Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

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Title: Fourth Wing
Author: Rebecca Yarros
Series: The Empyrean #1
Published by: Entangled: Red Tower Books
Release Date: May 2, 2023
Format: ebook
Pages: 656
Genres: Action and Adventure, Romance, Fantasy
Source: Overdrive
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2023 COYER Chapter 2, Lenoreo's 2023 Diversity Reading Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from USA Today bestselling author 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.

4.5 stars — Uh oh.  This is going to be one of those reviews.  I genuinely don’t know how to write this one, because I’m still sitting over hear absorbing it…and recovering from a crying headache, that was probably worse than it should have been but what can I say?  I’m on my period.

I was absorbed from pretty early on in this book.  I thought the pacing of setting up the world was done really well, where I wasn’t overdosed with information right at the start, but rather it was doled out as necessary.  I never felt really lost.  I had a lot of questions, but they were definitely questions that I was supposed to be noting and reacting to along with Violet.  The set up for how things would play out and how it would move on going forward in the series was just perfect for me.  I’m definitely not the kind of reader that appreciates a lot of information being withheld from the reader, so I loved learning it all along with Violet, having suspicions that didn’t drive me too crazy but just sort of burned in the background, but still with reasonable surprises along the way.

Violet was a pretty awesome heroine to follow along the journey.  She’s in this unique position of having trained her whole life for one dream/future, only for us to meet her as she’s being forced to follow a different future.  She’s struggled with limitations from her own body her entire life, and still struggles with how not to let that affect her in the Rider’s Quadrant.  Occasionally her pride and stubbornness could be frustrating, but I still connected with her on it.  And she worked so hard, you really wanted her to succeed.  I loved seeing her buck some of the trends of how to succeed in that first year by making connections and cheering on her friends.

I also absolutely loved her soft heart, her empathy, her compassion.  It made her stand out, and it made my heart ache and connect with her in the best ways.

There’s a sort of love triangle in this book, but also not really.  It was pretty obvious to me how things were going to play out, and it became less about love/attraction and more about just navigating between…well, shit, I can’t say because I don’t know how to write it without giving it away.  Needless to say it was hard to watch the one side because I guessed where that was going earlier, but absolutely delicious to watch the other — even with its dips and turns.

I absolutely ADORED Tairn and Andarna.  Like, fucking LOVED.

The world was delightful, full of so many wonderful fantasy elements, as well as the real human issues of right and wrong, moral gray areas, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out with the way it ended.