Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros book review

 Fourth Wing is one of the most popular fiction books to be released recently, I haven't been able to walk into a bookshop since its release without it being on a bookshelf front and center so when it came out in paperback it felt like I should finally get around to reading it (especially with two of my friends also telling me I should). 

Fourth Wing is about Violet Sorrengail, a small girl with chronic pain issues, who was trained her whole life by her father to be a scribe and to write down the facts of the war between her country and the outside forces that have been going on for centuries, instead being thrust into the most dangerous course at the Basigath war college by her war general mother who refuses to let her daughter be perceived as weak by not becoming a dragon rider like herself and Violets siblings. The riders course is almost a death sentence for someone like Violet who hasn't trained for long enough, riders are brutal and candidates can die at any given point of the course, from the very start to cross a parapet where you could fall to your death to the dragons themselves who will kill anyone they perceive as weak, along with the other candidates who will kill opponents to get ahead. You follow Violet as she struggles to not only survive to graduation but to not lower herself and lose her morals. 

I really enjoyed this book, I would give it a 3.5 out of 5. As a main character Violet is compelling and interesting, being the weakest in the riders quadrant means that she has to get creative to be able to stay alive, using her scholarly training as well as her only physical advantage of her speed to be able to beat her opponents and overcome the challenges she faces. An aspect of her character I hadn’t seen anyone discuss before is the fact that she has an unspecified chronic disorder that means her joints and bones are weak, and that she is often in pain, needing to wrap her knees and ankles to give them extra support. I thought this was a really good representation of what a chronic illness can be like to live within a fantasy setting where it can cause her issues and make many aspects of this difficult life even more difficult for her being that she gets injured far more easily than the other riders, however its also discussed as an advantage in some places where she expresses that she’s far more used to being in pain and having to deal with that while doing other tasks than her opponents meaning that she can carry on longer than they can in a fight. 

As for the side characters they all have strong characterisation outside of their relationship with the protagonist and you feel that they are fully rounded characters by themselves as well as getting a strong sense of the bonds they form with each other and Violet. 

As for the overall plot and writing style of the book, I found that I was more intrigued than I expected myself to be, it starts off as a very by the by fantasy book with war and dragons, strong survive, weak die, dragons are mystical, and there is an ill-defined war that you have to go and fight, but the further into the story I got the more I found myself pulled into the world, and being able to discover at the same time as Violet that there is more to the war and world in general than that meets the eye. The small snippets are the beginning of every chapter do a great job of world-building, and setting up the framing device really well. The beginning of the book can be very tropey, if you're familiar with fantasy books and the tropes associated with the genre you will be able to see a few things coming the same as I did which at the beginning didn’t give me high hopes, however, I'm pleased to say that this doesn’t continue as drastically throughout the book, sure it uses a few tropes that could maybe be avoided or are overused but on the whole after the first few chapters I was fully intrigued and loving it. 

One thing you may have heard about this book is that it has a few spicy scenes and I can confirm that is true, they are in the later half of the book as it does indulge in a little bit of a slow burn which I personally loved, the actual spicy scenes themselves I’ll be honest I mostly skimmed through but that has a bit to do with me being on public transport when I read most of the time.

So to conclude, I would definitely say I recommend this book to anyone interested in it, it's a good fantasy story, hits a lot of notes that I think most people will enjoy plus dragons that are written in a pretty unique and interesting way. However, I don't think this is the pinnacle of fantasy stories so don't raise your expectations too high.