Fourth Wing (Chapter 17 & Chapter 18)

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

Violet awakes the day after Threshing in the comfort of her own private room, allocated to her on account of being a bonded rider. As she goes to breakfast, she observes that most of her fellow riders had sex the previous night. At breakfast, she further observes that the informal seating arrangements have changed and that riders are treating her differently. The hierarchies of the dragons are being reflected among the riders. It is during this time that Imogen approaches Violet and announces that she will be helping Violet with both muscle training and sparring practice. There is clear indication that this is on Xaden’s orders.

Violet later attends her first flight lesson, which goes disastrously. She repeatedly falls off Tairn whenever he is not holding her in place with magic, surviving only because Tairn catches her each time (again, something that other dragons do not do for her compatriots). Later, she bumps into Dain. He apologies for kissing her, indicating that it was inappropriate given their power dynamic. Violet notes that this apology has caused her to lose respect for him.

After a one-month timeskip, Violet visits the Archives of the war college and chats with her deaf friend, Jesinia. She asks if Jesinia has a copy of a book of folklore on wyverns and venin, but Jesinia indicates that she has never heard of it. Later that day, Violet chats with other riders about manifesting Signets. Here she learns that a rider who doesn’t manifest a Signet within six months will explode due to pent-up magical energy. This conversation is also where the audience is told that Xaden is having rebel children shadow Violet between classes, much the same way that Dain used to shadow her.

During another disastrous flight training session, Dain pulls Violet aside. He’s heard of her many flight accidents. He tries to offer her his help, expressing concern about her ability to survive to graduation. Here she blows up at him, screaming at him about how he doesn’t have faith in her.

After this tantrum, Violet bears witness to the manifestation of another rider’s Signet. This one is an inntinnsic (one of the telepaths mentioned in Chapter 4). A professor executes this rider on the spot by breaking his neck.

Later, Tairn awakes Violet in the dead of night, just as six cadets and a bonded rider try to murder her in her sleep. Violet is overwhelmed by sheer numbers. She only survives because Andarna channels magic through her, stopping time.

PLOT

Nothing happens.

To be clear, events occur. People say things. Information is conveyed. However, the story does not advance in any meaningful way. It’s spinning its wheels as Yarros flings new plot threads at the wall. She makes three attempts here, two of which fall apart right away, the last of which she never uses.

Murder School II: Electric Boogaloo

Chapter 17 hammers in the plot point introduced in Chapter 16 regarding unbonded cadets murdering bonded 1st-years to claim their dragons. One of Violet’s attackers in Chapter 18 reinforces this by shouting to everyone present that it is the reason they are there.

This idea disintegrates thanks to the one-month timeskip.

The threat of Violet being murdered between classes was already hard to take seriously due to the lack of violence in preceding months / chapters. It just wasn't noticeable because there was a sense of constant action due to other things that were happening. Here, we are explicitly told that no one attempts to target Violet for an entire month. It is laughable that we are expected to think that the murder school is even more dangerous now when we are directly told that it is not.

Saying that Xaden has people bodyguarding Violet is not a narrative solution to this problem. First, Dain was bodyguarding her prior to Threshing, so at best, this means that the danger level has not been raised. Violet is perfectly safe with the same level of protection as before. Second, since the attack in Chapter 18 includes both a bonded rider and enough people to overwhelm Violet with sheer numbers, it should not have been hard for them to simply ambush her and overpower a single rider bodyguard.

Also, why does no one poison her? Violet acknowledges this as a possibility, but only from one unbonded rider. We learn in Chapter 17 that unbonded riders are assigned to all of the menial work while the bonded ones have flight training. No one managed to spike her food or drink during this time?

I think the fact that Violet is attacked in her sleep - a Codex violation - is what really makes this threat so hollow. Yarros was so unable to utilize her own murder school that she could only conceive a scenario that was not allowed by the murder school.

And It’ll Blow You Up, Boom! (Heavy Spoilers)

How many cadets do you think will explode as a result of pent-up energy from a Signet not manifesting?

None. It never comes up. At most, we get some riders dying because they manifested a Signet that was so powerful that they immediately lost control and were killed by it, but that possibility is not what Yarros chose to milk to tension.

She Did it!

Yarros tries to keep the identity of the bonded rider who helped with the attack on Violet a secret, perhaps intending to hold the audience’s attention with a mystery. I’ll go into more detail about this below. For now, I’ll just say that this is resolved with an anticlimax in Chapter 20.

ACTION

The fight scene at the end of Chapter 18 is fundamentally broken.

It is explicitly stated in this scene that Violet’s room is tiny. She is also outnumbered six to one (the bonded rider leaves as soon as she wakes up). Yet, somehow, she is not overwhelmed immediately. She then survives because one of these geniuses wastes times choking her instead of slashing her throat or smashing her head against the wall.

First, the environment. It is not believable that Violet avoids being overwhelmed by this many opponents in such a confined space. This is a near-automatic death sentence for even skilled fighters in their prime. She has no room to evade. Her dragoscale armor would not save her, because (A) it shouldn’t protect her from impacts, (B) we are explicitly told that all of her attackers know about it, so they should have been wielding bludgeoning weapons or gone for the head anyway, and (C) in these tight spaces, she could be immobilized easily to facilitate (A) and (B). By emphasizing how tight conditions are in here, Yarros made this fight impossible to take seriously.

Second, Violet lasts far too long before the choking starts. Her having extra training with Imogen for a month does not explain how this tiny woman with EDS is holding her own against four men and two other women, all of whom are larger than her and don’t have EDS, all of whom were doing their own training and staying fit during that same month (on top of already starting in better physical condition than her), and at least one of whom is wielding a sword. Violet is not Osha from The Shadow of the Gods. She should have lost immediately, especially if her opponents were aware of and prepared for her armor.

It does not matter that Violet only survives because of a Deux Ex Machina. The simple fact of the matter is that, for the second time is less that six chapters, Yarros is selectively ignoring the realism that she previously used to drive up the stakes just to make Violet seem like a badass action hero. If anything, the fact that Violet loses and still gets saved by someone else makes it worse, as now we have two points of evidence to confirm that Yarros will invent a way to save Violet from losing whenever it actually matters to the plot.

In a story fueled purely by Rule of Cool, none of this would be a problem. Our protagonist won via some crazy martial arts and cool knife throwing while trapped in a small room. Nothing there is that weird in a fantastical story. Yarros is the one who wanted realism to establish the tension. She needs to consistently adhere to those standards if we are going to take this story seriously.

SELECTIVE REVELATIONS

During the attack in Chapter 18, Yarros tries to force a mystery by the laziest means possible.

There are seven cadets in my room. Four are unbonded men. Three are unbonded women - I gasp with recognition - make that two as she runs for the door and slams it on the way out.

She opened the door. There’s no other explanation.

If Violet recognizes this bonded rider, why does Yarrsos not list her name in the 1st-person present tense POV narrative? Violet knows another rider in this scene (the third member of Jack’s cohort from Threshing), and he gets named. Why not name this rider?

It’s because Yarros is trying to force a mystery by blatantly denying basic information to the audience.

I’m all for altering an audience’s perception of events by withholding details, using biased narrators, or distorting the facts to reflect the limited understanding of the POV character. Great stories can be told if this is done correctly. For a pair of easy (spoiler-free) examples, the genius twists of both Fight Club and The Book of Eli are completely dependent upon the audience lacking one crucial piece of information that fundamentally alters the protagonist's involvement in the story.

The trick is that the withholding of information needs to make sense. There needs to be a logical reason within the narrative as to why the information is not shared with the audience. In Fight Club, the protagonist is the only person not aware of the information that drives the twist. Everyone else either doesn’t know that he doesn’t know or is under orders not to tell him. In the end, the twist is revealed to him accidentally, when one of the people who assumed he knew the information already throws that information in his face during a moment of high stress. In The Book of Eli, the protagonist IS aware of the twist, but he isn't given a reason to discuss this twist with other characters. We therefore don’t learn the twist until the antagonist does.

This does not make sense. There is no logical reason to not include information that the 1st person POV character knows in a moment where she would be mentally processing that very information. Violet recognizes who this person is, and she has no reason to lie to herself.

What A … Twist? (Heavy Spoilers)

The first time I read that line, I assumed that it was Rhiannon. I thought that Violet was not saying her name because she was shocked by the betrayal and didn’t want to accept it. That would have actually made some sense and made the story more interesting.

But, no. It’s Amber, the only female rider with a grudge against Violet. Yarros tries to justify this baiting by later saying that Violet couldn’t believe that it was Amber. However, this is not in any way justified by Violet’s characterization. She does not have any reason or positive relationship with Amber that would justify her disbelief. If anything, she should be mentally screeching about Amber being a Codex-violating hypocrite.

She’ll Do It Again

This denial of information is lazy enough in isolation. However, Yarros will use it again in the climax. This book ends with a massive twist that violates the established rules of this world. Yarros tries to build up last-minute tension for this revelation during the climax by having characters discuss the twist in pronouns, despite having no reason to speak in such a roundabout way at the moment. It is so hollow that I immediately figured out the twist. Despite violating the rules of the world, it was the most obvious thing that Yarros could have been going for by playing a pronoun game.

CHARACTER

Violet

Rereading this book for the review has hammered in just how horrific this character is. With the completion of her arc, Violet has nothing to do but to undermine said arc and then sink to new lows. The only development left is to show just how utterly foul she truly is.

Delusional

I was going to recap Violet’s argument with Dain, except I realized that there is no point to doing a blow-by-blow. They rehash all the same talking points as before, only with Violet coming off even more unhinged and narcissistic than in the previous instances.

I’ll just present her closing argument. It may just be the most self-damning thing she says in the entire book.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Dain.” I take a step closer, but the distance between us only widens. “The reason we’ll never be anything more than friends isn’t because of your rules. It's because you have no faith in me. Even now, when I’ve survived against all odds and bonded not one dragon but two, you still think I won’t make it. So forgive me, but you’re about to be some of the bullshit that this place cuts away from me.” I move to the side and match past him through the tunnel, forcing air through my lungs.

Other than the last year, when he entered the Riders Quadrant, I can’t remember a time without Dain in my life.

But I can’t take his constant pessimism about my future anymore.

I won’t rehash all of Violet’s previous delusions (though all still apply here). I will instead just point out the two new ones, and how her entire character arc just imploded.

This argument started because Dain heard how often Violet falls off Tairn. Remember, Tairn is catching her each time. This is not something dragons normally do. By this point, we have been shown two riders being allowed to fall to their deaths. This means that, every time Tairn catches Violet, she has not survived. She has failed and died, only to be snatched back because someone else protected her from the consequences of her decisions.

At the start of this scene, Tairn remarks that Violet “only fell about a dozen times that trip.” It has been one month. If we (very generously) assume that Violet has flight training only three times a week, assume that it has been exactly one month (four weeks), and ignore the fact that Violet admits to falling “three dozen times” at the start of the month … that’s 12 x 3 x 4 …

That’s a bare minimum of 144 times that Violet has not “survived against all odds”. That’s enough failures to kill every single 1st-year who lived past Threshing.

Also, by bragging about bonding with two dragons here, Violet just ruined her achievement from Chapters 14 through 16. Her dragons bonded with her to honor her courage. Tairn himself said that she didn’t earn the bond through physical prowess. By whipping it out like this and pretending it’s proof of strengths that she didn’t actually use to earn that reward, Violet devalues her victory. She didn’t actually learn anything from it. She only appreciates it for the power it gives her over others in an argument.

Hypocrite

Due to the death toll, the squads have been recognized and condensed. Violet’s squad gets new members. This is what she has to say about them.

They’ve refused to sit with anyone with a rebellion relic.

So, fuck them.

Hey. Hey, Violet.

Those people with the rebellion relics … remind me what they wanted to do to you at the start of the academic year, just a few months ago?

Oh, right. They wanted to murder you, on account of your mother’s involvement in their parents’ deaths. They only don’t kill you now because Xaden has ordered them to protect you. They are only helping you because their loyalty to him outweighs their hatred of you.

You think that maybe - just maybe - these other riders, who have demonstrated no murderous intent, might be a bit bitter about the deaths of their own family members in the rebellion? You know, like your brother died? Perhaps they, too, have some hard feelings.

No? Doesn’t matter? You’re going to say judge them anyway, and give the people doing the same thing a free pass because they’re helping you?

Naturally. That is your characterization.

Self-Centered

The scene where Dain apologizes to Violet for the kiss had potential. Setting aside how we got there, Violet has every reason to feel incredibly awkward about Dain. Her feelings towards him have shifted, and she doesn’t know how to deal with them. The fact that Dain is unaware of this likewise puts her in an really unpleasant spot. It's hard not to feel sympathy for her in this situation.

Then she makes it really easy not to feel sympathy. She judges him for not chasing after her because it would be against regulations (you know, given the power imbalance that he has over her). He diminishes in her eyes because he is not throwing himself at her.

Pick a lane, Violet. Either you want him, or you don’t. It shouldn’t matter WHY he is not chasing after you. If anything, the fact that he is so distracted by the rules and regulations buys you time to think of a way to deal with him in the long term (or for him to lose interest and leave you be). He’s unlikely to change his mind and come back to bother you any time soon if he's really this fixated on rules.

Dain

The demonization of Dain continues. He literally approached Violet on the flight field to help her. Not to offer her a way out, not to urge her to leave, but to offer to help her in any way he could, after hearing information about her struggles that was actually understating how severe her problems were. She lashes out at him for it.

Yarros should have left Dain alone. None of this was necessary. Every attempt to demonize him just makes Violet look worse and him look more sympathetic.

You deserve better, Dain.

Xaden

The only thing of note here is how Xaden reacts to the scene with the inntinnsic. Originally, he is just watching this poor 1st-year melt down under the weight of everyone else’s thoughts. That’s not a knock against him - everyone else was doing the same thing. However, when the inntinnsic starts spouting secrets from the mind of another rebel child, he uses his shadows to quickly gag the inntinnsic. This shows a good job showing his situational awareness (even if he probably should have realized the threat and acted earlier) and how quick he is to step in to protect his comrades.

Jesinia

Token Deaf Character.

Okay, let’s talk about virtue signaling.

VIRTUE SIGNALLING

Tokenization

Fourth Wing is a good example of character inclusion that calls attention to itself, thereby revealing itself to be tokenization.

At this point, Yarros has built a tidy Diversity Checklist. Thus far, we have:

• Violet: Token Physical Disability, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (or, rather, a fantasy derivative that lets Yarros spin Violet as a Special Snowflake).

• Rhiannon: Token Queer. (I’m recycling the term from Jade City, to be used in the same context, because I don’t want this criticism to be dismissed merely because I didn’t give Rhiannon the correct letter of the alphabet. She has sex with other women. That’s all that’s needed to check the box, even if she also has sex with men.)

• Heaton: Token Non-Binary

• Quinn: Token Queer. This female character, who has been floating in the background for the entire book, is conveniently introduced as having a girlfriend in the same scene where Rhiannon is established as having sex with men. It comes across as Yarros feeling insecure about her representation quota.

• Jesinia: Token Physical Disability, Deafness.

• Xaden and his cousin (a tertiary character not worth mentioning previously, and not worth naming now): Token Persons of Color (to use the phrasing that Yarros herself apparently used in a TikTok interview, when asked by a reader to confirm what she meant by their skin being “tawny”).

I would put Kaori on this list as well, except I’m pretty sure him sounding like he comes from an Asian culture in this otherwise European setting is an oversight, not an intentional inclusion.

What we have here, though, doesn't look good.

With the exception of Violet having EDS (the execution of which is a separate can of worms), none of these tokenizations have any impact on the broader narrative, and most make no sense from a broader worldbuilding perspective. Much like with Anden in Jade City, Yarros goes out of her way to highlight their inclusion. All of these inclusions could be cut without impacting the narrative.

• In Chapter 8, we got that scene of Violet bumping into Rhiannon right after sex with another woman and congratulating her for it. This tells us that Yarros, via her self-insert Mary Sue, is supportive of homosexuality. Prior to this, we got multiple indications that Rhiannon being sexually interested in women, yet this is dropped as a character trait after this scene, save for one or two throwaway references that are outweighed by her sexual flings with male riders.

• Heaton is wholly irrelevant to the plot. In fairness, this is a function of the bloat of secondary and tertiary characters more than anything else. However, Heaton’s introduction in Chapter 11 included an interaction that seemed to exist to call the audience’s attention to pronouns. I can’t help but wonder if Yarros gave Heaton the signature flame haircut so that she could use changes in hair color to hit the pronoun button again (because, after combing through the narrative, the only context I could find for Heaton’s pronouns being used after Chapter 11 is to describe the hair color changes).

• Quinn mentioning that she has a girlfriend is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that required no effort or sacrifice.

• Jesinia’s existence once again raises the question of this society’s stance about physical disability. It is revealed in Chapter 18 that Violet is fluent in sign language. What’s more, we will learn in Chapter 21 that another rider also speaks sign language. This means that this society that is supposedly against physical weakness has not only developed accommodations for the deaf but also has multiple people invested in learning sign language. Setting this incongruity aside, the fact that Violet is supposedly extremely good friends with this character, despite Jesinia never being previously mentioned, makes it feel like the goal here was to call attention to how Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue is virtuous enough to learn sign language.

• The race of Xaden and his cousin are mentioned in passing. I actually completely missed this on my first read, only discovering it because Katie Colson pointed it out in her review of this book. These two would actually not be an issue on their own. However, Yarros had to put her foot in it by confirming them as “Persons of Color”, thereby making a minor character detail into a Category 2 virtue signal.

Some justification or hand-wave could be applied to each of these characters. For all of them to share a narrative defies probability. This was deliberately arranged. When you factor in Yarros’s inconsistent handling of male / female physical differences (creating a Schrodinger's Cat of empowerment / victimhood), it really does seem like Yarros wanted to emphasize how much she personally supports (or, in the case of Violet, embodies) the groups she represented here, all without actually writing a narrative that made them relevant. Collectively, these represent a titanic Category 1 virtue signal (again, save for Xaden and his cousin being Category 2).

Modern World View

The tokenization isn’t merely immersion-breaking on its own. It exacerbates the damage that has already been done to the worldbuilding by the fact that the Riders Quadrant conducts itself like a modern American university.

It is not impossible for a fantastical world to share modern-day American views of homosexual behavior, gender ideology, and physical disability. The problem is that modern-day American views are a function of a complex historical and social factors. They are very much modern (or, at least, modern takes on concepts that were themselves the products of complex historical and social factors), and they are not universal outside of the United States. These views are also the source of immense contention even within the United States. Not even people who are on the same general side of the political spectrum agree upon the best method to go about implementing these ideas.

So, if a writer copy-pastes these world views into a fantasy setting and just expects audiences to believe that this is the accepted norm, it does not work. At best, it comes across as lazy. At worst, it comes across as preachy. These views either need to be explained or to feel natural within the setting.

Unfortunately, it does not feel natural here. The Quadrant is not a modern-day American university. It is a military academy structured to meet the brutal whims of dragons to support a war that has lasted for centuries. This world should be unrecognizable compared to the relative luxury of the modern-day United States.

Homosexuality

Because Fourth Wing appears to be trying to rebuild Pern, I am compelled to once again point out how Pern handled homosexuality way better.

Due to the telepathic bond between riders and dragons, the riders of any two dragons would be compelled to have sex with one another whenever their dragons did. Male brown and blue dragons and the female green dragons did not always bond with riders of the same sex as them. (For that matter, there were periods within the series when women were only permitted to bond to gold dragons, forcing the greens to always chose male riders.) It was therefore inevitable that the Wyrs would host a lot of homosexual sex. Fan speculation was that the dragons deliberately chose homosexual riders; however, The Skies of Pern establishes a rider who’d tried to resist the the mating frenzy ended up being raped multiple times, so it is far more likely that the dragons are telepathically force the bulk of their riders into homosexuality, with the Wyrs adapting to accommodate the situation. This served as a clear, in-world reason why Pern was so permissive of homosexuality despite resembling medieval Europe in so many other aspects of its society.

In Fourth Wing, the attitude towards homosexuality falls into the same category as the overall sexual attitudes. Navarre feels like the modern-day United States, not a kingdom in a fantastical world that just happens to reach the same worldview. This is a mistake that even Son of the Storm avoided. Okungbowa may have been milking homosexuality for his own ends, but at least he crafted a world with its own perspectives that made the attitudes of the characters make sense.

If anything, everything about Navarre points towards homosexuality (or, indeed, any sexual act that is not reproductive) being stigmatized. Their entire society is molded around reproduction for the sake of their own survival. Granted, it is the dragons that need to reproduce … except we got a line in Chapter 1 about riders being able to marry earlier to preserve strong bloodlines, plus the matter of Navarre being in an endless war and needing a constant stream of recruits. This might just be the worst possible environment as far as acceptance of homosexuality is concerned.

Gender Ideology

At face value, Heaton is the easiest to explain in terms of inclusion in this world. Nothing established outright contradicts a modern American attitude on gender ideology in Navarre. The handling of Heaton being nonbinary is also done far bettter than The Stardust Thief or Son of the Storm. The narrative does not halt to explain pronouns, nor are we expected to think Heaton is Stunning and Brave because of adversity we are never actually shown.

The problem with Heaton is a function of the tokenization in general. Given the overall modern American university mindset, we could have assumed that this setting embraces modern gender ideology. We did not need to be told or shown this. Ironically, by taking the extra step to inform the audience that this is part of the setting, Yarros made the inclusion feel less believable. If this truly was a natural part of the setting, she could have left it unsaid until she introduced a non-binary character who was an integral part of the story.

Also … I find it somewhat awkward that the Token Non-Binary character is defined by a trait commonly associated with modern gender identity movements (namely, the styled and dyed hair). Heaton is not the only character with this trait, but the fact that it is the one trait we have to work with makes the tokenization feel even more blatant.

Physical Disability

As covered during the analysis of Chapters 12 through 14, the idea that Navarre simultaneously is molded by a survival-of-the-strong mentality and yet supports those with physical disabilities is contradictory. It demands further context that Yarros simply has not provided.

Racial Diversity

The problem here is the same as with Kaori: namely, Navarre is not cosmopolitan (and is, in fact, isolationist), yet somehow there are ethnic minorities that are drastically different from everyone else, with no explanation for how they got there.

The issue here isn’t, in and of itself, that this book has POCs among a racial group that is implied to be an analog to Caucasians. The preservation of populations like the Hebrews and Romani across thousands of years of European history (and, in the case of the Hebrews, African history as well) is proof that this does happen. The issue I have is that, unlike the Hebrews or Romani, we’re given nothing in terms of cultural or geographic isolation to explain how this trait was preserved.

(And, no, I don’t think that “tawny” just means that they are slightly more tan than other people. By flagging them as POC, Yarros declared that they are of a completely different race from everyone else. If they are the same race as everyone else, then everyone is POC, and it wouldn’t be worth remarking upon.)

Xaden’s father was the ruler of the province of Tyrrendor. However, none of the other rebel children (most of whom are from Tyrrendor) are described as looking different from anyone else in Navarre. Violet only identifies them by their rebellion relics. We’re also not given anything to suggest that Xaden and his cousin are inbred. How, then, was this genetic trait not swallowed up by all of the pale folk who would have married into the family over centuries? Hebrew populations started to look like the other peoples in the area over time, and that was with cultural barriers to discourage intermarriage.

What’s weird about this is that it wouldn’t be hard to justify. Tyrrendor is described as being somewhat isolated from the rest of Navarre. It would have made a lot of sense if every single rebel child was of one ethnicity that made them stand out from the other peoples of Navarre. There could even be some interesting story opportunities there. Tyrrish riders who weren’t linked to the rebellion would have to deal with a stigma on account of actions committed by other people who just happen to look like them. There’s groundwork there for a meaningful story about racism, rather than mere tokenization.

Representation

Back in the prelude, I promised that I would address the defense presented by people who want to support this book because Violet provides EDS representation. This response applies equally to anyone who wants to defend tokenization within the book out of a desire for Representation, so I'm going to bundle it all together.

Defending a work of fictional media on the ground of Representation is a trend that echoes across the past decade. Identity politics has repeatedly been abused to shield art of inferior quality from objective assessment. A noteworthy example is when Disney exploited Moses Ingram to proactively shield Obi-Wan Kenobi from any and all criticisms.

The issue of Representation, and identity politics on general, is outside of the preview of this review and this site in general. My response to this line of argumentation, however, is above the issue itself. It applies equally regardless of whether this cause truly is virtuous. Therefore, if you are in the camp that values Representation above objective artistic merit, take what I say next as if I am the most thunderous and virtuous voice for Representation on this planet:

How is Fourth Wing at all acceptable?

• Are non-heterosexual people nothing more than accessories to be draped over the arms of heterosexual women, to validate said women with praise and to allow them to demonstrate their virtue?

• I would ask the same question about deaf people in relation to people who aren’t deaf.

• Are non-binary people nothing more than cardboard cutouts, utterly devoid of character outside of the changing colors of hair dye, to be brought up only when people want to feel virtuous by using the chosen pronouns?

• Are POCs fetish material who exist to be Bad Boy Love Interests?

• Does EDS turn people into delusional narcissists who demand every accommodation, bypass or break every rule, and otherwise rely on handicaps that no one else receives just to get by, then turn around and screech about how people don't believe in them when someone offers a helping hand and accurately points out all the special treatment being received?

I sincerely hope that everyone reading this will answer, “No,” to all of these questions.

This book makes a loathsome mockery of the idea of Representation. It exploits and spits upon every demographic represented by either the tokenized characters or the self-insert Mary Sue protagonist. If seeing characters with superficial similarities to yourself brings you subjective enjoyment, that's fine. No one can take that away from you. However, if you insist on shielding objectively bad media with your identity, or if you insist on uplifting these awful characters because they share superficial qualities with you, all you accomplish is the devaluing of yourself.

We all deserve better from the entertainment we consume.

WORLDBUILDING

This part has gone on long enough, so I will not do a worldbuilding breakdown here. Instead, I will consolidate my notes for worldbuilding in Chapters 17 and 18 into those for Chapter 19 through Chapter 21. This will also help me to keep from repeating myself, as a lot of the worldbuilding across this spread of five chapters is interlinked.

MORE SPINNING WHEELS

Chapter 19 through Chapter 21 don’t make Violet much worse.

Much.

That’s about all I can say in terms of positives.

I forgot just how much … nothing happens between Threshing and the climax of this book. There’s just no core narrative anymore. It’s just quickly resolved subplots that are laced together. Even the romance subplot between Violet and Xaden doesn’t progress in this section (reminding us that Violet will eventually have sex with him doesn’t count).

At least we can talk worldbuilding. That will be fun. Yarros actually manages to do a few things right. There are more horrendous problems that destroy the setting and immersion, to be sure, but there are still a few interesting elements that we can celebrate and learn positive lessons from.

I hope to see you all then. Have a good week, all.