Book Review: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Rating: 4 stars of 5

I have a video in which I speak more about what I thought of this book here.

I did not expect to like this book as much as I did. I first came across Fourth Wing when I was browsing my library’s online catalog and was intrigued when I realized over 600 people were waiting to read it through my library branch. This is unusual in my area. Normally, a new release that is expected to do pretty well might have 30 to 50 people on the wait-list; sometimes less, sometimes as many as 100 to 200. I had never seen this many people in line for a book there, and it made me wonder why it was so popular. This was several months after its release day.

I bought the book and when it arrived, immediately opened it up to start reading. When I saw the content warning in the front, I thought, “This might not be the book for me, but I’m still curious enough about it to give it a try.” After reading the first few pages, I decided to return the book.

A month or so later, it came across my page as I was browsing the library catalog again and this time, I saw that over 700 people were waiting to read it. My curiosity would not be satisfied until I had read it for myself, so I purchased a copy, as well as a copy of Iron Flame, from Target when I saw a couple of copies in good condition in store.

I have to admit that I might be a bit of a book snob. I’m not on TikTok and I tend to think a lot of the books that are known for being popular on there are just…not that great. Thus, I was expecting to not like this very much, and to be fair, it does have a lot of things I don’t like in books in it. Violence and strong language are not my thing and I usually don’t much enjoy books that contain them.

But…I did enjoy reading this book! It was my first foray into romantasy and I was pleasantly surprised by how the book held my interest and kept me turning pages. When I set the book down to do other things, I was thinking about getting back to the story, and it kept me up reading until 2am a couple of times.

I have heard some readers criticize this book for being quite derivative and unoriginal, which I do think is an important criticism. However, as someone who has not read the books mentioned as precursors to the ideas / elements found in this one, I found Fourth Wing to be so entertaining and different from anything I had ever read.

I never would have thought I would like a book that has dragons in it, but the dragons in this book were my favorite characters. I ended up diving down a rabbit hole researching other books with telepathic dragons in them and came home from the bookstore soon after finishing it with a stack of other dragon-boasting series to try.

Was this the best book I have ever read? Certainly not, and it did contain content on which I am not usually keen. But it was a gripping, thrilling read, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

I’ve chosen to give it a 4-star rating but I did toy with 3.5 stars after the complete cliffhanger left me feeling thoroughly unsatisfied. After letting it sit for a few weeks, I’ve decided to go ahead with 4 stars because I really did enjoy a lot of the book before reaching the ending.

If you’re thinking of purchasing a hard copy for yourself, I recommend purchasing in person rather than online, as this book and its sequel are both known for having multiple print quality issues.

(Note: This book contains spice. I would not recommend this series for children.)

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