Fourth Wing Live Reactions: Chapter 23-

[penwalla]

• ch. 23
• we open with violet talking to rhiannon about xylon and her frustrations, which are reasonable. since she and xylon can't be apart, she's worried about how it will impact her career going forward, since xylon is 2 years ahead of her.
• i wish rhiannon had some personality traits besides "violet's supportive bestie" and "has sex". that'd be cool.
• rhiannon shows violet her signet, which is summoning. she makes a book on the desk reappear in her hands. this is a rare signet, unheard of in a century, so violet is excited for her.
• they head to class with liam. xylon is nearby having a tense meeting with the other wingleaders. he glares, and dain appears behind violet, asking to talk to her.
• can i just say, i'm glad violet is finally being mean to dain now. he sucks! it's not his fault the author made him an obvious and boring fake love interest, but still.
• "good boy childhood friend who turns out to be bad and bad boy who turns out to be good" is a nice set up for a love triangle, tbh. like i don't hate the idea. it's not new but it's solid and there's room to do interesting things. yarros doesn't do them, but. you could.
• dain is upset because he feels like violet is pushing him away and trusts xylon more. violet, for once, is reasonable and points out that xylon's father killed her brother but her mother killed his dad--it's complicated. she then makes a speech about how she is a rider at her core and she's strong enough and dain needs to stop protecting her. woo.
• so uh. dain has mindreading powers, right. which work with contact, right. and he touches violet all the time. and she has never once worried that he was mindreading? not even after their last confrontation when he tried to forcibly mindread her? hahaha that will definitely not come back to bite her in the ass.
• it's not bad that violet trusts dain when she shouldn't or that she doesn't know everything. the tension of what the reader knows and what the POV character knows is part of telling a story. but it does feel extra silly when we're constantly being reminded how smart violet supposedly is. lol.
• time skip. training montage. no signet for violet yet, which annoys her. she casually drops that she wins her first challenge--would have been nice to see that, since presumably this is the first fight she's won without someone else rescuing her or by pre-poisoning her opponent. now she's at her third challenge, and it's versus jack, our mustache-twirlingly stupid villain.
• violet asks liam to keep this a secret from xylon, since liam reports everything to him.
• jack vs. violet, go. i really hope jack dies, because he's not any fun to read about and i'd like us to get some better villains.
• they fight. violet initially holds her own but is then overpowered. jack is about to kill her when she takes him out...by triggering his severe orange allergy. uhhhhh. ok, this was set up earlier, but not very strongly--i had to go back and look, there's one line where jack yells at another rider to get an orange away from him. also, is violet going to win EVERY fight by either poisoning or being rescued by someone else? she is in the military in an elite combat unit. at some point she is going to have to WIN FIGHTS.
• like...idk, man. violet keeps telling us she's getting stronger, but the narrative never gives us convincing proof.
• she passes out and wakes up in the infirmary, xylon at her side.