Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Fourth Wing

I LOVE THIS VERISON IT MAKES THE CHARACTERS SO MUCH BETTER and emphasises their tone and also I LOVE the background noises and music, really helps with the visualisation :D Really making me hate certain characters and fall in love with others even more!!! I honestly don't really like the voice actor for Tairn, but he's still a good VA, just not giving Tairn :( I LOVE Xaden's voice actor!! He's really giving me the feeels :) I'm still getting used to the VA for Violet because I'm used to Rebecca Soler lol, and I love her, but the VA for Violet here is good too, sounds younger. ALSO WHY DID IT END THERE I WAS EXPECTING ANOTHER SCENE FROM THE REVIEWS >:(

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mercerhanau's review

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adventurous dark emotional lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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sjexley's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I need to preface this by saying that I read this for book club, but didn't get to finish the last 150pgs before we met. So I Googled the ending (!!) and subsequently ruined the book for myself. I did finish it later, and still had such an emotional reaction to it. This book was great! I did struggle through some of it but the spice was good, the characters were good and the twists! SO good. I am enjoying these baby steps into fantasy and cannot believe I read a book with a MAP. Happy to report that the hype is real for this one.

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zydecovivo's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

If you get fed any social media posts about books, you have probably heard about Fourth Wing. Admittedly, I went into reading this book thinking “Everyone is saying it’s a game changer, so it must be amazing” and I think that is the wrong way to start this, or any, book.

I’d like to start by saying it is good. If you like romantasy (fantasy+romance) with a touch of dystopia, you’ll have a great time reading Fourth Wing. The main character is also explicitly disabled and it is intertwined with her journey of self-discovery, as well as challenging the status quo of the society she is in. Based on the descriptions, I think she has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. I also love the dragons. They are characters in their own right, not just tools to be used. However, the entire time I was reading, I couldn’t help but tell myself “This is just Divergent with dragons.” The general plot is almost identical. Everything was predictable because of this and the only things that I didn’t predict were because something we were told was “impossible” was, in fact, possible for our super special main character. This occurs multiple times. I don’t even think it’s an unreliable narrator at that point. I think it’s an unreliable universe. The upper hand that Fourth Wing has over Divergent is that this fantasy setting allows for more creativity (and covering up for narrative mistakes). Additionally, I did not enjoy most of the main character’s “love life”. This is enemies-to-lovers, so much so that it is almost anti-friends-to-lovers. I don’t care about either trope, but the blatant comparisons get old. I also felt that the main character thinks about “spice” a lot more than I care for, especially considering the actual spice level of the book. There may be people who want to see this since women’s sexuality is largely swept aside in many stories. But this was not it for me.

Overall, this is a decent adult romantasy book and probably a good introduction to the genre for people who prefer epic fantasy stories. I don’t feel like I wasted my time reading it. But it is not groundbreaking in the slightest and I’m not sure if I will continue the series.

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venlareads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros

Not bad. Not bad at all. This was an action filled medium to fast-paced fantasy novel, based around a battle college called Basgiath. In a world where there are four quadrants (slightly reminiscent of Harry Potter): healers, scribes, infantry, and riders, the main character, Violet, is definitely a scribe. She could never have the strength to battle, ride a dragon, or kill somebody. Until her mother, who just so happens to be General Sorrengail, decides she's a rider. So off she goes to war college. Now, I thought initially that the main character was naive and annoying, but she did eventually grow on me and had strong character development.
I made notes on my first impressions, and I pointed out that it was irritating to have so many expletives in one sentence. This book really had the F-word twice a sentence at times, which made it quite useless and repetitive, to say the least.

What I enjoyed by far the most was the dialogue between mythical creatures. In this case, dragons were a central part of the story, and they really had an attitude which was entertaining to read. Violet's dragon really humbled her at times and made her think.

In conclusion, I will be delving further into the fantasy genre after this. I enjoyed the action and adventure this book had to offer and although it took me a long while to read (started in February) it was worth my time just the same.
rating: 4,25 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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chinomi's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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eleek0609's review

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adventurous challenging emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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unsuccessfulbookclub's review

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adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book was fine, but I found it very derivative - like I had read all of it some place before. It’s basically like Top Gun plus Hunger Games plus A Court of Thorns and Roses. If you like the dragons, I cannot recommend Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series enough - it’s basically the same dragon-magic system but the world makes more sense.

Basgiath has to be the world’s worst military school - it seems like it exists simply to kill off its cadets which seems counterproductive? Call me crazy but there are stakes higher and fates worse than death. In a book written in first person POV you know from the jump that the narrator isn’t dying soooooo the tension I wanted in the first part of the book simply wasn’t there.

In the year of our lord 2024, I simply cannot get into a hero named Xaden, even though I liked him just fine in terms of his actual actions/personality. Tairn was the best character in a SEA of named characters who were interchangeable and forgettable. Violet is very much a 20 year old dystopian fantasy heroine.

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