Fourth Wing (Chapter 2 through Chapter 6)
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 braves the Parapet. It is a perilous crossing, made all the more dangerous by rain and wind. Further complicating matters is a candidate named Jack Barlowe, who begins crossing after Violet has started. He lingers on the Parapet to murder the candidate behind him, flinging this unnamed young man off the Parapet, then chases Violet all the way to the Riders Quadrant. Thankfully, Violet reaches the end of the Parapet and safety first, though Jack openly declares his intent to murder her.
In the aftermath of the Parapet, Dain finds Violet. He smuggles her away from the scrum of newly arrived candidates - now cadets - and up to his room. The pair catch up as he helps her to tend to her injury. He then tries to smuggle her out of the Quadrant and down to the school for scribes (the Scribe Quadrant). Violet refuses, initially hurt that Dain doesn’t have faith in her, yet ultimately falling back to the point that her mother will have her dragged back into the Riders Quadrant if she tries to leave. This convinces Dain to back down, though he insists that he will find another way to get her out. Emphasis is put on the fact that people can’t be allowed to learn of their prior history, lest Violet be targeted.
Violet attends the opening ceremonies for the cadets. The Quadrant’s commandant gives them a speech that sums up the spirit of this death school. Violet and Rhiannon are assigned to Dain’s squad for training. However, then Xaden intervenes, reassigning Dain’s entire squad to his unit, the Fourth Wing, with the obvious intent of having easier access to Violet. Xaden gives his own speech to the recruits, which concludes when several dragons arrive. The sight of the dragons so intimidates the cadets that a few try to desert. These individuals are incinerated by the dragons.
The story cuts to the next morning. Dain dispatches the 1st-years of his squad to head to their classes, warning them to stick together to avoid being cornered and killed. However, he pulls Violet aside to give her some advice on how to stay alive. Xaden discovers them, and he makes some loud remarks about them clearly having personal history.
Violet attends classes. The first one shown to the audience is Battle Brief, where cadets are apprised of non-classified developments in the conflict against Poromiel and encouraged to develop strategic thinking. Here Violet dazzles her classmates (and gets to one-up Jack) by demonstrating her intelligence. The next class shown to us is sparring. During his first bout, Jack murders another cadet via a neck break, which earns him a stern finger-wag from the supervising officer. Violet goes into a bout against Imogen - a 2nd-year student who, like Xaden, is a rebel child - and ends up with a broken arm.
Dain rushes Violet to the Healer Quadrant. He tries to convince the healers to rule that Violet is too injured to return to the Riders Quadrant. However, Violet pushes back against this, insisting that she needs to go back, one way or another. A rider whose Signet is “mending” (which allows both healing and repair of objects) restores her arm. Upon returning to the Quadrant that evening, Violet discovers that Mira was able to smuggle her a journal written by their brother Brennan, which details how to survive in the Quadrant.
PLOT
These five chapters pack quite a lot into 61 pages. Overall, I think it is done well. Much of what’s happening at this point is setup (more specifically, it’s a vehicle for exposition), yet it is still entertaining. The events aren’t actively contradicting themselves yet. There’s a sense that a foundation is still being laid.
ACTION
Chapter 2 is a solid scene of peril. There is a genuine sense of danger here. Yes, we know Violet is not going to die here, yet Yarros still manages to install terror on her behalf.
Chapter 5 is the first real fight scene of the story. This is where the concerns I had upon the reveal of the dragonscale vest really start to manifest.
Having Her Cake
A running element throughout this book is that Violet is not suited for physical combat. However, despite the emphasis put on her EDS in Chapter 1, it is not factored into the fights (which, again, is something Sun Spider got right.) Instead, the emphasis is on opponents being taller than her, heavier than her, and having more muscle mass.
In other words, Yarros generates tension in fight scenes by acknowledging that Violet is a woman being thrown into fights with men.
This isn’t me spotting a pattern and reading between the lines. Yarros goes out of her way to frame Violet’s male opponents as insurmountable threats. The most obvious example of this is Jack, whose verbal threats are backed up by his bulk. This is also applied to Xaden. When fighting female opponents, Yarros puts attention on the advantages that would more typically be found on male opponents (like reach and muscle mass), rather than on things like training (or, you know, Violet having EDS). The only time that magical powers are evaluated in combat is when Yarros really wants to emphasize an already-obvious threat or when she wants to throw a sudden reversal into a fight.
There was certainly room to work with this. As mentioned in the review for The Shadow of the Gods, a realistic take on the advantages and disadvantages a given character has in a fight can lead to more exciting sequences. Violet’s personal arc benefits a lot from presenting her with this concrete obstacle. The fact that Imogen breaks her arm also shows how low she is starting and how far she can climb.
Eating It Too
Despite milking the fact that Violet is a woman fighting against men, Yarros also wants there to be zero difference between the sexes so that she can show off her action girls.
Two of Violet’s female classmates utterly dominate male opponents in this same scene. It is explained that most cadets have trained all their lives to enter the Quadrant. While this does establish that Rhiannon and this other female cadet have training, it also means that the men they are fighting have training. We can't simply look to training to negate physical discrepancies; if anything, the fact that most people have training means that physical discrepancies become the deciding factor. Unless we are to assume that these two fought the only two men with no prior training, they should have been utterly destroyed in any world where men are a physical threat to women.
So which is it, Ms. Yarros? Are men an overwhelming threat, or aren't they?
Action where women equal (or utterly dominate) men in physical combat is not objectively bad writing. It all comes down to how information is presented to the audience. No one questions Gina Carano kicking men's asses in films and television: she looks like she's strong enough to do it, and she looks like she knows what she's doing during the fights themselves. For a less grounded example, the Avatar cartoons are filled with waifs (and children, for that matter) tearing through burly soldiers with martial arts, but this isn't treated as anything spectacular within the setting. The audience is given no reason to question it because we led to believe that it is simply the norm.
Yarros had carte blanche when writing her fantasy world. She could have had women and men just be equal in this respect. Maybe sexual dimorphism just isn't as big a deal in this world. Maybe humans all have some innate magic that cancels out the differences in size and muscle distribution. She didn't even need to explain it. As much as I praise the in-depth realism of The Shadow of the Gods, it was only necessary because of the type of story being told. Fourth Wing is a very different beast. Yarros could have said nothing, and just let the fantasy play out, and it would have been fine.
Choosing to have it both ways was the one thing she absolutely should not have done.
The Takeaway
Realism in fiction is not something that can casually be toggled on and off. This is especially true in fantasy (and science fiction, for that matter). If you tell the audience that realism matters, then flip around and show that it doesn't, it makes it hard to tell when we should take things seriously.
I have no idea why Yarros chose to put so much effort into establishing masculine traits as a threat when she had already set Violet having EDS as a big issue. This was the perfect time to pay that off. It would have been so easy to accept Violet's female classmates pounding every male opponent into submission if Violet was less worried about size and musculature and more about whether she'd tear something the moment she landed a kick on her opponent.
CHARACTER
Violet
Violet’s characterization and personal arc continues to hold strong on these chapters. She overcomes her first challenge, demonstrates her intelligence, fails due to her physical disadvantages, and showcases her willpower. The two arguments with Dain about her staying in the Riders Quadrant reveal that she has accepted that she is trapped in an impossible situation and doesn’t want to waste effort on escape attempts that her mother will invalidate. I wouldn’t say that she’d really developing, but that’s not an issue yet. The story is still at a stage where the foundation is being laid.
That said, there are three minor details in her characterization that I want to flag now. None of these are flaws in her writing (not at this stage, at least). It's just that they will be relevant later.
First, while Violet’s pushback against going to the Scribes Quadrant ends by pointing out that her mother has the final say in the matter, both times she opens with arguments rooted in pride. She does not want to be seen as weak, unhealthy, or fragile. This is a very sympathetic motivation in isolation, and it play well into her character arc, yet Chapters 7 through 11 will recontextualize this.
Second, Violet sexually objectifies the men around her. She’s “just enjoying the view” of the male trainees being shirtless while sparring. Keep this in mind for when we get to Chapter 12. The story has some things to say about sexual objectification that makes this rather interesting in hindsight.
Third, the voice. Violet makes a couple of sexual comments to Dain during that first scene when he pulls her aside. This feeds back into the immersion problem I mentioned with regards to the handling of sexual content in this book. For all the talk about the hedonistic sex within the Riders Quadrant, the way Violet talks indicates that the outside world is no different. It calls out the artificial emphasis that it being out on this element of the Quadrant.
Dain Aetos
Dain is clearly set up as the Best Friend Love Interest of this book. He and Violet have known one another for years, due to their rider parents being posted to the same locations, and now that they are adults, they are very aware of one another’s sexuality. On top of this, Dain prioritizes Violet’s well-being above all else. Despite Violet trying to twist his attempts to help her escape into a lack of faith in her, he is unafraid to make himself vulnerable and admit that her survival is what matters most to him. It genuinely feels like he would have tried to smuggle her out of the Riders Quadrant even if she didn’t have EDS.
Jack Barlowe
Jack is this book’s resident Murderous Sociopath Classmate. He exists to threaten Violet and to kill other people to reinforce that he is a threat, while simultaneously being humiliated by Violet at every turn. He is far from the only bully character in this book, but he is the one we are supposed to hate the most.
This is not a complicated or subtle character. Much like Rhiannon, he is an accessory to Violet. Within that framework, I do feel that he is quite functional. Yarros set out to write this character with a transparent goal in mind, and he achieves it. The main issue I have with him is really a worldbuilding problem, which we will get into below.
Xaden
The Bad Boy Love Interest acts shady when he reassigns Dain’s squad to his own command, but otherwise, he just lurks in the background for this part.
Others
These chapters introduce a dizzying array of secondary characters. I am not going to name them all here. While this is a practical choice to trim fat from the review, it is also a faithful reflection of how Yarros handles them. Most of these characters are fairly interchangeable, having only one or two minor characterization moments that are not enough to make them memorable. Yarros either needs to remind us of their characterization every time they appear or rush additional characterization in the chapters where they become relevant.
WORLDBUILDING
Remember how I said the worldbuilding issues would rear their heads down the line?
It starts in this chunk of chapters.
Before Fourth Wing can finish laying its foundations, it is undermined by the worldbuilding. Plot holes are already yawning wide. Underdeveloped aspects are yielding distracting questions. The collapse has not yet begun, so character and plot are still intact, but no sane inspector would look at what’s been laid down and sign off on its ability to support any amount of weight.
There’s a lot to cover, so let’s start with the general issues and work our way down to the details.
Exposition
The way that Fourth Wing manages exposition feels far too much like Shadow of the Conqueror. I don't think it messes up as badly as Shadow of the Conqueror, but it's hard to say whether that's because it does things a little better or just spends less time on this flawed information delivery.
Much like Shadow of the Conqueror, this book feeds a lot of exposition to the audience by having the POV character directly ask questions to another character. Some of these don't even make sense as questions for Violet to be asking. For example, she asks Dain basic questions about Signets that the someone who is the daughter of a rider and trained as a Scribe should already know.
Another similarity is that Yarros attempted to use a clever mechanic to justify feeding large amounts of information to the audience, one that was completely faithful to the POV character. Violet calms her mind during moments of extreme stress by reciting facts that she's studied. She does this throughout Chapter 2. Much like Daylen and his experiments, this is engaging at first, but it swiftly wears out its welcome. You can taste the overpowering, undiluted author's notes that are being poured down your throat. The information is presented in blocks of text that are so dense that they throw off the pacing of Chapter 2, as well as the later scene in Chapter 10 where this is also employed.
A third problem that this book shares with Shadow of the Conqueror is repeated exposition. Within just the first six chapters, we have Signets explained to us twice. Xaden's Signet power is explained in Chapter 4 and will get hammered in again in Chapter 7. Other information will get unnecessarily reiterated as the story progresses. It's hard to tell whether this was an editing mistake or if Yarros didn't trust the reader to remember how her world works.
Signets and Other Magic
As mentioned in the previous part, humans in this world cannot safely channel magic on their own. Instead, they require the aid of a dragon or a gryphon to channel power to them in a safe manner. This channeling grants all dragon riders access to “lesser magics”. Throughout the book, the following magics are gradually revealed.
Opening / closing / locking / unlocking doors.
Enhancing the rider’s speed.
Conjuring “mage lights”, which are a heatless flames that are as bright as a torch (judging by how they are employed in the story).
Amplifying one’s voice.
The ability to use ink pens.
This last one opens up something of a can of worms. It implies that either the riders can create matter out of nothing or that the pens have internal machinery that relies on magic to function. Either of these have massive implications for the world (i.e. this society can just casually create matter or engineer mechanical devices that we don't see anywhere else) and open up potential plot holes. I suspect that Yarros learned about the Emerald Pen magic item from Dungeons & Dragons and thought it would be cool to just drop into her setting, without actually considering the ramifications.
These chapters also give us more information on the Signets. Like the Affinities in Blood Heir, these are magical superpowers. Each dragon gifts his or her rider with precisely one Signet ability. Dain has the ability to read anyone’s recent memories by just touching that person; Xaden can manipulate shadows. “Fire wielding, ice wielding, and water wielding” are identified as being common Signets. We also learn of rare yet extremely valuable Signets, like the ability to see the future and the aforementioned mending.
Yarros deserves some credit for this system. She didn’t just casually slap cool magical powers onto her characters. Some effort was put into integrating them into the rest of the worldbuilding. If anything, my only significant critique of the Signets is that she did not think through the potential plot holes that individual powers would create.
The Good
The thing about unpredictable magical superpowers is that they would be a logistical nightmare to employ in a military. These aren’t abilities that can be honed through a meritocratic training process. They aren’t weapons that can be mass-produced if enough budget is allocated to the production. Some of these powers would actually be too dangerous to utilize due to the risk of collateral damage or the security risks if the rider is not trustworthy.
Yarros accounted for this to some extent. By the time Chapter 4 is done, we are aware that riders are supposed to broadcast their Signet abilities to other riders through patches on their uniforms, but some Signets are so classified (due to either power level or security implications) that said riders do not wear patches. Dain acknowledges that if he had outright mind reading, the power of an “inntinnsic”, he would have been a security risk (we will later learn in Chapter 18 that Navarre has a standing kill order out for any rider who manifests an inntinnsic Signet). Upon learning about Xaden’s Signet, Violet concludes that it much be the reason that he has been made a wing leader. This implies that the military will prioritize and advance personnel simply for having powerful Signets that can be used on the battlefield. Fitttingly, Violet’s mother and General Melgren, the guy who sees the future, are both incredibly high-ranking officers with extraordinarily powerful Signets.
The Bad
What Yarros did not account for was the implications, or even the basic rules, of the most powerful Signets she was handing out. General Melgren’s ability to see the future is the most obvious example of this.
Chapter 3 establishes that Melgren can never be assassinated, because he can see “a battle’s outcome before it happens”. However, in Chapter 5, it is then established that he only knows outcomes, not when the battle will take place. Chapters 31 and 36 will reiterate him understanding the outcome of a battle, while Chapter 39 (the last chapter of the book) will introduce a blind spot in his ability as a way to explain how he couldn’t invalidate the conclusion of the book.
So how does his Signet actually work?
If he can only see an outcome - not even when it will happen, just the outcome - then his Signet really isn’t as overwhelmingly powerful as the characters are making it out to be. It should absolutely be possible to assassinate him. All he should know if that he might die under certain conditions, but unless he plans to hide in a bunker all his life, he’s going to have to keep going about his day regardless. Literally all an assassin would have to do is kill him in a way so obvious that he’s not going to even bother trying to avoid it. When you factor in his blind spot - which is something that is both known by and accessible to a group of people with a strong motivation to assassinate him - he should have been killed long ago.
It might seem like I am nitpicking this, but Yarros made a big deal out of Melgren’s ability in the text. He is transparently being set up as some flavor of antagonist (whether a villain or merely an ally who is an obstacle) for later in the series, and his Signet is being pushed as the reason why the Violet and other characters should be intimidated by him. It should not be this easy to find massive plot holes.
Another example is the rider who can change the sizes of objects. Feel free to revisit my analysis of Violet’s literal plot armor if you want more about this. The bottom line is, a rider has a Signet that would be incredibly useful for making body armor, yet this military with detailed records on and contingencies for Signets never considered that potential application of his abilities.
Unfortunately, a lot of the Signets are like this. Their full limits are never established, and their applications are never explored. We will later learn that the human body can only safely channel so much magical energy without dying, even with a dragon’s help, but that doesn’t manifest as a practical limitation. Riders are essentially just people with cool powers that we aren’t supposed to think about.
Dragons
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that dragons are a quintessential element of modern Western fantasy. So many different writers have had so many different takes on them in recent decades. Since most of those writers are not scholars of the myths and legends from which dragons originally came, they are often making derivatives of dragons from other works.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. It’s not objectively bad to have dragons grouped into bloodlines with special powers, to make them telepathic, or to have them give special powers to their riders. What matters more is that a given iteration of dragons fit into the narrative and world in which it appears.
It’s important to spell this out because Yarros’s dragons are not the good kind of derivative. They fit into the world she created at a conceptual level, yet too many of the details fail to have any sort of internal consistency. It is obvious that she took superficial elements from other works without considering the deeper lore behind those elements. There are a few elements that might well be original creations thrown into the mix, but given that these also lack consistency, I suspect that these are simply derivatives from sources I don’t know.
The Lore
By the end of Chapter 6, we are made aware of the following about dragons:
While they do have names, they are identified based upon their color and the type of natural weapon that tips the ends of their tails (“orange swordtail”, “black morningstartail”, etc).
They are hexapods, with four limbs being legs and the remaining two being wings.
While we are never given a precise description (and, indeed, are given a great deal of contradictory information) as to their overall sizes and the proportions of their bodies, Chapter 3 tells us that the outer wall of the Riders Quadrant, which is 10 feet (about 3 meters) thick, is a “perch” for them, with their talons going around “either side” (implying it’s less like a bird on a branch and more like a cat on the back of a sofa). Chapter 12 will later tell us that they are 25 feet tall on average, but does not specify whether this is the height of the shoulder or the head, nor does it explain what position the dragon is in when this is measured.
They all breathe fire.
The reason that they are allied with the kingdom of Navarre is that they also manifest Signet powers from the bond. Specifically, a dragon gains a Signet that facilitates the creation of protective wards around their nesting grounds. Navarre is nearly circular because its boundaries are defined by the outermost limits of these wards.
A dragon who loses a rider will, at worst, be shamed by other dragons for choosing a weak rider. (The epigraph for Chapter 14 and information revealed in Chapter 16 will contradict this rule.) A rider who loses a dragon will suffer heart failure within minutes.
The Good
As I said, these dragons work at a conceptual level. So much about this setting is at least partially explained by their existence. You could not take the dragons out of this world without fundamentally altering the setting and the story.
The entire premise of this story - Violet enrolling in a death school - is only possible because said death school caters to the expectations of the dragons. The magic system is tied directly into the dragons. The greater geopolitical conflict, which will no doubt become central to the series as it progresses, relies on the dragons to maintain the status quo.
Yarros did not write a story and then slap on the dragons for flavor. She wrote a story that can only exist because of these dragons. This is a fine start.
The Bad
Most of my issues with the dragons are really issues with the Riders Quadrant, so I'll discuss them down the line as they become relevant. However, there is one fundamental quality of the dragons that really confuses me. It seems to only be there because Yarros thought it looked cool elsewhere: the variety of colors and tails.
A very big deal is made of these elements. Later down the line, we will be told that the colors exhibits certain patterns of behavior. Chapter 8 explicitly tells us that blue and black dragons are the most powerful (at least, for the colors identified in this book). The weapons that define the dragons’ tails will be referred to a defining aspect of their “breed” in Chapter 3 and again in Chapter 12. It is made clear that a dragon's color and tail should speak volumes about their heritage, personality, and power.
Here's the problem: Chapter 16 will introduce a mated pair of dragons who are neither the same color nor the same tail type. This means that dragons are freely mingling their genes. And, since we are not told that this pair are in any way special (which would have been a lazy shortcut in and of itself, yet still a viable solution), it is reasonable to assume that this is normal. To borrow a phrase from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, each of these dragons should be a genetic sock drawer. Color and tail type should be meaningless if a dragon's power level is based upon its ancestry.
Why, then, does Yarros make a big deal about this?
Usually, when colors (or other such traits) of dragons are emphasized in a story, we are given a strong reason to care about them. The color has either mechanical or symbolic meaning.
In the Pern setting, the colors of dragons reflect an inverse relationship between adult size/speed and maneuverability (with greens bring small and maneuverable and blues, browns, bronzes, and golds getting progressively larger and less maneuverable). All females are green or gold, and only the golds are allowed to breed, so there is political power to being the rider of a gold dragon or the rider of a gold dragon’s mate. The colors are not linked to any bloodline; a gold who mates with a bronze will produce eggs for all five colors of dragon.
In Eragon, the colors of dragons have no mechanical purpose, but immense symbolic value is placed upon two riders riding dragons of the same color or upon a rider wielding a sword of their dragon’s color.
Across the various media and settings of Dungeons & Dragons, the colors reflect subspecies of dragons, which are distinct not only in their appearance but also their personalities and the magical energies they wield (red dragons are proud and avaricious and breathe fire, black dragons are sadists who spit acid, silver dragons are noble warriors who breathe cold air, etc). While different colors can interbreed, a combination of cultural norms and pride in the purity of their bloodline discourages this.
Fourth Wing has none of that - or, rather, it tries to have multiple explanations be true simultaneously, and the end result is a garbled mess of seemingly random traits. The colors and tail weapons end up being nothing more than a way to establish which characters are special. Xaden rides a blue dragon. General Melgren rides a black dragon. I am not going to spoil what happens to Violet in this regard, but it is very clear from the narrative voice that our Mary Sue cannot bond with anything less than the most special dragon in the whole story.
Yarros Ripped Off Eragon
This is not an objective criticism, but since I did make a big deal out of it on the Shadiversity Discord, I should acknowledge it here.
Based upon the evidence in this book, Yarros primarily derived her dragons from the dragons of Eragon. Any similarities to Pern appear to be purely coincidental or the result of the fact that the dragons is Eragon appear to be heavily based off of Pern as well. If Yarros did read Pern, and did intend to pay homage to it, then she fundamentally misunderstood that setting.
The following is a list of the most obvious connections between Fourth Wing and Eragon.
The bond between riders and dragons enables telepathic communication and magical powers.
All riders receive a “relic” from their dragons when they bond, which is not unlike the Shining Palm that riders in Eragon receive. A dragon can also brand a non-rider with a relic, similar to how Saphira branded Elva.
Chapter 22 establishes that a rider will be overwhelmed by their dragon’s lust when their dragon is mating. This superficially resembled Pern, but given how riders can shut it out, this is more akin to the dragons from Eragon (who at least sense the lust of their dragons, even if they have not been shown to be affected by it).
For all of the fuss made about color in the story, it ultimately boils down to a measuring contest of “my dragon is better than yours”. It feels about as deep as the disdain that Saphira from Eragon expresses towards brown dragons. Yes, expressing these views tells us something about the characters involved, but in both cases, they are treated as personal opinions about superficial details rather than something that truly affects the story.
This is nothing wrong with being influenced by Eragon. I just think it’s interesting to note the influences that show up in a piece of work. It provides insight into what the writer changed or added and how much they understand both their sources and what they own work.
Riders Quadrant and Dragon Rider’s Codex
The Riders Quadrant, and the Codex of rules that define it, are even more integral to this story than the dragons themselves. The dragon enable the premise, but the Quadrant IS the premise. The plot, Violet’s character arc, and the characterizations of every single character is defined by the existence of this death school.
It is also so poorly written that plot holes are already opening up by the end of Chapter 6. They will grow catastrophically worse as the story progresses. By the end of Chapter 11, Violet will be assassinated as a character because of the worldbuilding of the Quadrant. Not long after that, the plot will begin to come apart at the seams.
On a first read, I had some small hope that my many questions about this school would be answered. It wasn’t much of a hope - I was assuming, at the time, that this was knockoff of a badly written Young Adult military school - but it was some hope nonetheless. That hope was disappointed with each new rule and danger revealed about the school.
Assassination Classroom
In concept, the idea of the Quadrant as a death school is an interesting idea that is justified by the dragons.
The dragons need the humans, but not more than the humans need them. They will outlive multiple riders. They therefore demand riders who have proven capable of surviving the challenges of being a rider, whether those challenges are a brutal combat zone or the simple dangers of navigating high places. Furthermore, because the number of candidates far outnumbers the number of dragons seeking a rider, some means is needed to cull the available candidates.
With that in mind, it makes sense that cadets are subjected to deadly training exercises. It makes sense that there is no consequence for killing off fellow cadets in sparring matches. It even makes some sense that cadets are allowed to murder each other in the hallways, since that will encourage a constant state of alertness.
What does not make sense are the rules used to control this bloodbath.
The Codex
The Dragon Rider’s Codex is referenced several times throughout the text, both within the diegesis of the story and the epigraphs that open each chapter. Its primary role within the text is to dictate when Violet is or isn’t in danger of being murdered as well as what actions she can take to survive, though it does serve a broader purpose as the governing text of the Quadrant.
Fourth Wing reveals only the rules that are relevant to the story, typically revealing new rules over time. At least once (in Chapter 11), this comes across as an ass-pull to justify a new development, but I don't think this approach is bad in principle.
I’m going to restrict the current discussion of the Codex-induced plot holes to just what has been covered thus far, since I feel that alone demonstrates how poorly written this element is. By the end of Chapter 6, we are aware of the following rules of the Codex:
Riders cannot harm one another while in official gatherings or in front of superior officers. This is explicitly done so as to not “diminish the efficacy of the wing”.
Riders within the same squad cannot attack one another.
Riders cannot attack one another while they are asleep.
1st-year riders are not permitted contact with anyone outside of the school. This is done to foster loyalty to the wing above all else.
Violating any of the above is a capital offense that will result in immediate execution.
While not stated in any one specific rule (that we are told about), the Codex as a whole encourages riders to both prove their worth to the dragons through survival of the fittest and to proactively cull anyone from their ranks who might be a liability to the unit.
Can anyone else notice the glaring contradiction in these rules?
If you said, “Riders can’t attack squad mates, but different squads in the same wing can attack each other,” congratulations. You put more thought into this than Yarros did.
Immense emphasis is placed upon the Quadrant’s efforts to burn away past loyalties and make candidates into soldiers who prioritize their wing, a military unit, above all else, yet immense emphasis is also put on the fact that Violet has members of her military unit who are out to get her. Xaden and Imogen are just two of the members of the wing who want her dead. They are within their rights to murder her at any point, and Yarros wants us to fear that possiblity, yet we are also expected to believe that the Codex wants these people to be good soldiers united by a common purpose.
Also, something I initially missed, but which Reads with Rachel pointed out in her review of this book, is that we are never provided with an objective standard of what constitutes a liability. It is entirely subjective. Arguably, Jack being a murderous sociopath makes him a liability to a military unit, yet no one disposes of him. Violet’s disability should have flagged her as a liability, but as we’ll get into down below, no one but Jack tries to take her out. In fact, with how vaguely worded this expectation is, anyone could be murdered for any petty reason without consequence. Having controversial opinions or cutting in the lunch line or just having an annoying laugh are all things that could affect interpersonal relationships, and therefore impact unit cohesion, so they should be valid grounds for murder with how the Codex is written.
And this is just the rules on the page. We haven’t even gotten to the applications.
Application - Death in the Hallways (Heavy Spoilers)
Emphasis is put on the danger of being killed in the hallways between classes.
How many times do you think that someone attempts to kill Violet or another character between classes?
Zero times. This never comes up.
Application - Secret Lovers (Heavy Spoilers)
Emphasis is put on the danger that Violet’s association with Dain will bring. After all, if people know that they have history, Violet could be seen as cozying up to an upperclassman for protection, marking her as both a weak link and a threat. Dain and Violet are then immediately outed by Xaden.
How many times do you think this comes around and presents a threat to Violet’s life?
Zero times. This never comes up.
Application - Kill the Spares (Heavy Spoilers)
Emphasis is put on the fact that liabilities to the wing will be culled, with both the wording and Violet’s reaction to how people perceive her implying that she will be targeted because of her ESD.
How many times do you think this happens?
Zero times. This never comes up.
To be clear, attempts are made to kill Violet. It’s just that they aren’t tied to her health. Jack is a murderous sociopath who marked her for death on the Parapet and is desperate to follow through. Later in the book, after Violet successfully bonds to a dragon, a group of cadets who didn’t get picked by dragons try to ambush her, aided by one of the minor antagonists. The fact that she is a liability is used as a justification, but it is very clear that everyone involved in that attempt either had an axe to grind or just wanted a shot at bonding with her dragon.
Application - Murderous Sociopath Classmate
In Chapter 2, Jack murders the candidate behind him on the Parapet and attempts to do the same to Violet. When Violet reaches the safety on the far side and warns him that he’d be violating the Codex if he tried to harm her in front of a superior officer, he loudly declares that he doesn’t care and tries to kill her anyway, only stopping because Violet already had a knife on him.
This man has openly declared contempt for the Codex and attempted to violate it in front of witnesses.
He does not get executed.
Application - Sparring Mat
Jack, Imogen, and at least one other candidate violate the Codex rule against harming another rider in front of a superior officer before the end of Chapter 5.
The sparring session is explicitly meant to be a preliminary assessment. The students are forbidden from drawing their knives (but, for some reason, aren’t forced to disarm before stepping into the ring). The supervising professor is also monitoring them and barking instructions and reprimands. It is made extremely clear that the normal rules permitting a kill during a sparring match are not in effect.
Despite this, Jack breaks a fellow cadet’s neck. A cadet named Ridoc pulls a knife on another cadet. Imogen openly declares her intent to murder Violet, then channels magic (despite several reprimands) to thrash Violet and break her arm.
All three of these cadets have displayed intent to kill and violated orders to pursue it, thereby violating the Codex.
None of them get executed. They barely even get a talking-to. We later learn that Dain uses his authority as squad leader to punish Imogen with cleaning duties, but that’s it.
The Takeaway
Having a death school as a setting of the story is fine in concept, but execution really does matter. There is a difference between, “Danger lurks around every corner, our heroine must play a dangerous game to survive,” and just having murderous maniacs roam around with no consequences. The rules need to be consistent for the audience to get fully invested.
This wouldn’t even have been hard to fix. All Yarros had to do was remove the supposedly ever-present possibility of death and to have the professors be competent. If the cadets can only kill each other on the sparring mat, and they are only otherwise in danger during official exercises, then most of the contradictions and failed setups would be erased. If the sparring professor was actually doing his job instead of making hollow reprimands, then there wouldn’t have been multiple violations. Jack could still kill that cadet and Imogen could still break Violet’s arm in this scenario, with Jack’s rewritten to make it less obvious that he was flouting the rules and Imogen defeating Violet without using magic.
Throwing the Gauntlet
Well. That took some time, didn’t it?
If I have not yet convinced you that the worldbuilding of this story is fundamentally broken, don’t worry: it’s going to get much worse very soon.
Chapter 7 through Chapter 11 is where the plot of this book really gets going. It’s where we get to see Violet’s character arc take flight and where the romance subplot starts to smolder. It is also where Violet suffers the first brutal assassination of this book. (Yes. There are multiple.) I will do my best to condense things next time, since now that foundations have been laid, but there will still be a lot that needs to be said.
Hang tight, folks. This is where the storm properly rolls in. I see you all next week.
