Fourth Wing (Chapter 30 through Chapter 32)
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.
CONTENT WARNING
This is the section of the book with the pornography. In case you do not want to read about that type of content, I will be isolating the portion of my analysis that is linked to sexual content to a designated section, though even within this section, I will not be assessing the pornographic material directly. The focus will remain upon how the handling of sexuality is connected to other aspects of the story (in particular, the massive damage Yarros manages to do to the entire premise of this book).
If you want absolutely nothing to do with sexual content, feel free to rejoin us next week. I’ll include a recap of the non-sexual plot beats at the start of next week’s part so that you won’t miss anything.
If you want to read along, but don’t want to read the sex scenes, one is located in Chapter 30, and the other two are located in Chapter 32. I’d provide precise pages, but I don’t have a hard copy, and since the page numbers of the Barnes & Noble Nook edition appear to vary between my phone and my iPad.
STORY
Violet and Xaden have sex. This involves multiple accidental discharges of their Signet powers, destroying most of Violet’s room. Afterwards, Violet questions Xaden about a pattern of scars on his back. He reveals that the reason that the rebel children are conscripted into the Riders Quadrant is because of him. After the rebellion, he cut a deal with Navarre in which the children would be conscripted as an alternative to being executed with their parents. The scars on his back are to remind him to keep the rebel children loyal to Navarre, as he will be executed if even one betrays the kingdom. Violet then convinces him to spend the night with her. He departs before morning, but he leaves her flowers.
Violet is hauled out into the mountains to train with her lightning Signet with Professor Carr, who is in charged of helping riders control their magical abilities. While there, Violet explores the limits of her power. Later, Xaden meets Violet as she is cleaning up her room. She notices that her book of fables (which Mira had passed over to her back in Chapter 26) has split long the binding, revealing a cryptic letter from her father about history being buried. Xaden then tells her that they can’t be in a relationship (which leads to a sexual tension moment of them saying explicit things to arouse one another), and Violet kicks him out.
There are a few scenes of Violet lusting after Xaden and nettling him about a relationship, spanning approximately one month. A big ball to celebrate Reunification Day (the anniversary of the end of the rebellion) is established as an important event that also marks the ending of the academic year. Xaden does not arrive for this celebration. Violet slips away from the ball and finds him sitting on the Parapet. She ventures out to meet him, proclaiming her love for him, and gets him to admit that he loves her, too. They then go up to his room and have sex (again, blowing things up with their Signets). There’s a brief bit of pillow talk and then they have have sex a third time. In the middle of this, a rider pounds of Xaden’s door. The whole Quadrant has been mustered to respond to an imminent attack upon Navarre.
PLOT
Romance Subplot
Nothing happens outside of Violet and Xaden having sex. Yarros tries to rush this subplot of Violet trying to convince Xaden to admit that he loves her and commit to a relationship. However, it is far too condensed to work. It amounts to one chapter, which is also being used to rush the setup for the climax. Nothing would have been lost by simply having their relationship be official from the moment that they had sex the first time.
There is No War in Navarre
Around this point, Yarros really starts to hammer on the idea that government of Navarre is the enemy Violet will ultimately need to overcome. During the ball, she encounters the king, and he comes off as less than pleasant. There is the matter of her father’s cryptic letter about history being buried. Then there’s the book of fables itself. Information from this book has been referenced a few times throughout this story, but always as a background detail. It felt like flavor to color in the world and the characters.
Now, Yarros is force-feeding us information at an incredible density. There’s no subtlety here. She is rushing us towards a climax that she should have been building towards for the entire book. The idea that Navarre is rewriting history and suppressing information about the war could have been fantastic for the core plot, but Yarros simply has not crafted a story to accommodate it. No matter how many letters or intelligence briefings Violet has read throughout this book, none of this has been SHOWN to us. We are being told that the kingdom is shady and that bad things are happening in the world, but it’s always in random crumbs of information that don’t tie into anything and aren’t supported by anything else. It reads as though Yarros wrote this entire book on a single draft and then doubled back to slap in a few moments of weak foreshadowing, rather than make an earnest attempt at a rewrite to support the impending climax.
(Plus, given how Violet is the 1st-person POV, any implication that the kingdom is shady is suspect. We’ve seen plenty of evidence at this point of how skewed her perception of reality is and how deep her double standards run.)
CHARACTERS
Violet
During the scene with Carr, Violet takes offense at both his referring to her body as frail and to his referring to her as an asset for her Signet. We’ve already covered her delusions about her physical capability in great detail. Her reaction to being called an asset further confirms that she still doesn’t grasp the military significance and responsibility of being a rider. She has known for this entire book that the military deploys and promotes riders based upon their Signets. The idea that she would be valued for her own Signet should not offend her if she is actually devoted to this duty.
Violet’s decision to continually chase Xaden, even after he tells her that they can’t have a relationship, isn't objectively bad writing. I just can't help but reflect on Violet's penchant for double standards and how that would affect the presentation if the roles were reversed. This falls under the modern definition of sexual harassment (and given everything else about the Quadrant, it should be sexual harassment within the setting, too). Some of the folks I talked to on the Shadiversity Discord pointed out that she is effectively a stalker. It’s hard to really support and empathize with Violet when there's no doubt that she would demonize any man who pulled the same stunt on her. More importantly to the objective quality of the narrative, the fact that Xaden tried to keep Violet at arm’s length, and that she kept pushing anyway until she wore him down, is going to be very relevant to her characterization a few chapters from now.
Xaden
Bad Boy Love Interest is actually a Type B Tsundere burdened by a dark secret.
I really wish I had more to say about Xaden. From what I can see up to this point, he's not badly written. He's just a walking trope. There is nothing to dissect outside of acknowledging that he is checking off traits associated with the trope.
Nadine
Nadine gets two lines of dialogue during one of the scenes after Violet finds her father’s letter but before the ball. She is part of a snippet where the characters chat about their sex lives. At this point, her hostility towards rebel children has either resolved itself or simply been forgotten, thereby robbing her of her only character trait. The only other conclusion I can draw about her is that she is supportive of both homosexuality and the hedonistic sex culture of the Quadrant, but since that makes her no different from any other background character, it doesn’t really work as characterization.
WORLDBUILDING
Signet
During the training with Carr, we learn the following about Violet’s Signet:
She is only able to fire off six lightning blasts before she is exhausted.
Her body temperature rises significantly when she uses the power.
Her powers are triggered by emotion. Xaden helps her to summon lightning by telepathically transmitting her memories of them having sex.
Carr is not surprised by any of this (though he is unaware of the sexual memories being used), as the last rider with a lightning Signet experienced similar limits.
These are reasonable rules that are easy to follow (assuming that they are consistently executed going forward). Carr's understanding of Violet's Signet gives this power a sense of depth and history. I also like that Violet is shown to have terrible aim with the lightning. It gives her something to work towards (again, provided that this is consistently handled going forwards).
Xaden’s Deal (Heavy Spoilers)
So. Xaden will be executed if any of the rebel children are disloyal.
Chasing the rabbit a bit here, shouldn’t have the looming threat be that ALL of them would be executed if any rebel? Xaden can only be killed once. Given the wide age range of the rebel children, he also has a high risk of dying in the line of duty before the youngest of them enters the Riders Quadrant. Also, if we were to assume that only his life is on the line, that does nothing to stop HIM from rebelling.
The logical conclusion, therefore, is that Yarros intended to tell us that all of the rebel children have their lives on the line, with Xaden being the lynchpin to their survival.
The sequel, Iron Flame, will confirm that this is indeed the case. Within the first two chapters of that book, it is established that Xaden violating this deal with result in the execution of every rebel child. With how these statements are worded, it could also easily mean that any one rebel child’s disobedience could get all of them executed.
This means that, by having those clandestine get-togethers with the other rebel children inside the Quadrant, Xaden endangers the life of every innocent child who is bound by the agreement but too young to enter the Quadrant. This is not a good look for him.
Within the next few chapters, it is going to get a lot worse.
A DISCUSSION OF WORLDBUILDING FOR THE SEXUAL CONTENT
As promised, I am isolating this from the rest of the analysis. This is not going to be an analysis of the pornography itself. Rather, it will be a review of how Yarros attempted to use her worldbuilding to shore up said pornographic content, and how doing so opened plot holes or simply fell short of other stories that did similar things. If you don’t want to read about this, feel free to exit the review here. We will pick up next week with Chapter 33 through Chapter 35.
Dragons & Bonds
Chapter 22 establishes that Violet experiences Tairn's lust when he is mating. This is used to feed into a first kiss between Violet and Xaden, which Xaden breaks off upon recognizing that it's a function of both of them being impaired. This same scene also has Xaden smoking something to help block out the lust being fed to him by his dragon.
Superficially, this is fine. It's a balance between Pern and Eragon, not overwhelming the rider entirely but not being something that can be easily ignored, either.
Why does this only surface in the one scene, though? To be more specific, why was this not discussed or explored prior to this scene?
This isn't a rare or special thing. It has been established that mated dragons will try to bond with riders at the same Threshing, so as to ensure that they won't have to be separated by their riders graduating at different times. Tairn and Xaden's dragon represent an abnormal case. However, the fact that there is a norm against which they can be contrasted indicates that there this is something riders have had to deal with for a long time. The riders should not be unaware of this telepathically transmitted lust.
Why wasn't THIS have been the origin of the hedonistic sex within the Riders Quadrant?
That's how Pern did it, and it made a lot of sense. The riders with mating dragons got used to surrendering to the lust of their dragons, resulting in a lowering of their inhibitions in general, and that radiated out from them to affect the wider culture of the Wyrs.
Why weren't cadets given psychological training to account for the pressures of the bond? Riders of mated dragons aren't compelled to have sex with one another specifically, so there is a very real risk of a rider raping either another rider or an unbonded cadet. Would a rider who commits such a rape be held accountable for the deed? Or would this, like the murders, be acceptable so long as no other Codex rules were broken? (Come to think of it, is rape in general permitted under the Codex? With all of the strange and inconsistent rules established thus far, I would not be shocked if it was permitted.)
Again, Pern did this better. The overwhelming lust transmitted from dragons to their riders during a mating frenzy forces the riders of any two mating dragons to have sex with one another. It is a rare rider who can resist this compulsion, and that rider will just end up being raped by the rider who couldn’t resist the compulsion. No reference is ever made to one of these rapes being punished. The one time we meet the victim of one such rape, she is effectively shamed for not just going with the flow. This is an incredibly grim scenario. However, it is internally consistent with everything else established about the bond between riders and dragons.
Ultimately, this element was introduced just to force a first kiss between Violet and Xaden. I'm not against adding a worldbuilding element merely to achieve a functional goal within the plot, but if one chooses to do that, that worldbuilding element needs to fold organically into the rest of the world. We should not need to ask these uncomfortable questions just for our leads to get a kiss (at least, not if the story is not going to explore these questions). Avoiding unnecessary rabbit holes is one of the things that separates good Fantasy from bad.
Signets
Both Violet and Xaden lose control of their Signets during sex. This came close to injuring (or killing) them each time.
Why is this not a known risk among riders? Would that not out a dampener on the hedonistic sex culture?
People dying due to out-of-control Signet powers is an established reality of this school. Why is the risk of discharging a Signet during sex never mentioned? Why does the Codex allow this sexual culture if there is a genuine risk of their best military assets being killed on this manner? Or does Yarros really expect us to believe that the sex between Violet and Xaden is so good that they are the only riders to have ever lost control in a institution of hundreds of people with the same type of powers who are constantly having sex with one another?
Consequences
The riders in the Quadrant take “the fertility suppressant” to avoid conceiving children. This is mentioned in the middle of the first sex scene:
My pulse skyrockets. “I take the fertility suppressant.” Of course, we both do. The last thing anyone wants are little quadrant babies running around. But it’s better said than sorry.
“Same.”
Okay. Many thoughts here.
I originally wrote a length analysis of the fact that Yarros failed to have any of the characters acknowledge that their hedonistic sex makes babies, which feels really weird given how much else she copy-pasted from a modern American university campus. It wasn't until Reads With Rachel mentioned it in her review that I ran a keyword search for “fertility suppressant”. This still leaves the issue of no one catching sexually transmitted infections, but I'm willing to acknowledge that Yarros closed the conception question.
However, the way she did this blows yet another hole in her premise. Let’s run through the list of small problems before we get to the incomprehensibly huge one.
First, Navarre apparently has advanced enough biochemical science to make a single chemical contraceptive that works for both women and men (which is something even we haven't figured out). How did they manage this when so much else about their world is medieval? Technological progression in a fantasy world doesn't have to follow our own, but between this and the ORS, additional worldbuilding is now needed to explain how specific modern technologies exist but not others.
Second, how widespread is this substance? The fact that no mention is made of Violet starting to use it indicates that she was already taking it prior to entering the Quadrant. This indicates that Navarre has indeed had a sexual revolution, no doubt propelled by this substance … which once again raises the question of why the “hedonistic” sexual culture is worth remarking upon. Surely, this entire kingdom would be in the same boat (and, judging by the lack of any culture shock on the part of any of the cadets, this is indeed the case).
Third, how are they getting this substance? Did Violet bring a year's supply of it in her bag on her first day? Did Xaden? Or is the military issuing contraceptives to the cadets, thereby squandering resources that could be used to make drugs for troops on the front lines?
The latter explanation would seem to be the most likely. Contraceptive availability doesn’t magically prevent conception. I don’t care how dedicated these people are to maintaining hedonistic sex lives without consequence - human error is still a thing. The lack of children in the Quadrant can only be rationalized by a higher authority forcing all cadets and bonded riders to ingest the suppressant at regular intervals. This is further supported by Yarros’s chosen phrasing. If “the last thing ANYONE wants are little quadrant babies”, that implies that the military (which is already aware of and condoning the hedonistic sex) has a policy in place to prevent the natural consequences of such a culture. Granted, this then raises the question of why Xaden and Violet pause to exchange this information, but it would hardly be the first bit of forced exposition in this book. On top of all of this, because we are never shown or told about dragons going into battle without a rider, each pregnancy represents multiple months (at minimum) in which the rider’s dragon is out of commission. It makes sense that the military would want to avoid pregnancy, and since they are making zero efforts to curb the sexual intercourse, forcing their cadets to take contraceptives is a likely fallback position.
However … mentally sorting through this third problem exposes a far greater issue with this world, one that exists regardless of how the cadets are getting their hands on the drug.
The plot hole that we must now discuss has existed since Chapter 1. It has only grown worse over time. However, much like a sinkhole forming beneath karst, this plot hole has gone undetected, edging towards the moment where it grew so large that the soil layers above buckled under their own weight … or until an unwitting soul stepped on the unsupported area and dropped into the hole.
The last thing anyone wants are little quadrant babies running around.
That, Ms. Yarros, is the sound of your premise collapsing.
Why Are Women Allowed to be Riders?
Let's recap the culture and geopolitical situation in Navarre and the cold realities of the Rider's Quadrant.
Navarre is in a constant state of war. It has been for centuries. This conflict demands a constant stream of soldiers to the front lines. Breeding more soldiers is something they explicitly value. Chapter 1 acknowledges that riders are encouraged to marry young so as to “continue bloodlines”, thereby ensuring that desirable traits for riders are continued into the next generation. On top of this, the war has also forced many cold-hearted policies, like executing inntinnsics as a potential security risk just for having a particular Signet that manifests randomly.
The Rider's Quadrant, meanwhile, is a brutal environment filled with lethal physical challenges, where ambition-fueled violence is encouraged. The conception of children in this environment is “the last thing anyone wants”, despite the fact that any children conceived in said environment would be preserving those valuable rider bloodlines, thereby making them military assets.
With everything that has been established here - with everything that Yarros has chosen to tell us about this world - this is a terrible environment for egalitarianism. Women would not be allowed to be riders. Frankly, they would not be on any sort of combat position within Navarre’s military as a whole. Their military options woould be limited to healers, scribes, or … military wives.
Let Me Be Clear
Egalitarian militaries are not bad in concept. I understand that there are ongoing issues with how to implement it in the real world, but in fictional worlds, a setting can be structured so as to resolve, bypass, or negate said issues. At the end of the day, a good military will do what it must to perform with peak effectiveness. That includes utilizing the available personnel in whatever manner will allow them to best contribute (or removing those individuals who prove to be a liability). Egalitarianism, in and of itself, does not run counter to this objective.
The issue here is that, with everything Yarros has chosen to establish, the most effective military for Navarre would not be an egalitarian one. It would be one where men do the fighting while women, at most, fill logistical and support roles. This is an issue that has simmered breath the surface from the start of the book, but it could be ignored or rationalized. By introducing contraceptives in this way, Yarros has forceed this issue to the surface.
Why would a nation that is in constant need of soldiers and that prioritizes good breeding allow women to serve in the military but not have a support network in place to facilitate these women having children while they serve? Once more, I must point out that Pern did this better. The Wyrs were effectively socialist communes that raised all children communally, meaning that the few women who were riders would only be grounded temporarily. (It also helped that Pern had a period where women were only allowed to ride gold dragons, which had minimum involvement in combat operations against the Thread.) Sure, Dragonquest established that there abortion was common in the Wyrs, but the overall Wyr culture was one that accepted and accommodated the consequences of the riders’ promiscuous sex lives.
One would think that Navarre would have a similar system in place, especially if the children of riders are so valuable that they encourage riders to marry young and start having said kids. The fact that they want the exact opposite is a contradiction that exposes the flaws in a premise that was otherwise easy to accept at face value. It calls into question why they would ever allow any situation where conception could occur.
So, I ask that we all approach this next part with an open mind. There is a lot we can learn from the mistakes made here. It would be a shame to waste this opportunity for all of us to grow as builders of fantasy worlds.
Population Crisis
In a generations-long military conflict that needs a constant influx of soldiers, women - and, more specifically, mothers - would be the most valuable individuals in all of society. They are the future. The military will literally collapse without their support.
Let's take Yarros as an example. (Given how much else about this world is copy-pasted from our own, I have no doubt that she could find a way to transpose her family situation into this setting.) Each mother in Navarre potentially represents five new citizens of Navarre, plus a home for one war orphan. The split between sexes for our species is close enough to 50-50 to conclude that each mother in Navarre represents three sons and three daughters. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that all of the sons become soldiers, while one of the daughters becomes a healer or scribe (and, to simplify the math that follows, say that this daughter never has children. Assume she dies in the line of duty or is married to her career). The other two daughters would become mothers themselves and have the same number of children … and two of their daughters would do the same …
This means that any given woman in Navarre either represents one member of the military or … four members of the military in the first generation, another eight in the second generation, another sixteen in the third generation …
You get the idea.
With how Navarre as a whole and its military leadership specifically are characterized, they would absolutely have done this same math. There is no way that these people would squander the future of their entire kingdom. They would absolutely send the men to die (since, after all, the men can’t have children, but they can certainly do all of the battlefield tasks that a woman could do) while encouraging women to assume non-combat roles and keep the civilian world running. What they would never do is compromise the survival of their nation by killing hundreds of women (many of whom have rider blood) each year in training exercises.
Quadrant Issues
The average man has superior odds of surviving the Quadrant versus the average woman.
A good chunk of this is the physical disparity between the average man and the average woman. Remember, Yarros has chosen to emphasize that when it is convenient to her narrative. We can’t simply hand-wave this due to it being a fantasy world. Doubling down on this problem is that the riders’ favored form of combat is one where men have a massive edge over women: melee combat, and in particular, hand-to-hand. This isn’t our modern world of firearms, artillery, explosives, and war machines. This is a world where reach, upper body strength, and weight could decide almost every violent engagement. These disparities can be offset by training, weapons, and environment, but with how this story presents things, the men are equal to the women in these aspects. Simply put, even if women have the same survival rates as the men for things like the Gauntlet and Threshing, they would be slaughtered en masse via Codex-sanctioned murders.
(In case anyone points out that Chapter 1 mentioned a fitness test to get into the Rider’s Quadrant, remember that Violet passed that test before she really started to build up her muscles. The standards of the test must be so low as to be effectively meaningless.)
Then there’s the psychological aspect: the aggression and ambition needed to acquire a dragon, even at the cost of murdering fellow cadets. Women can certainly possess these traits, but these are things usually associated with men … and Yarros acknowledges this. Compare how Jack and his cronies conducted themselves versus how Amber or Luka did. One sex is represented as predators seeking any sign of weakness of feed upon; the other is merely petty and relies on said predators to do their dirty work.
By Yarros’s own rules, very few women should survive the Quadrant. Navarre's leadership has already made the Quadrant volunteer-only (save for the rebel children) to balance the high death toll. It is strange that they would not outright ban women for the same reason.
Next, there’s the big reason WHY there is so much death in the Quadrant: the shortage of dragons. Now than Tairn has invalidated dragon expectations, the only reason left to have this Survival of the Fittest mentality is to cull excess recruits. If women were banned from becoming riders, the pool of cadets should be cut in half. Fewer people would need to die for everyone to get a dragon.
Lastly, we come to why we are having this discussion in the first place: the Quadrant wants to avoid pregnancies among the ranks of cadets and bonded riders.
Do you know what the most effective means to avoid pregnancy in a military is?
If you said abstinence, you're half-right. It's actually to not put women into the same military installation (or, worse, the same military unit) as a bunch of hot-blooded young men who are under a lot of stress. This isn't rocket science. If the military unit is single-sex (or, at least, has highly segregated roles with minimal contact), then its members will have a substantially harder time conceiving children by having sex with one another.
How to Fix This
This mess would be so easy to fix. There are both large and small changes that could have been made to justify an egalitarian force of dragon riders in Navarre. Some of these changes work in isolation, while others can be combined to maximize their mileage.
Yarros could have not mentioned contraceptives and just left it to the audience’s imagination, thereby not calling attention to this problem in the first place.
Yarros could have omitted contraceptives entirely. Humans could just have incredibly low fertility in this world. Alternatively, Violet could have done some quick math and confirmed that she’s in the low-fertility days of her cycle (which, granted, would not explain why no one else is conceiving, but with everything else established about Violet, I could buy that she could successfully gauge this on the fly).
Xaden (and the other rebel children) could have been sterilized as part of their punishment.
Pregnant riders are assigned to desk jobs. (There is already precedent for this in the book. Back in Chapter 16, Dain pushed Violet to reject Tairn and stick with Andarna because Andarna's inability to carry Violet's weight would ensure that Violet was assigned a desk job.) Violet and other female riders would be choosing to take the suppressant to evade that consequence.
Male and female riders could be trained for different combat roles. The female riders would be trained to defend the dragons’ nesting grounds while male riders are trained to be deployed to the border. This would eliminate the need for female riders to go through a lethal gauntlet of challenges that simulate frontline combat conditions, thereby bringing their death toll way down. They would also be able to have and raise children while remaining in a relatively safe environment, only mustering to unleash the power of their Signets if a threat came close to the nesting grounds. Because the dragons themselves would need to separate which ones are staying to guard the nesting grounds versus which ones venture out to the battlefields (to avoid the issue of mated dragons needing to be posted in different locations), this would also create separate pools of dragons that would not force men and women to compete against one another.
As above, except instead of getting combat role, female riders would be assigned to logistical and administrative positions (or, say, to work as liaisons to the scribes or healers). This would be another element ripped from Pern (riders of gold dragons handled administration of the Wyrs), but at least this time, it would reflect understanding of how and why that element exists.
Yarros could have not have mentioned maintaining bloodlines as a factor within the setting, thereby downplaying the need to constantly replenish the riders’ numbers.
All of these are very quick and basic solutions to justify an egalitarian military. Most would not fundamentally alter the narrative. I’m sure you could think of others. It is frustrating that Yarros didn’t stumble into ay of them, even by accident.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Chapter 33 through Chapter 35 mark the final ascent to the climax of the book. It's … not earned.
The plot beats that we are about to explore are not terrible. They could have made for a fantastic ending … if they had an entire book that built up to them. Yarros wasted Chapter 1 through Chapter 32 ricocheting between random events and half-formed conflicts. The result is a climax that feels as random and hollow as the Squad Battle.
Oh, and Violet continues to be terrible, and the worldbuilding takes yet another hit.
We are almost to the end, folks. I hope to see you all next week. Have a good day.
