There is the odd low-key spoiler in this review, but I’m not giving away the ending.
Every so often I pick up a book from a small publisher, or a self-published author where the overall quality of the writing, or presentation/formatting of the book isn’t as good as you’d like it to be, but the enthusiasm in the story telling, and the story itself just keeps you turning the pages.
I felt, to some extent, the opposite of this reading the Fourth Wing. Rebecca Yarros is clearly a very talented storyteller and her writing is exquisite, the world she has created is rich and engaging, overall the story intrigued me right up to the final series of dragon sized plot twists, one of which I really didn’t see coming at all. There were, however, a couple of plot lines that I just wasn’t able to buy into completely that could have seen me ditch the book halfway through if it wasn’t for the overall package Rebecca Yarros provides.
The book tells the story of an academic named Violet who comes from a family of Dragon Riders. Her mother is the second highest ranking officer in the kingdom, and so the expectation is that Violet will follow in the family’s traditions. This means enrolling in the Dragon Rider training college. A massively dystopian school where students are expected to die, and murdering your classmates is generally okay, provided they’re not sleeping.
Violet must use her formidable intellect to make up for her lack of physical strength and stamina to navigate the initial tests and challenges if she has any hope of being given the opportunity to bond with a dragon. All this whilst being the top of any number of her fellow student’s “most want to kill” list.
There are elements of the level of violence tolerated between the students that I find hard to accept within the story. An example is where one student casually throws another off a parapet without any consequences (what makes this scenario harder to believe is that the test they are undertaking is not even a combat one) which feels out of character for what is meant to be an elite military school, and no, the student’s behaviour does not improve and he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
However, whilst I feel it is a level beyond what is required or believable, it certainly creates an unsettling environment for the reader to navigate which set up, for me, a number of questions that were answered in a very fulfilling way as the story unfolded.
I’m a big believer that you don’t have to love every word on every page of a book to really enjoy the story, and this is very much what I feel about The Fourth Wing. In fact, as the story started to progress outside the college I found myself more and more drawn into it to the point that finding out there is a requirement for a second instalment was the second best discovery in the final paragraphs (when you get there you’ll know).
Whilst The Fourth Wing hasn’t made it onto my “must read” list, it’s definitely on my “glad I made time for it” list and my “looking forward to the next instalment” list.
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I hope you enjoy my brief book reviews and find them of interest. I would love to recommend my own five-star fantasy novella “The Rose of Amzharr”, which is available to purchase from Amazon, with proceeds going to support the Wizard’s Bookshelf.
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