Fourth Wing (Chapter 15 & Chapter 16)

STATS

Title: Fourth Wing

Series: The Empyrean (Book 1)

Author(s): Rebecca Yarros

Genre: Fantasy (Epic)

First Printing: 2023

Publisher: Red Tower Books

Rating: 2/10

SPOILER WARNING

Heavy spoilers will be provided for the entire story up through the end of the content covered in this part. Mild spoilers for elements later in the story may be provided, but I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers from later in the book will be confined to clearly labelled sections.

STORY

Tairn catches Violet after she falls off his back, rather than letting her fall to her death (which we are shown that other dragons allow). He uses his magic to secure her to his back and flies her to the flight training field, where all of the riders and dragons who have completed Threshing have assembled. During the flight, Violet asks Tairn why he chose her, especially given her physical weakness. He tells her that it is because she fought to protect the golden feathertail. He values the courage that she demonstrates above her physical ability.

Upon reaching the flight field, Tairn helps Violet to dismount. The golden feathertail lands with them. Violet walks over to the rider responsible for recording the selections of dragons and riders. When Violet gives Tairn's name, however, the golden feathertail instructs her to also give the name of Andarnaurram, or Andarna.

That's right. Violet has been selected by two dragons.

This causes a great deal of consternation among both the human rider leadership and the dragons. Tairn and Andrana fly off with the other dragons, assembling so that something called the Empyrean can render judgment on the decision. Left behind on the training field, Violet is pulled aside by Dain, who urges her to reject Tairn's selection and stick was Andarna. His reason for this is that Tairn is the mate of Xaden's dragon, and since mated dragons can't be separated, Violet would be forced to deploy to wherever Xaden is and to make herself vulnerable to Xaden's whims.

At this point, Xaden appears. Dain accuses him of engineering Violet's selection by Tairn. Xaden retorts by turning Violet against Xaden, forcing Dain to admit that he wouldn't have broken the rules of Threshing, the way Xaden did, to save Violet's life. Xaden flexes his authority to order Dain to leave him alone with Violet. He then warns Violet that their fates are entwined: if Violet dies, Tairn could die, which could kill Tairn's mate, and thus kill Xaden. He warns Violet that unbonded cadets will spend the remainder of the year trying to kill her and claim Tairn for themselves.

The dragons return. Their verdict is that both Tairn and Andarna can keep Violet. The riders finally bond properly with their dragons, receiving their relic marks in a formal ceremony. After that, Dain kisses Violet, and she realizes that she is no longer interested in him.

PLOT

These chapters could have been a fantastic ending for the book. Despite all of the flaws introduced to Violet’s characterization via the worldbuilding, there is a narrative and a thematic follow-through here. Violet had previously overcome every challenge necessary to become a rider by cheating: either by overtly violating the rules or the governing ethos of the Quadrant, or else by sabotaging her fellow unbonded cadets to make herself seem more capable than she actually is. Her decision to face a threat head-on, without the benefit of those tricks, shows that she may indeed be capable of more. To be rewarded by being chosen by a dragon pays off her arc. The fact that she is chosen by two dragons enhances that payoff. Violet’s decision to engage with challenges directly is being recognized and celebrated both by the one she saved and by someone who should otherwise be her harshest critic.

What’s more, this serves as a crucial milestone within the romance subplot. Violet has completed her transformation into a rider. She is no longer compatible with the love interest who represents the person she used to be.

Here’s the thing …

These chapters would have made for a fantastic ENDING. This praise is contingent on the book ending here, allowing the story to reset for new conflicts. As it is, we aren’t even at the midpoint. Yarros is going to cram Violet’s entire academic year into this book. It’s not going to go well.

It’s not that there aren’t plot threads and conflicts that can still be explored. Jack has not been dealt with as an antagonist. One vertex has been knocked off the love triangle, but Violet has not gotten together with Xaden. Violet still has to develop and learn about her signet powers. Also, Xaden and the other rebel children represent something of a wild card faction that simultaneously hate Violet and yet are indebted to her for protecting their secret meetings. All of this presented fertile ground for continuing the series.

The book that started back in Chapter 1, though, is effectively over. Everything thus far as built towards Violet bonding with a dragon. All of the focus and competition has been upon acquiring a dragon. Dain’s efforts to help her escape the Quadrant had Threshing as the deadline, both from the explicit reason that he feared she’d be hunted down and killed and for the implicit reason that she wouldn’t be able to leave the Quadrant at all if she did survive and bond (indicated by the fact that she couldn’t be dragged out of the Scribes Quadrant if she was sworn in before her mother learned of the transfer). Everything has been geared towards getting us to this point, and now that we’ve arrived, the book is out of gas.

What’s somewhat funny about this is that I can mathematically prove that the book should have ended here. Yarros handed us the numbers of a silver platter.

The Death Toll is Catastrophic

In Chapter 3, we get this from Violet via the narrative:

Statistics say about a quarter of us will live to graduate, give or take a few on any year.

Xaden then adds this as part of his motivational speech.

“Roughly half of you will be dead by this time next summer… A third of you again the year after that, and the same your last year.”

Xaden’s estimate comes out to a 22% survival rate after three years, thereby corroborating what Violet told us. We can therefore assume that his estimate of a 50% fatality rate within the first year is reliable.

Prior to the start of the speeches, 301 cadets had survived the Parapet. Three get incinerated during Xaden’s speech, so that’s 298 cadets at the start of the year. Which means that, by the end of the year, roughly 149 cadets will be left, give or take “a few”. Not a few percent, but a few individuals. Furthermore, since each academic year starts sometime in mid-July and ends in early July of the following year (as implied by the multiple references to the month that are spread throughout this book), we can reasonably assume that the death toll will be spread across the year, though the deaths will undoubtedly be clustered around certain pivotal events.

At the start of Chapter 11 - which seems to begin in mid-September - we get this:

“What are we down to?” Tynan asks. “Hundred and eighty?”

“Hundred and seventy-one,” Dain answers.

171 cadets is about 57% of the starting total, or 43% dead. Already, we are nearly at the expected death toll for the entire year. It’s been just two months.

At this rate, everyone will be dead if the death rate doesn’t flatter out. This sends the message that Threshing - which, according to Chapter 13, is always on October 1st - will mark a sharp decline in fatalities. This makes quite a bit of sense in light of the worldbuilding, as the death school is meant to cull the pool of cadets, and most of the surviving cadets should have their dragons after Threshing. In other words, Yarros is all but shouting at us that Threshing will be a deadly finale that ends the story for the entire academic year, and that there will be no Quadrant-related threats after that point.

Then we get to Threshing. Early in Chapter 13, we are given this:

“Remember to listen here,” Professor Kaori says from in front of the 147 of us here, tapping his chest.

We are down to 49% of the cadets we’ve started with. “Roughly half” of them are dead now. This is clearly the checkpoint that Yarros told us to watch for. Unless something has gone catastrophically wrong, the deaths during Threshing should be the last ones for the year.

And yet Chapter 16 tries to perpetuate the murder school element. We are told that the 41 unbonded cadets will be gunning for Violet so as to take her dragons from her. While I’ve referenced this throughout the review, this is actually the first time that the book has introduced the concept.

Yarros put all this effort into ratcheting up the tension with the death toll and gave us clear milestones to work with, only to turn around and tell us that the next nine months of the academic year are supposed to be just as dangerous as the bloodbath that was the first two and a half. I’m already tired of using this phrase, yet it needs to be said: she keeps trying to have her cake and eat it. Unless Yarros is mathematically illiterate, she must have realized that she was telling the audience that Threshing would be the finale. Yet now, after culling the promised number of cadets, she is turning around and telling us that, no, the story is still going, and we should totally fear for Violet’s life. The deaths are apparently going to keep on rolling it.

This could have been redeemed if the book acknowledged that this death tool was anomalous, but we don’t get that. The closest thing we get in Chapter 17. There’s a throwaway line that states that the number of 1st-years to bond is the Quadrant’s “smallest class to date”. However, given that the number of cadets that can bond is dictated by the number of available dragons, and that the small number of dragons willing to bond had previously been called out, this isn’t really acknowledging the overwhelming death toll. Chapter 17 also states that Violet’s class came out of Threshing with 92 bonded cadets. With the 41 unbonded, that’s 45% of the starting class. We are already more than “a few” cadets off from the norm, yet no one can be bothered to do so much as accuse these 1st-years of being a weak batch of cadets.

Why It Matters

Every story needs to end at some point. Whether it is a book or a series, there comes a point where the writer needs to wrap things up and start something new, even if that something new is a direct sequel. Stretching the story beyond the foundation established for it will cause it to buckle.

As we’ll see in coming chapters, Yarros did not have a structured plan for her plot after this point. The majority of the next 23 chapters will consist of her throwing random things at the wall and not even bothering to see if they stick. Nearly everything after this point will be forgettable padding to stretch out the book until the climax.

If I were to be charitable, I'd say that Yarros may have started with book with just the romance subplot. Perhaps she only planned the main plot up through the Threshing, with Violet choosing between Xaden and Dain there. Then, as things changed over the drafting process, the progression of this subplot changed such that Dain was removed from the love triangle by Threshing but that Xaden had not been chosen. She therefore needed to pack in filler until she could get Violet and Xaden together. Much like the erotica subplot in Notorious Sorcerer, this might not have been an issue if the subplot was the main focus, but because she was writing a story in a very different genre, the result is a mess.

I think what Yarros should have ended the book after Chapter 16. Let Violet have her victory. Xaden could then warn her about the unbonded cadets (perhaps acknowledging that this is happening despite a record death toll, thereby properly addressing the statistical blip). This would be a hook for the sequel. The events of the later chapters could then be structured into a new narrative, which would serve as a framework in which Violet and Xaden could get together.

CHARACTER

Violet (In Isolation)

This is the last time I will be analyzing Violet separate from the worldbuilding, as her writing in the back half of this book is significantly weaker than in the front. Let’s enjoy the good while we can.

What an arc.

I’ve compared Violet to the animated version of Mulan, and I am happy to do so again. Much like Mulan, Violet was thrust into a situation where her brains alone are not enough to dominate. She had to confront an overwhelming physical threat. With quick thinking (and help from a dragon), she succeeded. Her courage was then rewarded.

I also think that she has reached a satisfying end to her relationship with Dain. Yarros established that her trajectory led away from him. Now, with this final decision made, she is beyond his reach. It’s sad for anyone who was shipping her with Dain, but it’s the nature progression of the narrative.

… that said, there is one bit that did bother me. It’s a nitpick, but it applies regardless of the worldbuilding. Namely, I’m speaking of the very end of Chapter 16, where Violet reacts to Dain’s kiss.

The thrill is gone in less than a heartbeat. There’s no heat. No energy. No shape slice of lust. Disappointment sours the moment.

“No sharp slice of lust”? Seriously?

I’m not against this in principle. How much of “romantic love” is actually lust, and how that lust manipulates our perception of other people, is a deep rabbit hole that escapes the scope of this review. However, there’s a reason that people always fall back to, “I love this person,” or use euphemisms like “heat” rather than, “I lust after this person,” when asked to defend their romantic attachments. Openly declaring devotion to lust just sounds crass.

Epic Fantasy, even at its grittiest, understands this. Unambiguous heroes typically don’t evaluate their romantic partners on the basis of lust. Villains, or gritty anti-heroes, do.

Violet is not a gritty anti-hero. We’re supposed to think she’s the unambiguous hero. This line is therefore rather jarring. It makes it seem like sex is all that she truly cares about. That doesn’t break her in isolation, but given everything else about her characterization … well.

Violet (In Context)

Violet feels betrayed by Dain, and ultimately rejects him, because he wouldn’t break the rules to save her.

The same rules she twisted to validate her cheating.

The same rules that she got angry at him for thinking she couldn’t play by (while she was simultaneously cheating).

The same rules that he warned her, back in Chapter 9, that he would have no choice but to obey if she decided to go through with the Threshing.

Violet is insufferable at this point. She demands validation for surviving a death school while cheating, yet she simultaneously gets angry at others for letting her succeed or fail by the rules of that school. Dain offered her multiple outs from this situation, warning her what would happen if she didn’t. She spurned his help, thinking ill of him for even considering the possibility that she might want an out. Now she is demonizing him for following through on the consequences that she accepted by spurning him.

And, yes. It’s outright demonization. The entire argument between Xaden and Dain is framed like Dain is a jealous incel who's trying anything and everything to drive a wedge between Violet and an established boyfriend. Remember, Violet is the 1st-person POV, so when she describes how Dain is frantically pivoting between arguments and moving goalposts, it is how she perceives him. There’s also this line right before Xaden shows up, when Dain is trying to persuade her to reject Tairn and stick with Andarna.

Dain looks away, and I can almost see the gears in his mind turning as he calculates … what? My risk? My choice? My freedom?

Dain has no power over Violet. He never has. All he has offered is a helping hand, asking nothing except that she considers the effects that her death would have on those around her. Violet has never been forced to accept his help. Yet here, as he does everything he can to help her, she treats him as if he is possessive and abusive, all because he isn’t validating her.

This main character is despicable, and Protagonist-Centered Morality cannot shield her abhorrent nature any longer.

Dain

Poor Dain.

The guy was never going to end up with Violet. That simply wasn’t her character arc. It wasn’t enough for her to simply choose someone else, though. The narrative voice - and, by that, I mean Yarros, via her self-insert Mary Sue - had to go to extremes to demonize him and make him the bad guy, going so far as to destroy Violet’s characterization.

The sad fact is, if Yarros really wanted to validate Violet’s decision by making Dain the bad guy, it would not have been hard to do. He didn’t need to be demonized; Violet didn’t need to be made deplorable. If, say, Yarros had split this book in two, Dain could made for a solid antagonist for the second book. Perhaps he could have actively interfered in Violet’s progression as a rider for the rest of the year, using his authority as squad leader to force her into a specific role. Perhaps, once Violet had chosen Xaden, he could have become the spurned lover. If Yarros wanted to go really wild with things, it would not be out of character for Dain to double down on the Codex. He could be organizing unbonded cadets to murder Violet, operating with the twisted logic that she will prove herself within the rules, die within the rules, or be forced to come to him for way out of this dangerous life.

Xaden

I really don’t know what to say about Xaden.

He’s still a cookie cutter Bad Boy Love Interest. I guess that validating Violet’s impulses explains why she likes him. Chapter 16 finally admits that he isn’t going to kill her, instead changing their dynamic to that of a bodyguard and charge who outwardly despise one another as a means to drive up sexual tension.

These developments just aren’t that interesting. Xaden is still a puppet made of construction paper and popsicle sticks. It’s just now he has some pins in his joints so that his arms will move independent of his body. If you like Bad Boy Love Interests, I’m sure you’ll like how he’s been written thus far. I just don’t see much value outside of that.

Tairn & Andarna

The two dragons are functional characters. We now know that Tairn values Andarna, and Andarna is childlike in her mannerisms. The only real issues I have with them come down to the impact they have on the worldbuilding.

WORLDBUILDING

The entire setting just imploded.

Tairn the Merciful

Tairn does not let the weak rider who can’t stay on his back fall to her death. He catches her after she falls. He then uses magic to pin her to his back. When they land, he helps her to dismount.

All this happens in Chapter 15. In this one chapter, Yarros destroys her entire setting.

The Codex, and the murder school in general, is based on the fact that the dragons want only the fittest candidates. They would rather have hundreds of cadets, whom might otherwise be used as valuable members of other branches of the military, die than risk a batch of cadets who can’t meet the dragons’ brutal standards. Yet here we have Tairn, one of the strongest among them, one who is explicitly established as having a high risk of dying if his rider does, accommodating a cadet who is so far below baseline expectations that the mere act of choosing her borders constitutes a death wish.

Why do dragons need strong riders if they are this forgiving of failure (and willing to risk their own deaths)? Why do cadets need to succeed in the Gauntlet if the dragon is willing to do everything for them? Why do riders need to be able to cling to their dragons without aid if the dragons are willing to use magic to secure them? At that point, why not use saddles?

Yarros tries to justify this, but she makes it worse.

“Why did you choose me?” I have to know because as soon as we land, there are going to be questions.

“Because you saved her.” Tairn’s head inclines toward the golden as we approach, and she follows after us. Our speed slows.

“But …” I shake my head. “Dragons value strength and cunning and … ferocity in their riders.” None of which defines me.

“Please, do tell me more about what I should value.” Sarcam drips from his tone as we pass over the Gauntlet and crest the narrow entrance to the training fields.

I feel like this is Yarros directly addressing the audience’s reactions to this development, so I will address her in kind.

No, Ms. Yarros. This is not an adequate explanation. You spent the entire book hammering in what the dragons are like. You cannot simply say, “Well, Tairn is different,” and expect your narrative to hold together.

Tairn is the first dragon to serve as a functional character whom Violet can interact with. His mannerisms, beliefs, and actions are our first introduction to who the dragons are and how they truly perceive the world. Any attempt to establish him as an exception just undermines every previously established rule. If Tairn is willing to make exceptions for personal reasons, why aren’t all dragons? Why don’t they all hold their riders on their backs with magic (or just allow saddles)? Why don’t they value cunning and intelligence over physical prowess? Why not test for courage over brute force?

How To Train Your Dragon (the movies) got this right. When Toothless, our first dragon character, was established to not be the vicious monster that Hiccup was raised to believe that dragons were, it led to the discovery that all dragons could potentially be dealt with peacefully. The fact that Toothless at first seemed to be an exception was used to discover the true rules.

Further amplifying this problem is that Tairn is at the apex of dragonkind. I could understand Andarna being attracted to Violet. She seems to be at the bottom of the hierarchy of dragons and possesses a childlike mentality. (The story does explain this more later on. I’m just going with what is shown up to this point.) It makes sense that she would not be representative of her culture and that she might make choices that run counter to the culture’s values. However, for a dragon as revered as Tairn to hold this attitude towards humans, there must surely be an entire faction of dragons who look up to him and follow his example. This should be reflected within the Quadrant, but it simply isn’t.

This would not have been hard to fix. Andarna should have been the only one to actually choose Violet. Perhaps she could have gone so far as to slap a relic on Violet while still in the Threshing. Tairn, who would only have saved Violet to repay her kindness towards Andarna, could have been utterly furious about this development, but would agreed to bond with Violet himself to preserve her life and thus shield Andarna from the consequences of this foolish decision. Tairn could then become something of a mentor and a minor antagonist, one whose approval Violet is forced to earn over the course of the series, which would in then symbolically represent her earning the approval of dragon kind as a whole. (If this was indeed Yarros’s intent, the execution was so horrendously botched as to make it unrecognizable.)

Double Dragons

Our Mary Sue is so special that the two specialest dragons in the story both want her. One of these explicitly chose her because she is Stunning and Brave.

This is worthy of an eye-roll. However, Yarros does deserve some praise for her execution of this idea.

EVERYONE is furious about this. The humans are angry. The dragons are angry. This is established in-world as something that is not supposed to happen. While this may superficially resemble Kirito suddenly whipping out Dual-Wielding in Sword Art Online, it does not damage the story in the same way. This may functionally serve the same purpose of making the Mary Sue more awesome, but the weight it has within the world gives it some actual meaning. (Whether Yarros capitalizes upon that meaning is another matter, but it works as a starting point.)

I do want to call out two details about this. In Chapter 16, Violet asks Professor Kaori if there is any precedent for two dragons bonding with one rider, reaffirming in the process that he is an authority. We should therefore take anything else he established - like Signets being about to kill their riders if overused, and how no Signet can raise the dead - as gospel. (Seriously, don’t forget this.) Additionally, the epigraph for Chapter 16 establishes that no dragon has ever selected multiple riders at the same time. This quote is also from Kaori, and thus, we are expected to accept it. I expect this lore will become relevant later in the series.

Highlander Rules

In principle, the idea that unbonded 1st-years will go after the bonded 1st-years has some merit. It is all about survival of the fittest. The dragon will survive if the rider dies, so the unbonded can prove themselves to be more worthy by killing bonded riders and presenting themselves to the victim’s dragon.

The problem is that this chapter now establishes that dragons can, in fact, die if their riders do.

This was hinted at in the epigraph of Chapter 14. However, there it was presented as a rider’s death merely being emotionally traumatic. The deaths were implied to be due to causes stemming from the loss, much like how dragons who lose riders in Eragon or Pern are driven to suicide. What Xaden reveals in Chapter 16 takes things to an entirely different level.

Why would the Codex allow any unbonded cadet to kill a bonded rider when doing so might kill the dragon, the dragon’s mate, and the rider bonded to said mate?

The only conceivable reason to hide this reality would be for security, to prevent agents of enemy kingdoms from killing off high-ranking officers and powerful dragons by assassinating weak riders. However, given that Xaden reveals it freely to Violet on the training field, it can’t be that big of a secret. It’s also something that doesn’t need to be properly explained to cadets. The Quadrant would just need to update the Codex so that the murder is only allowed among unbonded cadets, thereby protecting the bonded riders and their dragons.

Plus, thanks to Tairn choosing a rider for sentimental reasons, that implies that any dragon can be emotionally attached to a rider. Does it really not occur to anyone that a dragon might be furious about their choice getting shanked in the toilet? Is no one concerned that a dragon might show up at the Quadrant to find its rider’s killers (thanks to the telepathic bond, the dragon likely know exactly who’s guilty) and exact revenge, killing anyone who gets in the way? That danger alone is a valid reason for the Codex to ban the killing of bonded riders.

THE DESCENT

According to my Barnes & Noble e-reader app, we are now 38% of the way through the book. (Chapter 1 technically started at the 2% mark and the Acknowledgements are at the 94% mark, so this really comes out to more like 39% of the length of the narrative.)

This book has wrapped up the main plot established back in Chapter 1, yet it is nowhere near finished.

Next week, we will do Chapter 17 and 18. There’s very little of plot significance in this part. However, there is even more destruction to both the world and to immersion. On my first read, Chapter 18 was the point where the damage to immersion became irreparable for me. Part of this is because of more ill-considered worldbuilding. The rest is the virtue signaling.

In the review of The City of Brass, I made it clear that I would not assume that any given character is an instance of tokenization unless the narrative goes out of its way to call attention to the inclusion of that character. Chapter 18 pushes Fourth Wing over that line. On top of discussing the continued deterioration of this book, we are going to get a delightful little case study into tokenization and the projection of modern world-views into settings where they don’t fit.

I hope you all enjoy it. Have a good week, everyone. See you all for the next one.