penwalla | Fourth Wing: A Breakdown

I seriously considered giving this more than 1 star. It has sections that are competent. It has moments that are good. It's not completely bad. But you know what? No. The competent sections are still bad, because they're essentially floating on a scaffolding of nothing, totally devoid of the context that would lend them some actual emotional weight and impact. This book gets a single star.

The Good:

The climax of this book involves a large fight scene, which is well-written. There's good suspense, it's easy to follow, and it's enjoyable to read.
The porn in this book is fine. Not very good but also not very bad. No idea why reviews are focusing on the sex scenes, they don't feel out of bounds from what I've read in other romance novels in any way.
There is a section about three fourths of the way through where the book becomes good. I would say chapters 28-30ish are the most successful. When Yarros actually bothers to write the romance, it isn't bad. I can see why people are into Xylon/Violet. But this is still actually indicative of a big problem with the book, as we'll get to later.

The Bad:

Oh boy.

The Writing:

Fourth Wing is written in the first person, in the POV of our protagonist, Violet Sorrengail. Violet is supposedly 20 years old.
The prose is readable. The main talking point about Yarros's style is that it's jarringly modern. We use modern swear words, modern slang (well. "modern". I think "for the win"'s time has passed.) Yarros likes to divide sentences up into one word sentences, Just. Like This. For emphasis, which I personally hate and think should be done sparingly. I don't think all fantasy novels have to sound old-timey. But in the case of Fourth Wing, it feels like the end result of Yarros not being able to or caring to come up with anything original. As we'll discuss later, the world-building of this book is its weakest point, and without a strong place and culture to build on, it's no surprise to me that Fourth Wing reads like it was written about 20 year olds in the modern day USA.
Most of the characters sound exactly the same. You would be hard-pressed to differentiate the dialogue of any of the other riders (except Xylon) from one another, or from Violet.
Despite Violet being described repeatedly to us by other characters as very intelligent, her narration is quite juvenile. If this book didn't have explicit sex, swearing, and was a little less horny, it could easily be YA.
The other major problem this book has is the way it conveys information about the world to us. Yarros loves to infodump via dialogue, either by having characters have unnatural conversations about info that all of them should already know, or by having Violet recite facts aloud to calm her anxiety. This is no fun to read and creates the sense that every character in this book has been transmigrated in from somewhere else.

The World-Building:

Oh boy.

This is some of the dumbest worldbuilding I have ever had the displeasure of reading. I do not think Yarros thought for even a second about the implications of anything she put in her book, and the end result is that the world feels like it's made of tissue paper.
First off: let's talk about the war college. Supposedly it's broken into four quadrants: the riders, the scribes, the healers, and the infantry. The riders are supposed to be the best of the best, people who have been training for it their whole lives. But also people are conscripted into the riders all the time. Which is it, Yarros? We simply don't know. You might expect there to be some division between volunteer riders and conscripted riders, but there's actually minimal time spent on the oppression the conscripted rebellion's children face, and it's not clear to me if anyone else is conscripted.
Also, the riders have to pass an exam to get in--Violet had to train for 6 months and barely passed. So if people are being conscripted, are they just conscripted in general and then can take whatever exam they want to try to get out of the infantry? It's never clarified.
The scribes appear to have military duties and to manage the country's entire Archive of knowledge. Are they solely under the province of the military, or are they a branch of the government that supports the military and also has civilian positions? Same thing about healers--is this the country's only medical school, or are these just the military's healers?
You might say, hold up, does any of this matter? To which I say: yes. Not every one of these questions has to be answered, but Violet's choice between the scribe quadrant and the rider quadrant is pivotal to the book. That's the foundation on which the premise is built.
Here are some more questions. Why is Violet forcibly sent to the rider quadrant? Her mom orders it, and she's a high ranking official--sure. But Violet has a physical disability that could easily be argued precludes her entrance. The dragons are canonically picky about who they bond with and they have a surplus of riders as it is--plus Violet was primed to go to the scribe quadrant where she would have done well.
Yet the story never offers us a convincing motivation for Violet's mom to push her into the riders' quadrant. Nor does Violet ever try to solve the mystery. Nor does Violet ever attempt to use her supposedly enormous brain and try to get herself out of dragon riding school by leveraging her own disability. Now, you can argue that Violet hates being thought of as weak or secretly wants to be a rider or whatever, but the book itself does not consider any of these options. It's just "Violet's mom said so".
Let's talk about the actual training these dragon rider wannabes get. Because it's stupid.
Let's start with the big one: THREE QUARTERS OF THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS DIE.
I'll say that again: 75% of the students training to be dragon riders die before graduating from their first year. Of a three year program. During a time when the military is explicitly underpowered and conscripting bodies to fill the gaps, during a time when, as we'll find out, there's a big uptick in fighting on the border that they're trying to conceal. And this 75% isn't an inevitable consequence! It is extremely preventable.
Some of these cadets die during training. They die during exercises meant to test their skill, none of which make any sense (we'll get to that). For example, the first thing the riders have to do is cross a very narrow and slick bridge, and for some reason most of them have terrible shoes(?). Some of them just fall and die, before even entering the school itself.
Also, the cadets? Are just allowed to kill each other. Are encouraged to kill each other to remove weak links. This is stupid for a number of reasons. To start with, how can you build a cohesive military force with any sense of camaraderie if you allow everyone to kill each other? For another, why do you want your cadets to decide who is weak and who is strong? The instructors at this academy should be making that determination themselves, with the cadets competing to impress them, instead of murdering each other. Someone who randomly murders other cadets (like Violet's nemesis, the cartoonishly evil homicidal maniac Jack) shouldn't be allowed to become a dragon rider--he clearly can't be trusted!
Even once the riders are bonded, they can die at any time. Violet straight up says 10% of the graduating class dies in the last simulation before graduation. The dragons themselves also randomly kill people for offenses like "fell off" or "stood too close."
Look, it's explicitly stated that the dragons choose who to bond and the humans have no control over it. But the military can control who gets the chance to try. The dragons only choose from the humans who make it to Threshing.
They need more people in the army. This is explicitly stated. So why kill your "best of the best" during training for no fucking reason? If you have to conscript people to keep up your numbers, an easy way to preserve them is to just not kill them during training! And why do so many people volunteer to be riders if the risk of death is so insanely high?
Okay, let's talk children of the rebellion. We eventually learn that every child of a high-ranked rebel was fostered out to a noble family and once they're of age, they are forcibly conscripted into the war college as dragon riders. Xylon apparently brokered this deal himself. There are many things wrong with this.
First off, why would you allow these children with a very good reason to not be loyal into your elite fighting force? Being a dragon rider is supposedly an honor. And it comes with a huge murderous lizard and magical powers. Furthermore, while the rebel kids do face prejudice from others, they're not...institutionally being punished? They have the same chance to succeed as the others. Xylon is considered one of the best of his generation and is in a leadership position.
This is even stupider when you learn these kids aren't supposed to meet in groups greater than three...because the head of the army has a power that lets him see battle outcomes, and if more than three rebels are in one place, their magical marks from the rebellion make them invisible to his power. Yet there are more than three of them in the army, and they're not being deliberately spread out or separated, because, again, they're allowed to get into positions of power. Xylon regularly rearranges the make up of the squads to his liking, and no one stops him. Throughout this book, pretty much everyone warns Violet that Xylon will want to kill her. Yet even thought Violet is the daughter of a high ranked military official and Xylon is the son of a rebel...you know what anyone does about this? NOTHING.
You know what I think? I think this is another case of Yarros just not thinking about it very hard. She knows Xylon will never pose a real threat, that he loves Violet at first sight. And Xylon never actually does pose a real threat in the book, it's pretty obvious to the reader that he's on Violet's side, and all the fearmongering feels stupid because of that.
I could go on and on and on. The religion is wildly underdeveloped, to the point we know the names of a few gods and exactly one religious tradition--the dead's belongings are burned. Yet we get mentions of angels and hell and demons, so does Christianity exist in this world? The book uses our modern week and the Gregorian calendar--did they have a fantasy equivalent of the Roman empire? No aspect of this book's world has had an ounce of thought put into it.
The big reveal at the end of the book is that the venin and wyverns of folklore (secret folklore that only Violet knew about!) are real, and exist beyond the borders of the country, but their existence is concealed by the government and the rebellion was fought because the rebels wanted to help the people being persecuted by the wyverns.
So, uh...why does the country want to conceal the existence of the wyverns and venin?
They have a presumably very solid alliance with the dragons, since other than the dragons of the rebel kids and Violet's dragons, none of them seem to care about the wyverns or venin as long as they get to live behind the human's wards. The gryphons don't pose much of a threat. Like, what do they gain from pretending the gryphons are their enemies and the wyverns/venins don't exist?
I don't know what Yarros's experience reading/writing fantasy is, but overall this feels like a book written by someone who doesn't read much of it, and what they do read is probably YA. (I've seen a lot of comparisons to Maas and Burdago's work, but I'm not familiar.) It brings nothing new to the table at all, and the construction of the setting is so slapdash.

The Characters

Violet Sorrengail.
Violet is the only character that really matters. Every other character only exists in relation to her or to act as cheap cannon fodder, since Yarros loves to kill off random named characters as soon as they're introduced.
And she is...so underveloped. Bizarrely underdeveloped.
Here's what we know about Violet. She's twenty and suffers from EDS (not named in the book, but confirmed via word of god.) She's physically weaker than the others and more prone to injury, and has chronic pain. She doesn't like to kill. She studied her whole life to be a scribe, but then became a rider. Supposedly, she is intelligent and compassionate.
But...she's not. Like, she's just not.
Okay, here's a rule of thumb: if your character is meant to be very smart, they need to be as smart as the audience. What I mean is that if I and Violet have the same information--and we do, because this novel is in 1st person POV--and I am always ahead of Violet, it is impossible to believe she is smart. If I solve a problem and Violet solves it three chapters later, it doesn't matter how many characters tell Violet she's the smartest best girl ever. The reader can't believe it.
Violet is supposedly academically gifted, but this book spends very little time in class, so we don't get to see that. More than that, though, I think the essential problem is that Violet is incurious. She's reactive. Whenever a crumb of plot drops into Violet's lap, she's like "Hmm. That's interesting." And then she does...nothing.
The briefings the cadets are getting are incomplete? Huh, that's weird. Violet asks Mira about it, once. That's it. Despite being a former scribe, she doesn't try to investigate. Despite her mom being a general, she doesn't try to use her position or connections to find out. Violet repeatedly learns that the fables her dad told her as a child have some greater significance. HER DAD LEAVES HER A LETTER TO THIS EFFECT. Yet when she actually is forced to confront this truth, it takes her pages and pages to put it together. I put it together like 30 chapters ago, Violet! Please keep up!
Let's talk for a minute about backstory. In real life, people are highly influenced by their environment. They absorb values and ideas from their culture, from school, from their family and friends. Violet is a military brat who has lived at the war college for six years. She intended to become a scribe, so it's not like she was planning to become a civilian. Why is she against killing?
No, seriously. Why is she against killing? Because Violet isn't critical of the war itself. Despite her college being a death trap, she is not critical of the system itself. She's proud of her rider relations. She's not upset when Xylon kills her attackers. And despite multiple opportunities to quit, she decides to pursue dragon riding training and bond with a dragon--she is choosing to become a soldier.
To be blunt, Violet's distaste for killing feels less like a moral stance and more like pure squeamishness. And that's not inherently a bad thing to give your character, but it does make the book's insistence that she's kind ring a little hollow. Sure, Violet will defend baby dragons. She'll lend a friend a shoe. She feels bad when people are bullied or killed right in front of her. But does Violet ever try to do anything substantive about these problems? Does she try to convince other people not to kill, too, to change the culture of the college? Does she protest the treatment of the rebel kids in any meaningful way? Nah. Violet never does anything until the problem is right in front of her and it's blocking her way.
Okay, let's talk about side characters. There are only a few that matter. Actually, the only really developed one is Liam, Violet's bodyguard/friend, who dies for her in what is the only remotely meaningful death scene in the book. No other character in this book has a arc, a subplot, or anything to do besides prop Violet up or push her down.
We find out later that Xylon is up to all kinds of things, but we find that out in the last couple chapters and all he does in the book on page is pretend badly to be Violet's enemy and become her lover. I do think Xylon is kind of interesting, but it's more by accident. Yarros wants him to be a kind of generic bad boy so she can have her enemies-to-lovers thing, but Xylon's never a convincing enemy, so he ends up almost sympathetic because Violet's so mean to him.
There's another problem with the characterization in this book overall. Yarros loves to retcon character traits.
By this I mean that she'll drop a significant character moment in late in a character's arc, something that really should have been mentioned earlier and developed, and act like it retroactively applies. The most obvious example is Dain, who suddenly is derided as being too rigid about the rules about halfway through the book, despite his repeated attempts to defy General Sorrengail by smuggling Violet to safety. Dain is also found to be using his retrocognition to read Violet's memories and use them for evil. Dain is clearly just given this trait suddenly because it's plot convenient and because he has to be a bad guy so that Violet can reject him and Yarros can stop pretending this book contains a love triangle.
Violet is also a big offender. Her motivations are rarely explored in any depth and when they are, it's late enough in the book that it rings hollow. For example, after Violet manifests her lightning ability and then kills for the first time, she thinks that she secretly wanted to have her brother's ability, mending, as proof that she wasn't a bad person deep down, since the signet abilities are thought to be representative of a person's true nature. But there was no mention of that in the preceding chapters, where Violet was constantly worrying about whether she'd manifest a power, or before that at any point. At one point we get a flashback where Violet's dad tells her her path is different from her sister and mother, who are riders--but why are we getting this after Violet's already a rider? We needed this motivation back when she was making the decision to actually do it!
Okay. Let's talk about the romance.
Let's start with the enemies-to-lovers trope. It's a good set up: Xylon's dad killed Violet's brother, Violet's mom killed his dad. They have good reasons to hate each other. But Yarros never utilizes this correctly. First, Xylon is obviously not a threat right from the start, so the enemies part is one-sided. Second, Violet is extremely suspicious and quite caustic towards Xylon, but she rarely if ever actually thinks or talks about her brother's death or her blaming Xylon for it. Instead it's all "Oh, he's trying to kill me!". So Violet looks both oblivious and angry for no reason.
As I said up top--there's a few chapters where the romance becomes good. But these chapters aren't built on anything, because no romance was really happening prior to them, and they're followed by the dumbest third act relationship conflict I have ever had to read. And to be honest, they feel a little overstuffed--Violet's speeches to Xylon feel like they're directed at the reader as much as they are at him, like we need to be convinced she's in love with him, too.
I'm gonna add a final criticism: Violet talks constantly about how hot Xylon is. And that's...it. If she appreciates any of his personality traits, we don't get to hear about it much. In contrast, Xylon constantly helps Violet out, respects her autonomy, and during his POV chapter at the end, can monologue decently about all the things about her he loves. And some of them are intangible!
All right, let's dig into the third act break up.
Violet goes with Xylon and some other rebel kids to an outpost beyond the wards as part of the final exercise of first year, the War Games. While they're traveling, they stop to rest and are intercepted by some gryphon riders, and Violet finds out that Xylon and the others have been secretly funneling the gryphon riders the magic weapons needed to kill venin this whole time.
She is furious that Xylon lied to her, and furthermore she's furious that he so easily lied to her even though she was vulnerable to him. This is fully stupid for a number of reasons.
One: She and Xylon have been together for like...weeks? Months? This information could get Xylon executed. It's not unreasonable at all for him to hold back some secrets, considering his position. Two: this secret endangers the other rebellion kids, too. We know some of them are still too young for the war college, and we know Xylon is responsible for all of them and has been secretly trying to make sure they all survive training. Three: Violet's friend Dain can read mind through face-touching and constantly touches her face, and guess what? We find out soon after this that he did, in fact, use his powers to figure out Xylon was up to no good, because Violet wormed some info out of him, and he did in fact use these powers to try to get them all killed!
So actually, not telling Violet is completely sensible! If Xylon had refused to tell Violet where he was a few chapters ago, the climax of this book would not have happened. She literally can't be trusted.
Eventually Violet realizes they're not all fucking with her and ends up fighting the venin, but even afterward, when Xylon has saved her life and apologized, she's like. I can never trust you again. Which is just patently absurd, and Xylon's easy acceptance of this view of events makes them both look like idiots.