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Fourth Wing: Fixes
Here is a short list of changes I think could make Fourth Wing better.
Some themes, before I list specific ideas:
- Violet desperately needs something to do. She needs internal drive.
- The romance is underdeveloped, in part because Yarros sets up enemies-to-lovers and then never does anything with it.
1. Reverse Violet's position at the start of the book.
This is a pretty simple fix, and one I've seen proposed by others. Violet shouldn't be a scribe-to-be forced to join the riders. Instead, she should want to join the riders and be forced to join the scribes, and the book should start with her finally triumphing and being able to enter the rider quadrant.
Right now, Fourth Wing already wants you to think Violet wants to be a rider. But instead of just straightforwardly making that her motivation, the book backfills this as a secret desire via a few lines of flashback late in the book. But there is no reason for this to be a secret! It weakens the book considerably that Violet is forced to become a rider. It strips her of agency and drags down the story. It makes her refusal to go to the scribe quadrant confusing and irrational.
This also solves the problem of Dain being made retroactively evil halfway through the book--if Violet has always wanted to be a rider, and her childhood friend keeps trying to stop her, he's now an antagonist! You can even work in the rule-abiding thing by having him use the rules against her. Maybe there are physical milestones she has to meet, or ableist requirements for fitness in the Codex, or something like that.
There are two ways to handle Violet's mother, I think. One is to just swap her motivation as well; she's against Violet going to the rider quadrant, and the book opens Violet having secretly trained and passed the exam, or gainsayed her in some way. But I think there's actually a more interesting way to approach it. We know from late book revelations that Violet's father was subversive in some way. He knew about the venin, to the point he had an illegal book about them, and he encouraged Violet to become a scribe and left her a secret letter pointing to the truth.
And he's dead, and his death coincided in canon with the start of General Sorrengail's insistence that Violet join the riders. Now, I imagine we'll find out in a later book that he was killed deliberately and Yarros will attempt to explain why Violet's mom made her join the riders, but hear me out.
Maybe Violet's mother always supported her joining the riders. But her father didn't--and as long as he was alive, he kept Violet from becoming a rider. Maybe he taught her a horror of killing so she wouldn't go, maybe he just pushed her to become a scribe, who knows. But then he dies. Violet herself says that her father died after a second heart attack, and the first one was triggered by her brother's death. Maybe her father's death triggers a need for vengeance in her, and she decides to join the riders because of that!
2. Okay, you really want Violet to have been forced to join the Riders? Here's an alternative reason then.
We know Violet's dad was knowledgeable about the real cause of the rebellion and the venin, right? And he died recently? Maybe it wasn't a heart attack. Maybe it was execution for treason. And what happens to the children of traitors in Navarre?
They're conscripted into the riders.
Now Violet's mom has a clear reason to force her to go. The family has to demonstrate loyalty, or they'll be killed. If Violet doesn't know this, that's something for her to discover--something for her to actively do during the book--and if she knows, that's a coherent motivation for her to stay in the riders and not try to escape to the scribes.
Also, if Violet and Xylon are both conscripts and children of traitors, that is something for them to bond over that is stronger than anything currently in the book.
This actually makes Violet's total incuriosity about everything suspicious she discovers more understandable. She would be highly incentivized to keep her head down and act the part of a loyal citizen.
3. The enemies part of enemies to lovers needs to be either way stronger or to go away.
Right now the book sets up a decent reason for mutual hate, and then basically discards it. It hardly ever comes up, in part because Xylon is so obviously a non-threat.
Make him a threat! Make them both threats! They should be thinking about their dead loved ones, throwing that information at each other. Violet shouldn't be cowering in fear of Xylon. They should actively be working against each other, and then you can have Violet discover something actually damning and agonize whether to turn him in. Then her decision to not do that carries some actual weight, and tells us something about her moral character, and serves as decent romance set up.
Either they need to genuinely be antagonistic over all the great reasons Yarros sets up for them, or that stuff needs to go away so they can start out as reluctant allies.
4. The dragon bonding should be the first thing the riders do, not something they work up to.
Here's an idea. Right now we spend a significant portion of the book forced to endure what is essentially a boring and stupid extended training montage. Cut out the parapet, the Gauntlet, the fucking catwalking.
Day one of dragon riding school: either you're chosen by a dragon. Or you aren't. The chosen get to enter the rider's quadrant; the unbonded are shuttled elsewhere. Maybe there's an officer's school that's parallel to the riders. Maybe they go to the infantry or whatever. First off, this eliminates all the idiotic murder in this book--right now, the military is wasting an enormous amount of resources on a class that they'll lose 75% of prior to graduation from the first year. That's absurd! If the military can't choose who the dragons bond, only the possible candidates, a way better system is to simply gather every candidate that passes the initial exam and parade them at once. Now you have a bunch of qualified people and conscripts who you can funnel elsewhere as needed, and you have your full complement of dragon riders, who you can devote time to turning into a cohesive and elite fighting force immediately. No need to have them kill each other, no need to waste time having unbonded riders repeat their first year of training.
This also solves a problem I don't think I mentioned in my review: there's barely any human-dragon scenes in this book. Big T and Little A are just plot devices that talk. If Violet has dragons from day one, that's way more time with the dragons we get to spend as readers. You can even keep the mates thing in, though I wouldn't.
5. On the subject of all the murder.
You want it to be a death college? Then you should go all in.
Right now the logic of Yarros's world falls apart. The dragon riders are made up of the children of elites and lots of people volunteer, and they're the best of the best, but there are also conscripts and the army is hurting for money. The cadets can kill each other and frequently die, all under the basis that they're weeding out the weak, but they also admit they have no control over the actual bonding process. It's an out of place element that weakens the book enormously.
But let's run with it. Most of the dragon riders die in the first year? Then everyone signing up should be fully aware of that and should have a good reason to take the risk. The riders should be getting enormous perks, whether that's for them or their families, whether financial, magical, etc. There are options. Maybe all riders are volunteers, but there are very few of them because no one wants to risk their lives. Maybe there are quotas that have to be hit and the rich can use the poor to opt out of having to send their own children. This even works with Violet's backstory--her mother has the power to opt out her disabled daughter, but refuses out of pride. Or maybe everyone is a conscript and it's dragon riding or some terrible punishment.
This would require a significant change to the dragons, but frankly they have such thin relationships with their riders and such a nonsensical alliance with humans in canon. You could make them nonsentient, which would give a good reason for the considerable danger, or you can lean into it and make them genuinely terrible. Maybe the sacrifice of a unit of humans who act as living weapons for them is the price of their alliance.
Some themes, before I list specific ideas:
- Violet desperately needs something to do. She needs internal drive.
- The romance is underdeveloped, in part because Yarros sets up enemies-to-lovers and then never does anything with it.
1. Reverse Violet's position at the start of the book.
This is a pretty simple fix, and one I've seen proposed by others. Violet shouldn't be a scribe-to-be forced to join the riders. Instead, she should want to join the riders and be forced to join the scribes, and the book should start with her finally triumphing and being able to enter the rider quadrant.
Right now, Fourth Wing already wants you to think Violet wants to be a rider. But instead of just straightforwardly making that her motivation, the book backfills this as a secret desire via a few lines of flashback late in the book. But there is no reason for this to be a secret! It weakens the book considerably that Violet is forced to become a rider. It strips her of agency and drags down the story. It makes her refusal to go to the scribe quadrant confusing and irrational.
This also solves the problem of Dain being made retroactively evil halfway through the book--if Violet has always wanted to be a rider, and her childhood friend keeps trying to stop her, he's now an antagonist! You can even work in the rule-abiding thing by having him use the rules against her. Maybe there are physical milestones she has to meet, or ableist requirements for fitness in the Codex, or something like that.
There are two ways to handle Violet's mother, I think. One is to just swap her motivation as well; she's against Violet going to the rider quadrant, and the book opens Violet having secretly trained and passed the exam, or gainsayed her in some way. But I think there's actually a more interesting way to approach it. We know from late book revelations that Violet's father was subversive in some way. He knew about the venin, to the point he had an illegal book about them, and he encouraged Violet to become a scribe and left her a secret letter pointing to the truth.
And he's dead, and his death coincided in canon with the start of General Sorrengail's insistence that Violet join the riders. Now, I imagine we'll find out in a later book that he was killed deliberately and Yarros will attempt to explain why Violet's mom made her join the riders, but hear me out.
Maybe Violet's mother always supported her joining the riders. But her father didn't--and as long as he was alive, he kept Violet from becoming a rider. Maybe he taught her a horror of killing so she wouldn't go, maybe he just pushed her to become a scribe, who knows. But then he dies. Violet herself says that her father died after a second heart attack, and the first one was triggered by her brother's death. Maybe her father's death triggers a need for vengeance in her, and she decides to join the riders because of that!
2. Okay, you really want Violet to have been forced to join the Riders? Here's an alternative reason then.
We know Violet's dad was knowledgeable about the real cause of the rebellion and the venin, right? And he died recently? Maybe it wasn't a heart attack. Maybe it was execution for treason. And what happens to the children of traitors in Navarre?
They're conscripted into the riders.
Now Violet's mom has a clear reason to force her to go. The family has to demonstrate loyalty, or they'll be killed. If Violet doesn't know this, that's something for her to discover--something for her to actively do during the book--and if she knows, that's a coherent motivation for her to stay in the riders and not try to escape to the scribes.
Also, if Violet and Xylon are both conscripts and children of traitors, that is something for them to bond over that is stronger than anything currently in the book.
This actually makes Violet's total incuriosity about everything suspicious she discovers more understandable. She would be highly incentivized to keep her head down and act the part of a loyal citizen.
3. The enemies part of enemies to lovers needs to be either way stronger or to go away.
Right now the book sets up a decent reason for mutual hate, and then basically discards it. It hardly ever comes up, in part because Xylon is so obviously a non-threat.
Make him a threat! Make them both threats! They should be thinking about their dead loved ones, throwing that information at each other. Violet shouldn't be cowering in fear of Xylon. They should actively be working against each other, and then you can have Violet discover something actually damning and agonize whether to turn him in. Then her decision to not do that carries some actual weight, and tells us something about her moral character, and serves as decent romance set up.
Either they need to genuinely be antagonistic over all the great reasons Yarros sets up for them, or that stuff needs to go away so they can start out as reluctant allies.
4. The dragon bonding should be the first thing the riders do, not something they work up to.
Here's an idea. Right now we spend a significant portion of the book forced to endure what is essentially a boring and stupid extended training montage. Cut out the parapet, the Gauntlet, the fucking catwalking.
Day one of dragon riding school: either you're chosen by a dragon. Or you aren't. The chosen get to enter the rider's quadrant; the unbonded are shuttled elsewhere. Maybe there's an officer's school that's parallel to the riders. Maybe they go to the infantry or whatever. First off, this eliminates all the idiotic murder in this book--right now, the military is wasting an enormous amount of resources on a class that they'll lose 75% of prior to graduation from the first year. That's absurd! If the military can't choose who the dragons bond, only the possible candidates, a way better system is to simply gather every candidate that passes the initial exam and parade them at once. Now you have a bunch of qualified people and conscripts who you can funnel elsewhere as needed, and you have your full complement of dragon riders, who you can devote time to turning into a cohesive and elite fighting force immediately. No need to have them kill each other, no need to waste time having unbonded riders repeat their first year of training.
This also solves a problem I don't think I mentioned in my review: there's barely any human-dragon scenes in this book. Big T and Little A are just plot devices that talk. If Violet has dragons from day one, that's way more time with the dragons we get to spend as readers. You can even keep the mates thing in, though I wouldn't.
5. On the subject of all the murder.
You want it to be a death college? Then you should go all in.
Right now the logic of Yarros's world falls apart. The dragon riders are made up of the children of elites and lots of people volunteer, and they're the best of the best, but there are also conscripts and the army is hurting for money. The cadets can kill each other and frequently die, all under the basis that they're weeding out the weak, but they also admit they have no control over the actual bonding process. It's an out of place element that weakens the book enormously.
But let's run with it. Most of the dragon riders die in the first year? Then everyone signing up should be fully aware of that and should have a good reason to take the risk. The riders should be getting enormous perks, whether that's for them or their families, whether financial, magical, etc. There are options. Maybe all riders are volunteers, but there are very few of them because no one wants to risk their lives. Maybe there are quotas that have to be hit and the rich can use the poor to opt out of having to send their own children. This even works with Violet's backstory--her mother has the power to opt out her disabled daughter, but refuses out of pride. Or maybe everyone is a conscript and it's dragon riding or some terrible punishment.
This would require a significant change to the dragons, but frankly they have such thin relationships with their riders and such a nonsensical alliance with humans in canon. You could make them nonsentient, which would give a good reason for the considerable danger, or you can lean into it and make them genuinely terrible. Maybe the sacrifice of a unit of humans who act as living weapons for them is the price of their alliance.