college challenges and the moment everything changed was very well done and had me fully engaged.
It gets the ratings and sales because the book is just thoroughly entertaining.