In case you were wondering, there is actually not that much sex in Rebecca Yarro’s Fourth Wing, besides Violet’s frequent internal diatribe about how attracted she is to one of the other characters and the frat-boy conversations between the characters. But the sex scenes that are there are lengthy and extremely graphic, down to the details. Personally, I was just glad that the sex in this series, so far, isn’t super messed up, like in Game of Thrones or Uplander. You can even skip the scenes if you want; what you need to know is that sex between our leading lovers is always mind-blowing in a completely unrealistic way and also that their magic (or the dragons’ magic, officially) makes it even more mind-blowing as well as violent in a kinda funny way (like they break things and blow things up on accident). But that’s not all I have to say about this book. It just addresses what I kept hearing about it before I read it.

Synopsis: Despite her commander-in-chief mother and her tough, brave, accomplished older sister and brother, Violet was headed to the Scribe Quadrant to live a quiet life with her big brains and memories of her father. But mommy dearest pulls a fast one at the last minute and Violet finds herself queuing up for the entrance to the elite dragon riders, a line that leads to a 20 per cent death rate in the first day. And Violet isn’t only petite, she’s also brittle. But if she wants to survive to graduate, let alone live till next week, she’s got to dig deep and do the impossible: bond with a dragon, despite enemies on every side, despite the odds, despite the secrets that her mother and the government may be keeping.

Why did I read this book? Because everybody and their sister is reading this book/has read this book. At least it seemed like it, until I started mentioning it to odd strangers and many of them were like, “Fourth What?” But in the world of books and bookstores, in the world of popular fantasy (especially romantasy) this book has been hot for the past year-plus. The second installment (Iron Flame) also did really well when it was published last October. The third book out of the five that are supposed to compose the series, Onyx Storm, is due for release January 21, 2025. So despite all the buzz about this series being sexually graphic, I thought I would need to give it a read.

Sometimes I wait until I am done with a series to review them all together. I won’t be doing that this time. Why? The books are super long. And we are in the middle of publication. I can’t be expected to hold back on the review of earlier books for years at a time.

Okay then, let’s just dive right in: is it sexually graphic? It is, sorta, a little, in some ways… I mean, there are some sex scenes (only like two or maybe three, actually), and those are detailed although they are also unrealistic in both real ways and magical ways; in other words, the sex is way over the top. Besides that, though, the book isn’t particularly raunchy, but it is, as some reviewer put it, a little bit middle school boy. I would maybe say college frat guy. The point is, Violet does think and others around her talk in a way that regularly objectifies those around her/them. There are reasons for this: they are living apart from adults (except teachers/trainers), are young, are living very physical and very stressful lives, and (the reason given in the book) they have short life expectancy: they might die like tomorrow, or this week. Put all that together with the social mores of the Empyrean world which involve the acceptance—even encouragement—of casual sex, and you have a book full of horny characters. I did have a problem with how much Violet objectified men. Sure, it’s kinda payback and a part of me enjoyed it for that reason, but officially I am not a fan of any person (real or fictional) being objectified, no matter the gender. And one last thing about this: I said to a questioning, potential reader that I have a personal standard for the books I read when it comes to the sex, and that is that the sex can’t be wrong and played off nonchalantly (or worse). For example, all the rape in Outlander was a big no for me (which is a more complicated reason than you might think; see my review for details). Another example, the incest and pedophilia (though culturally that’s not what it was, sure) in Game of Thrones had me setting it aside before I was done with the first book. I may re-approach the latter, may skip over some things, but the point remains: if the sex is weirding me out but I’m supposed to be okay with it, then I’m out. The sex in Fourth Wing was at least consensual and had some strains of love and respect in it, etc. I kinda laughed at it, to be honest, given the over-the-top ridiculousness.

Now let’s get to the meat of the review.

The book starts off strong. The first chapter is, in my estimation, picture perfect, including the risk that Yarros took introducing us to six characters right off the bat, only to kill one of them before the end of the chapter. It lets us know what we’re in for. It startles the reader, grabs our attention from the first paragraph. After that? The writing is fine. There are like no grammatical mistakes or typos, which is pretty amazing. I’m not blown away by the style or voice or poetry or anything. The point gets across and the world is built for us, the characters forming while we are addicted to turning the pages.

It is written in first person, present tense. I have a theory: people in their twenties grew up with YA that was very prominent and very distinct (before that it was nearly nonexistent), so they are now adults expecting a closeness of voice that we in the book world had been attributing to YA as a genre. This intimacy with character and immediacy of story that often uses first person present, therefore, is their norm. It is not the stuff I grew up on, but I imagine that it will persist in expanding into books that are not middle grades or YA because this is what kids are reading now as they grow up. For this book it was not very distracting (like it wasn’t in The Hunger Games trilogy), though it did make the tone youthful in that self-absorbed way (immature?) even though these characters were in their twenties and the book is meant for straight-up adults. I mean, twenty years ago you couldn’t even get a collage-age kid MC book published. Now our adult books are riddled with these characters as well as the YA voice and style. I would think that this voice is going to grate on some readers who expect a more traditional fantasy voice.

I believe this character-intimacy is why the few naysayers point out a shallowness to the characters. We are extremely close in voice, so we almost only have the ability to develop Violet in our head (and then Xaden, who takes the last chapter). Everyone else is just too far away for us to get to know in depth, which is a fault of this type of story-telling (and one that, in my opinion, people should out-grow). But yes, I do find all of the other characters a little flat, especially Violet’s besties. Perhaps this is also due to just how many characters there are. It’s difficult to keep them straight—but quite frankly, we have to have enough so that a bunch of them can die. I say all this, but Suzanne Collins developed the characters in The Hunger Games better, even under the same situation (first person, present, YA-feel, a violent world, a set-up where a huge number of the characters were going to have to die eventually). I liked all these people in Fourth Wing, but loved? Felt invested? I dunno.

Speaking of which, the book is brutal, violent, and there is plenty of death. If that’s not something you can stomach—just like in The Hunger Games, yes again I mention it—you’ll need to move on. This is a story about war, military, and dangerous lives (like lion tamers times ten or a hundred). It’s magical, too, and involves dragons and other mythical creatures, the dragons in this world being super-lethal. If you like that sort of high-stakes and bodily-strong story, if you want to see a young woman be bad-ass despite her physical limitations (which I am still a little unclear about, BTW), then this is the series for you. Traditional training and brute force. Traditional steamy romance.

Another traditional element? The world and world-building. We’ve now absorbed the whole fantasy school setting into the fantasy genre, and this fantasy school (military training as a trade sort of thing) is in an otherwise fairly recognizable fantasy world. Like I said, dragons. Dragon-riders even. Magic which has to be discovered, trained, and then requires something of the user. A link between magic and dragons. Other schools, like for scribes and healers and the regular, non-dragon infantry. (Dragon riders are like Special Forces/Air Force.) We have our underdog and a quest. We have a detailed, clear world within the limits of the Basgiath War College—and even a little outside of it. There are rules and hierarchy and societal norms, all of which we understand without having to think too hard about it. Violet is placed in a world we understand and enjoy, at least in a certain manner of speaking.

Was it predictable? Did I see things coming? Yes and no. There were enough surprises in the world and in the near-constant action, but it was pretty darn easy to see the main things coming a mile away. And yet, in some cases, we are hoping we’re wrong or wondering about the deets, so tension is totally keeping the pages turning, whether we think we know what’s ahead or not.

My overall take on Fourth Wing, the first book in the series: it’s a good story and I’ll definitely keep reading it. I am not sure exactly what makes stories addictive, but this one 100% has it (like Madeline Miller’s books and Emily Henry’s books and the Twilight series). It’s a stay-up-late-and-read book. I went ahead and asked my husband to take it from me at 11pm so that I would go to sleep and be a good mom during her son’s finals week. Then I asked him not to return it till 5pm, when I’d had enough time to put in a full day of work. This is after I stayed up too late and then lost most of a day of work reading. There are worse things, right?

“Remember that firsthand accounts are always more accurate, but you have to look deeper, Violet. You have to see who is telling the story” (p220).

“But keeping me safe is keeping me from growing, too” (p286).

“I’m not mad that [redacted] is dead. We both know he’s wanted to kill me since Parapet, and eventually he would have. I’m mad that him dying changes me” (p370).