So I read and wrote up a review for Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros rather soon after its release in hopes to beat the hype and get a genuine reaction out of it. While I certainly enjoyed it, I have since seen a lot of responses and reviews of it and I can’t help but question my review and understanding of the novel. I figured, nearly two months after my initial read-though, now would be a good time to see if my feelings and opinions about certain details and techniques, tropes, themes and such are the same. THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS AND WILL NOT BE SUBTLE IN ANY WAY. PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVE YET TO READ FOURTH WING, INSTEAD MY FIRST REVIEW WILL BE BETTER TO READ IF YOU ARE STILL INTERESTED IN WHAT I HAVE TO SAY.

I’ll start by saying I believe my overall rating is going to be brought down from a 5-star to a 4-star. The main reason is that, while it’s a fun read, it isn’t outstanding and it borrows from a lot of YA novels of the mid 2010s (Divergent, ACOTAR, a splash of The Hunger Games) to set its structure. There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other works but when these facets of the story are large portions of the narrative and integral to the structure and flow of the story I can’t say its wholly unique or exceptional. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing any of the aforementioned novels or story worlds (I write Divergent fanfiction in my spare time, trust me, I see the potential and the options). Good books can be repetitions of others, but for me, great books are something that can stand alone and have a solid foundation to them.

There’s been some confusion on social media as to what they have to train for, what war they need to prepare for and who they are fighting. From what I understood, there are two parts to this war college’s training plan. The internal conflict between the “revolutionists” and the “government” that occurred twenty years or so ago is still fresh to the mind of those in power and they are choosing to continue to punish and oppress those who hail from those “traitor” families while also preparing the next generation against them. Then there’s the war with the other country – the griffon riders and their griffons. This is the external conflict the country is training for which is an ongoing war mentioned throughout the book. If you were in any doubt about why they’re training to fight, I hope it makes a little more sense now. Note that I haven’t mentioned if those in power are in the right (they’re not) and the methods they’re using to oppress and punish the children of the “traitors” only provides the children with the means to efficiently fight back once they’re bonded with a dragon.

There are elements I absolutely love about this world. The dragons are incredible and I haven’t seen dragons be written so well before. The mental and emotional connection between human and dragon is good but did we really need that scene? The brutal realism of a war college, of training and fighting and suffering from pains and breaks and falls and the death resulting in missteps and miscalculations feels appropriate for the world. If there wasn’t death and struggling involved in this process it wouldn’t be realistic. Similarly, the politics between the “traitor” children and others in the college, the rules they must abide by and how they get around them feels fitting for the characters involved and the nature of the two sides.

The ages are more unique than most YA/NA special protagonist books I’ve read and they work far better than having the younger protagonist fighting the world. What doesn’t align though, and this is part of why the rating has dropped, is the narrative voice. I know I said I like the tone and crude language used in my first review, and I still think it’s befitting the characters, however, the voice is far too young for their ages. In our world, these adults could be in the final years of university. They could be working and have been working for a few years now. They’ve been adults long enough to scrub off that green young adult shine on their lapels. A 20-year-old, book-inclined adult woman with a medical history that’s been far worse than most her age, wouldn’t still sound like a sixteen-year-old finally old enough to escape the house and discover what parties and drinking is. She’s got friends her age, friends a year older, who would have help illustrate the nature and order of the world for her outside of her privileged family connections.

The staged action scenes where they’re still training and learning are alright but that scene at the end felt jarring to read. The action was sort of everywhere and the tangible setting lost its shape in my eyes. I couldn’t grasp where everyone was, what the plans were and how Violet was able to take all of it in. It wasn’t horrible but I think it should have been a little more confined and cleaner as to the mechanics of such a fight scene and the plot progression at the climax of the novel. Oh, and on that note, Xaden’s perspective is not wanted nor needed. It ruined the ending for me and felt so immature and out of place. If Rebecca Yarros wanted Xaden’s thoughts to be addressed while Violet was unconscious, I think it would have been better to split into third person limited rather than first person. If it was in third person limited then please forgive me and ignore my comment, I don’t have the book on hand but I noted that it was written largely in first person.

There are a few more things like word choice, plot points that didn’t quite align with the direction of the main plot, predictable or ignorant character reactions and such that solidify Fourth Wing as no more than a 4-star read for me. I will be reading Iron Flame so hopefully there’s an improvement to be had in the structure and the character development. Maybe I’ll be buying the two once its been read but I’m not betting on it at this stage.