Book Review: Fourth Wing

You can also read this review on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6457188067

 Note: I read this as an audiobook. Please excuse any misspellings, I did not see the spelling.

Much like with A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES, I picked this up not expecting to enjoy it all that much. To be completely honest, I picked it up *because* I didn't expect to care much if I missed chunks of it. I've been afraid to get into audiobooks because I worry about spacing out and missing a lot of it, and this book sounded like fun without being so serious that I would worry about that. So I picked it up, and plugged in my earbuds, and started listening.

I really enjoyed this book. This may be surprising given that I gave it only three stars (3.5, but Goodreads doesn't have half stars). I honestly really struggled with the rating when I got to that point, and eventually I settled on this. I worked out my rating using a reader's journal, so I'm going to break up my review here in the same categories.

CHARACTERS: 4 STARS

There's a lot of characters in this book. Not all of them are well-rounded or well-thought-out. But enough of them are. I fell for Liam just like Violet did, and I appreciate every minute of Xaden's snark and the sometimes-abrasive way he pushed Violet forward. I even liked him nicknaming her "Violence" and using that in the bonus chapters at the end of the audiobook. The major flaw in the cast of characters was the bad guys. Jack in particular. I'm not sure why anyone let someone so smugly sadistic live long enough to almost kill Liam. I don't know why no one turned his own tricks back around on him and snapped his neck or his spine for being such an insufferable ass. And I'm not sold on any dragon picking him. Then there's the wing leader whose name I have completely forgotten because she stopped mattering about two scenes after her death, who decided to break a cardinal rule for no good reason despite being almost as married to the rules as Dane. (Dane himself is a surprisingly good character for who he is--a "lawful stupid" figure who thinks that's the same as "lawful good" and is so horribly wrong he'll never figure it out.)

mynameismarines on YouTube pointed this out, and I'm not sure I would have caught it otherwise. The character who just got named in the scene is going to be dead by the end of it. Not for real impact, but because there's a death roll to get read off, and someone has to fill it. Honestly I was hoping that meant that Rebecca Yarros didn't have the stomach for "real" character death, but she pulled it off with the absolute gut punch that was Liam.

One last note on character: THE DRAGONS. I compared the dragons in this book at many points to the dragons in SO LET THEM BURN, and while I give the latter the win on mechanics and concepts surrounding dragons, the actual *dragons* in this book shone. The personalities are simple on paper but carried out so very well and I loved them. I want to pet Andarna, I want to hug Tairn's scaly neck, I want to tell Segail how very much I love her snark at Xaden. I loved the dragons so much. (And I apologize for how badly I've probably mangled their names.)

WRITING: 4 STARS

I found the prose in this very solid and breezy in nature. It wasn't intrusive. It wasn't spectacular or mind-blowing, but it was solid and serviceable. I know some people have complained about the, shall we say, "millennial-isms." I took those and made them part of the world as I saw it. The world became more of an alt-modern setting rather than a true fantasy world. I saw it as basically like our world, but where magic powered things instead of science and engineering. Aside from "for the win," which really only works for me in a setting with the internet, I found the slang worked very well into the world when I treated it that way.

PLOT: 3 STARS

When I got to this point I had to pause. I listened to this book in bursts, and it took me a while to really consider what the plot had been presented as for most of the book. Only in the last ten percent did it become clear. For most of the book it's presented as effectively a school drama romance that honestly has no business being so long it takes up a 21-hour audiobook. I have to think too about the plot points that were dropped (see the above wing leader) and the questions that the world building left open (what exactly *are* the Navarrians doing with outposts beyond the walls if they don't care about the venin? Why are griffin fliers attacking Navarrian outposts if they're not the real enemies in the war? Why...) and I have to admit that the book's plot is held together solely by the binding on the pages (or the recording of the audiobook), not by the power of the words themselves. And for that, I have to dock points.

ENDING: 3 STARS

This goes back to the issues with the plot. This could have honestly been a far better ending if the plot had been built up properly. If the holes in the official stories had been highlighted more consistently and built up better, this would have been a more satisfying ending. Instead we're left with questions. How can Brennan still be alive if someone saw him dead enough to try to bring him back to life? Why did the dragons leave enough buildings standing to be rebuilt (we saw them crush parts of walls just by landing, and those were presumably meant to hold their weight)? Why is Navarre so willing to let the outer lands die? Who is breaking the wards if the griffin fliers are busy fighting the venin? Are the griffin fliers also attacking the wards? Why? Shouldn't they want the wards up so that they can try to retreat behind them? The ending fell flatter than it deserved to because so many things didn't make sense, and it's not fair to say "Just read the sequel." I just reviewed THE LAST BLOODCARVER yesterday. A book can be satisfying standalone and still be good with a sequel. And if this book had been crafted better leading up to the ending, it would have.

OVERALL: 3.5 STARS

The thing that eventually clinched this rating for me was a simple question I had to ask myself. If this wasn't an audiobook, if I didn't have a narrator carrying me along, if the book didn't continue at a consistent pace whether or not I was personally invested in reading it... would I have finished it? And the answer is, I'm not sure I would have. But reading as I did, I enjoyed it.

BONUS POINTS: EHLERS-DANLOS SYNDROME REP

I'm a zebra. I never knew until this book how much I wanted to see that part of myself in a character. There were multiple instances where I giddily recounted to my boyfriend a scene where Violet had done something bonkers with her joints that I related to. Some people with EDS won't relate the way I did because Violet doesn't get routine dislocations without serious outside force being applied. However, dislocations aren't a requirement for EDS. Routine subluxations, if they're serious enough, can meet the criteria. For me, it's my shoulder blades, which rotate forward when I reach down and can lock painfully against my ribcage if I try to lift something too heavy. (The first time this happened I legitimately worried my shoulder blade would break against my ribs if I didn't get it back into place.) So while Violet never spontaneously dislocates, she is still a fellow zebra and I still love seeing her pull off stunts that no one without hypermobile joints could do. (I used to do martial arts, and I too subluxated to get out of holds on a regular basis, well before I even knew what subluxation was. I told my training partners they were learning the lock on hard mode.) Just for the EDS rep, I was tempted to bump this up to four stars. I didn't, in the end, because that's not fair to people who are looking for reviews and aren't zebras. But I was tempted.