Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (The Empyrean, #1)

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Violet Sorrengail has been preparing her entire life to join the Scribe Quadrant, and to live out her dream documenting history and being surrounded by books. However, the commanding general (who is also her mother) forces Violet to follow in her siblings footsteps and join the Riders Quadrant - which consists of hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of the kingdom of Navarre: dragon riders (and they may or may not be willing to kill each other to get there). 

Violet is in no way prepared for what awaits her, and when she gets to Basgiath War College its very quickly established that she is the smallest and weakest out of all the cadets. This only makes her more of a target as with fewer dragons willing to bond to cadets, most would be willing to kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would would kill her just for being her mother's daughter - including Xaden Riorson, an incredibly respected and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

With every life-threatening challenge that passes, the attacks throughout Navarre grow deadlier as the kingdom's protective wards start to weaken, and the death toll continues to rise - Violet will need all of her wits about her to make it to graduation as a dragon rider.

My thoughts: 

Spoiler alert: I loved this book. For someone who pretty rarely picks up high fantasy novels - Fourth Wing may have very well established fantasy romance as one of my new favourite genres (and if that doesn't speak to how obsessed I was with this book I don't know what will).

This book pulls you in from the first scene - and the author somehow manages to make you root for Violet from the second you meet her. With the action-filled opening, we are immediately introduced to what is going to be a tension filled (some good, some bad) and high-stakes story - which is exactly what makes this book so binge-able (despite it being 500 pages).  I think this also speaks volumes of Rebecca Yarros's is writing style - which is not overly complicated but still manages to give the perfect amount of descriptions for us to get invested in the story. 

All the relationships and characters are incredibly well fleshed out and developed - and I loved following the snippets of other cadet's stories in the quadrant on top of Violet's narrative. I also thoroughly enjoyed seeing the development of Violet's character and her story arc, which while she did undergo a lot of personal growth it all still felt like a very natural progression and I felt that where she ended up by the end of the story felt very true to her, which I loved. The romance was also a fun storyline to follow but in my opinion, the banter and tension in the (very) slow burn timeline was much better than when they actually got together (I just felt like it all progressed a little too fast near the end). More than the romance, I loved reading about all the friendship Violet and Xaden make and I truly think those side characters added so much to the story. 

Surprisingly, on top of all the character relationships - I honestly think my favourite part of this book was the fantastical world and the dragons! As a fantasy beginner, it was incredibly easy to fall into this world and understand how it functions. The dragons were amazing and I loved the fact that they all have distinct personalities. 

I also adored the setting (imagine a more dangerous version of Hogwarts) and the trials and challenges in the first half of the book were very reminiscent to the Hunger Games for me which I really enjoyed.

However, in all honestly - the ending is what made me rate this 4.75 and not a 5 star despite how I had been feeling the whole way through. The plot suddenly started moving really fast in a way that felt unnatural to me. This being said, I'm definitely looking forward to picking up the next book in the series when it comes out to see how the story progresses from here.

In conclusion, I would whole-heartedly recommend this to anyone looking for a fast-paced, accessible fantasy (with dragons!!) and great characters. 


More info: 

Pages - 528 pages

Publisher - Entangled Publishing, LCC (Red Tower Books)

Author - Rebecca Yarros



My rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐.75

Thank you so much for reading this if you got this far :) 

Happy Reading! 📚💖

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