Fourth Wing by 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.
Review: Twenty-year old Violet Sorrengail was raised expecting to join the Scribe Quadrant to live a quiet, and more importantly safe, world among books. Instead, her mother, who is also a commanding general, has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates competing to become an elite in the world of Navarre: dragon riders. But Violet is physically small and frail and as her peers one by one around her, she feels her chances of survival are small. And when her mother has made enemies, others would kill her just for who she is, such as Xaden Riorson, the wingleader of the Riders Quadrant. Beyond their deadly training games, the war outside of their kingdom grows more deadly and Violet begins to suspect that the most powerful in the kingdom are keeping a dark secret.
Yarros does an excellent job of creating a visually stunning world full of swooping dragons and fierce young warriors battling to survive and join the league of riders. Tension is high from the opening page, and the body count is high. Violet is very much the underdog and it's easy to root for her to beat the odds using her brains, empathy, and courage. The tension between Violet and Xaden is evident from the beginning.
Despite all the promise, I didn't enjoy this as much as I had hoped. Despite featuring mostly twenty-year-old characters, it reads as Young Adult Fiction trying to masquerade as adult fiction through the addition of some f-bombs and sexually explicit scenes. This is supposedly a love triangle story, but the third point on the love triangle is clearly not a big threat from the beginning. There were also so many unanswered questions. The history and greater backstory of the kingdom is only very lightly filled in. It was hard to suspend my disbelief when so little was explained or made sense to me. On the other hand, I had very high expectations for this book, which has been extremely hyped up online since its release so perhaps I was expecting too much from it.
Stars: 3
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