Fourth Wing Live Reactions: Chapter 18

[penwalla]

• before we begin, i would like to voice some complaints and corrections:
• so i guess the dragon's bloodlines were mentioned during a previous section, and also that each color of dragon has distinct personality traits/abilities? some of these kinda make sense, some don't. green dragons are really smart? okay. orange dragons are "unpredictable". okaaaay. if they're sentient creatures, why are we dividing them into what are essentially races and imposing stereotypes?
• i guess it could be deliberate, like later in the book we'll come to understand that humans impose these structures but are completely wrong about everything. except we already know that, so...idk man. it's just weird.
• okay, religion. it exists in this book. every once in a while a character will reference a god and praying. but there's absolutely no detail beyond that. the only god about whom we have any info is malek, the god of death, bc traditionally all a dead person's things are burned in his name? it's not clear how stringent this. violet has her brother's book, which her sister saved, and she and rhiannon talk quite casually about how sometimes they don't burn everything because it's "nice to have something".
• it's such a hack move to have a whole polythestic religion in your book and tell us nothing about it. there's so much you could do with this. it could make the world so much richer. is the degree to which a person's things are burned something that varies with regional practice, or is this a marker of how fundamentalist someone is? does everyone follow the same gods, or do individual gods have their own cults? what does worship look like? yarros has asked no questions!!!
• third complaint. no one in this books knows anything. basic facts about their military, the rider's codex, dragons, etc have to be explained to them. yes, this is how yarros gets in her terrible cringe infodumps, but hang on! these are supposedly the best of the best, who passed the exam to become a cadet! are you telling me the rider exam doesn't test your KNOWLEDGE OF THE MILITARY?
• fine. fine we can start the recap. ch 18.
• violet is walking into the archives, nostalgic. she's been assigned to archive duty for a month, so we've skipped at least that far ahead. apparently the archives are restricted unless you're a scribe.
• one of violet's old scribe friends is here. apparently the "customs and rituals of the scribes" mean they're not allowed to express emotion or break their composure, in order to impress upon others how earnest and dedicated they are.
• this isn't a bad idea for a bit of world-building, but yarros does just drop it like a lead balloon into violet's narration.
• naturally violet's friend has to remind her that violet is the only reason she passed the scribe test, because violet is the smartest person in the world.
• violet's job is to return the books the riders have borrowed and pick up whatever has been requested. she and friend talk about violet being a rider, and violet assures her that she's happy. it's not a bad line, but it would be way stronger if it was preceded by us seeing violet be happy first.
• violet asks for a copy of the fables she couldn't bring with her, and the scribe doesn't recognize it. five bucks says this is a forbidden text or whatever that her dad had in secret, and violet has just revealed this info she wasn't supposed to have.
• apparently one of these fables is about losing your soul to your powers after bonding a dragon. again, you could have violet read this story later and convey this info to us then, instead of having her narrate every bit of lore to us in a boring way.
• one of violet's old teachers stops her to brag about her to all his students, and has her explain some basic info about the archives and scribe culture to them that they, scribes, should already know.
• there is on good line in this scene about violet looking for her father among the hooded scribes, even though he's dead.
• yep, i was right. the archives have every book in the country except forbidden tomes, so violet's fables are a Forbidden Tome. can't wait for her to piece that together in like 200 pages.
• so we've timeskipped, which isn't a bad idea, but the problem is that yarros is using violet's catch up with her friend to exposite all the things we missed during that month. but that's not necessary. we could just watch violet go about her day a month later and observe for ourselves that her actions and thoughts and feelings were changed! she could even run into an old friend, be hit by nostalgia, and then make the comparison herself at a later moment. that would be more interesting to read and more impactful. violet could be thinking about her dad, as she does briefly here, and could linger on that thought, and how her life has changed from when she thought she'd follow in his footsteps, and that could motivate her to get the fables.
• instead we're watching violet and her friend infodump at each other.
• sawyer has manifested his signet--he can manipulate metal. over lunch the riders infodump about signet powers to each other. apparently after six months, if you don't manifest a power, your cool dragon relic tattoo makes you explode. the new riders are all surprised to hear this, which is absurd, because they go to DRAGON RIDING SCHOOL and should already KNOW.
• flight lesson. a month in and violet is still falling off Big T 12 times a lesson. he keeps doing stuff that's not in the lesson plan, which doesn't help.
• Big T calls her Silver One. why do all the men in this book give violet a nickname against her will? oh and Big T is mocking her because he can tell she's into xylon.
• dain comes over. Big T makes violet tell him if he hurts her, Big T will scorch him. of course, dain then grabs violet's arm and starts yelling at her because he didn't know she keeps falling off her dragon. dain, aren't you her superior officer? how do you not know?
• violet makes this exact point and then they finally have a fight where violet stands up for herself and tells dain they'll never be together because he has no faith in her abilities.
• yarros has now shoehorned in dain's apparent obsession with rules, a personality trait she didn't bother giving him until like 2 chapters ago. lmao.
• violet stomps off, walks past xylon, and just then another rider manifests his signet power. he starts freaking out because he can read minds. per violet, this is "a death sentence", and immediately, the professor in charge of teaching them how to wield their powers runs in and breaks the guy's neck, killing him.
• hmm. you know what, this professor was mentioned earlier in the chapter as a scary guy, and now he's here doing scary shit. and killing all your mind readers? actually smart. this is a good scene.
• scene change. violet is dreaming about her dad, who tells her the scribes have all the real power and riders are just weapons. ah, foreshadowing. violet then wakes up to Big T yelling at her to move.
• because 7 unbonded cadets are in her room to kill her.
• i...i've already explained in detail why this book's setting's cavalier attitude towards murder is idiotic. whatever. sure.
• violet was sleeping in her armor like mira told her to! thank fuck.
• however she can't fight 7 at once, and is about to be killed when two things happen. one, her bedroom door is busted down, and two, time stops. so her golden dragon who is useless in combat...can stop time.
• obviously it's xylon coming to save her. but this recap is long enough as it is--see y'all in ch. 19.