Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher: Piatkus

Genre: Fantasy, Romance 

Tags: Dragons, YA/NA, Violence, Magic, Sex, Action **TW: Death 

Length: 646 Pages

Reviewer: Kazza

Purchase At: amazon 

Blurb:

FRIENDS. ENEMIES. LOVERS . . .
EVERYONE HAS AN AGENDA

Violet Sorrengail expected to live a quiet life surrounded by books, until she was forced onto the world’s deadliest training ground. Now she must fight to join the army’s elite: dragon riders. But dragons don’t choose fragile riders, they incinerate them, and when your body breaks as easily as Violet’s does – death is only a heartbeat away.

EVERY NIGHT COULD BE YOUR LAST

Many cadets would kill Violet to better their own chances of success; the rest would kill her just because of her last name . . . including the ruthless Xaden Riorson, her family’s greatest enemy. With the odds stacked against her, Violet must use every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise, because once you enter Basgiath War College, there are only two ways out:

GRADUATE OR DIE

DON’T BE THE LAST TO DISCOVER THE SERIES THAT EVERYONE CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT:

Review:

I left in the fear of loss sentence above  ^ that was a part of the blurb on Amazon because there are literally millions of ratings and reviews for this book. I think I could quite possibly be “the last” to “discover this series,” do I, like, get a prize? The next book for free? Because they’re around $20 AUS for an e-book. As it turns out, I didn’t mind, this book was very much worth the money. I hope the series continues to live up to what was delivered here. I bought this because I love fantasy and I love dragons in fantasy and TBH, I can be a bloodthirsty bitch who likes some good payback, and Fourth Wing held that very carrot in front of me.

From the moment Violet Sorrengail is ordered by her mother, a general at Basgiath War College, to be a rider, not a scribe as has been her whole life’s training, Violet is shocked. She is ‘frail.’ Her bones and connective tissues are problematic. The idea of this twenty-year-old girl with a degree of disability, which is never explained properly, having to be in what is essentially a war academy defies logic, but this is what a lot of YA/NA fantasy is about. And I know lots of comparisons are out there about the book being like other books, and I see them myself, but the truth is there’s nothing new under the sun. Yarros delivers her own take.    

Violet’s sister, Mira, in her late twenties and already a war hero, is also shocked that their mother is packing Violet of to the Riders Quadrant…. if she doesn’t die trying. She sets about debriefing Violet on how to survive the parapet, the opening, death-defying challenge… in all of about five minutes. Well, that’s not 100% correct. Mira also has made some special clothing with her own bonded dragon’s scales for added protection and gives them to Violet. And daggers. In fantasy, daggers are a girl’s best friend. Her brother, Brennan, wrote a journal about what to expect as well which proved to be somewhat of a cheat sheet. But the problem still remains, you have a better chance of dying than surviving Parapet, and if you do, you have to survive being a cadet in the torturous, hazard-filled  Riders Quadrant.

But I’m not about to let this asshole murder me. Best to get to the other side, where the rest of the murderers wait. Not that everyone in the quadrant is going to try to kill me, just the cadets who think I’ll be a liability to the wing.

Yes. Well. Violet’s got spunk. However, her physical stature, her lack of pre-training, her musculoskeletal issues are all seen as a weakness by virtually e v e r y o n e at Basgiath. Her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, also at the Academy as a second year, constantly tells her the ways in which she won’t survive. Way to go, Dain. He tells her he’ll get her to the scribes. Yeah, like her mother won’t haul her arse back to the Riders Quadrant. I got his point but he was incredibly negative when she needed help,  and he didn’t have her back on important occasions. Lacking validation there, Dain.

Anyway, back at College. So many people were threatening to throw Violet off the parapet or kill her once she got past that point. The entire process of Conscription Day to the ongoing training of a first year cadet through to being picked by a dragon, post that, is laced with lots of ways to die. Each day starts with a death roll. That’s a hell of a bummer. I’d need seven cups of double-shot coffee to face roll. Then there’s the fact that there are less dragons than conscripts. Even though the College has its Codex, a code of behaviour, it can totally be bent to suit the ambitious, the desperate, the sociopathic – looking at you, Jack Barlowe – as well as the fantasy socio and geopolitical machinations of Basgiath, Navarre, and its surrounds. But in the meantime, wear badass clothing, daggers, and cheat death, girl.   

“The tighter your clothes, the better off you are up there, and in the ring once you start sparring. Wear the armor at all times. Keep your daggers on you at all times.” She points to the sheaths down her thighs. “Someone’s going to say I didn’t earn them.”
“You’re a Sorrengail,” she responds, as if that’s answer enough. “Fuck what they say.”
“And you don’t think the dragon scales are cheating?”
“There’s no such thing as cheating once you climb the turret. There’s only survival and death.” The bell chimes—only thirty minutes left. She swallows. “It’s almost time. Ready?”
“No.”
“Neither was I.”

If a dragon doesn’t bond with you, you basically have a limited time to bump off a fellow conscript to hopefully get theirs, if the dragon will have you, and these dragons fry their fair share of cadets. The Empyrean is the dragon’s council and they have the final say on who the dragon wants to bond with, much to most people’s chagrin at who and what Violet gets. Mira warned Violet that Xaden Riorson, a third year wing leader, will kill her if he gets a chance. He also confirms this at parapet, ‘I’m gonna kill you, girl with the gorgeous silver fade in your hair.’ He’s the son of an executed rebellion leader. Other executed rebels children are at Basgiath College as riders as well. Part of the punishment for the sins of their fathers is that they are all conscripted to be dragon riders, because high death toll and a seemingly inexpensive war machine. That already made the hierarchy at Basgiath arseholes to me. They’ve all been permanently ‘tattooed’ with a rebellion relic which identifies them to all and sundry as the Tyrrish apostate’s children and they are treated as lesser beings by Navarre society. For them the name Sorrengail is forever linked to the murder of their parents and their people as Violet’s mother oversaw it all. Violet’s brother, Brennan, was supposedly killed in this same rebellion by Riorson’s father which technically means Violet should hate Xaden. However, Violet has emotional intelligence, scribe smarts as well, and she isn’t exactly cut from the same cloth as her older siblings, not yet – they’ve had years of dragon riding and living that experience over Violet.   

Violet is the nerdy, small girl with added physical disability (I am not being flippant), also with long hair in a college where a lot of women cut theirs short. It’s a formula in YA and NA, even adult books, to achieve unexpected greatness. To suddenly be seen as the most beautiful. Long hair worn down is a common tropey male aphrodisiac, ‘her hair is so soft….‘ Anyhow, she was always going to be the chosen one. The one to manifest a late but exceedingly rare and powerful signet – a power that is the riders ability brought out and magnified by the dragon and their bond. I liked her developing signet. Two dragons bond with her. Tairn, one of the biggest and most revered dragons, and a small feathertail juvenile, Andarna, who is a ray of sunshine with a unique skillset, and to parallel Violet, Andaran is still developing. Both of Violet’s dragons are personality personified and helped make this story. Tairn is labelled grumpy throughout the book but I call bullshit on that. He’s pragmatic, tough, he pushed when needed, and supported Violet more often than not. He caught her on so many occasions. To add to all of this, Tairn, Violet’s primary bonded dragon, is mate bonded to Xaden Riorson’s Dragon, Sgaeyl.       

In these series there is always the psychological Damocles sword hanging over the primary MC’s head about who can and can’t really be trusted. Who’s good and who’s bad. Then there is the other guarded MC, usually male, who adds to the main female’s confusion by keeping tight-lipped. Mira tells Violet not to form friendships, rather form allies. Violet does make a couple of good friends, and some allies, and I liked her friendship group. She is primarily torn, though, between the word of two men – one she’s known since five, the other the rebellion leader’s son, who did tell her at first that he’d kill her. Then, as she and Xaden become romantically enmeshed, because nerdy good girl and hot, brooding male is a successful formula, he also tells her that he’s not nice. While a bit of a lies of omission kinda guy, Xaden continues to do things over and over that prove Violet is his everything. And when Liam’s dragon went down, gahhhh!! He passed Go and collected (over) $200 from me.  

I liked the romance aspect of Fourth Wing set in amongst the fantasy. When I say fantasy, know that even though it’s set in an alt-world, the language used is contemporary and it works perfectly well for the book. The obstacles to be overcome, the action, it was gripping and flowed fluidly throughout character development and the genesis of the world building. It was done very well.  

Every challenge, every obstacle, every hour Imogen spent in the weight room, every single time Xaden has taken me to the mat has to be worth something, right? This is just a challenge…with a not-so-fictitious dark wielder…on the parapet. A moving, flying parapet.

Yarros delivers chemistry for days. Violet and Xaden work in a semi-dysfunctional, gotta love it way. Acts of service really is his love language and I approve. Xaden is excellent fantasy and romance leading man material. Apparently he’s an awesome Shadow Daddy. I had to look that up. You learn something new every day. I empathised with his character. I struggled at times with Violet but also admired her tenacity and her lack of preconceived ideas. I also laughed at her mad Lucrezia Borgia skills. While I didn’t buy in to them as a couple straight away, because it went pretty much straight from ‘I’m going to kill you, Sorrengail,‘ to ‘I’m leaving you violets, girl.‘ He actually nicknames her Violence. They’re a good couple in the making. Their chemistry grew to off the charts levels. It broke things and set other things on fire when they had sex. Considering Violet was thirsting after the enigmatic bad boy for months, and you knew he had it bad too, I loved that for them. I believe this is going to be a five-book series. I guess there’ll be a lot of back and forth between the MCs from now until the end of book #5. Overall I loved this. I read what is over 600 pages in two days during the back end of my break. I had a lot of fun, some abject misery – so, definitely a lot of feelings – and I’ve already bought book #2, Iron Flame – please don’t let me down. 5 Stars!