Book Review: Fourth Wing

Fourth Wing was one of the biggest books to come out of 2023. As a fantasy romance reader, I knew from the beginning I had to read this one.

In many ways, I consider Fourth Wing to be entry level fantasy. If you don’t normally read fantasy, this is a great intro to the genre. If you like romance, this might be a good fit for you, too. You can get Fourth Wing at your local bookstore, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

Let’s get into the Fourth Wing book review.

Note: This review is spoiler free.

The Details

Book: Fourth Wing

Author: Rebecca Yarros
Publish Date: April 5, 2023 (special holiday edition pictured here published November 7, 2023)
Page Count: 512
Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Synopsis

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.

Rating and Review

Spice level: 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ 

Friends, when I tell you I devoured Fourth Wing…I mean it. We are talking about staying up until 3 a.m. on a school night (cough, work night). If you’ve been on social media, I’m sure you’ve seen numerous people on booktok or Instagram raving about Fourth Wing. 

So, is the hype worth it?

In short, yes.

Listen, is Fourth Wing a flawless book? Definitely not. However, what Fourth Wing lacks, it makes up for with fast pace, loveable characters and dragons. 

Seriously, the dragons were a lot cooler than I expected. I am first and foremost a romantasy fan, so I’m not used to elements of high fantasy like dragons, but the dragons in Fourth Wing surprisingly help to lighten tension while driving the plot forward. 

In some ways, Fourth Wing is predictable. It has tropes we’ve seen in fantasy romance before – enemies to lovers, chosen one, a love interest who wields shadows and secrets that change everything the main character once believed. 

I got some vibes reminiscent of Divergent and Hunger Games, but I maintain that Fourth Wing is unique enough to stand out among the competition. 

One of the ways that Fourth Wing stands out is through its main character, Violet Sorrengail. The first person present POV is one that can easily go wrong, in my opinion, but Yarros nails it here. Reading Violet’s thoughts is like having a gossip session with a friend.

Violet is extremely likable. As the main character in a fantasy series, she clearly has impressive abilities, but she’s also compassionate and kind. She also suffers from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a chronic condition that affects the body’s connective tissue, which makes enrolling in a war college that much more tough.

Her love interest, Xaden Riorsan, is also extremely likable in that shadowy, mysterious type of way. I really enjoyed reading the budding romance between the two (enemies to lovers is my favorite). Fair warning: the spice level really amps up in the last third.

There are a lot of twists and turns in Fourth Wing, and what makes the book so good is that the pacing never slows down. Even though some of the twists are predictable, I still gasped reading them. 

Pictured in this post is the holiday edition of Fourth Wing. I really enjoyed the bonus chapters (scenes from Xaden’s POV) so it was worth the buy.

What I Liked

• The pacing. This book is nonstop, which made it so hard to put down. 
• The romance and the spice. Both worked really well for me. I’m a huge fan of the enemies to lovers trope, and even though I would argue they’re not really enemies, I loved the Xaden and Violet romance.
• Dragons! I haven’t read many books with dragons, but the dragons in this book are so unique and downright entertaining.

What I Didn’t Like

• Predictable twists. Some of the twists were easy to uncover.
• The world building could have been better. While the book is localized to one location, I didn’t get a great understanding of the larger world.

Favorite Quotes

“A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.”

“The right way isn’t the only way.”

“There’s nowhere in existence you could go that I wouldn’t find you, Violence.”

TL;DR

TL;DR: Fourth Wing is an action-packed fantasy romance book that is prime for entry-level fantasy readers. 

I hope you enjoyed this Fourth Wing book review! The sequel to Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, was released November 2023. Read my review of Iron Flame here.