Fourth Wing (Chapter 36 through Chapter 39)
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 book.
STORY
Xaden's squad is presented with a choice by the rider leadership: retreat from the venin assault on the other side of the border, or announce themselves as traitors by intervening. A vote is taken. The riders agree to intervene.
What follows is a furious battle between the riders and the venin. At first, there are only four venin and a lone wyvern, but things rapidly escalate as more wvyerns enter the battle, until a horde of “dozens and dozens” of wyverns is assaulting the riders. Liam dies after his dragon is slain. Violet is struck by a venin's poisoned sword. The battle ends when Violet uses the combination of her Signet and Andarna's power to single out the venin among the wvyern horde and kill them, thereby killing the wyverns.
Violet nearly dies from the poison. As she hovers on the verge of death, she hears Xaden arguing with the others in vague terms about “him” and something secret the rebel children are working on.
Chapter 39 takes place three days later, and it is from Xaden's POV. When Violet wakes up, she reiterates that she no longer trusts Xaden, which he accepts. Xaden then reveals that the rebel children are helping to rebuild them capital of Tyrrendor. He asks Violet to join the revived Tyr revolution.
The books ends with the reveal that Brennan is alive. The final line is:
Brennan just grins and opens his arms. “Welcome to the revolution, Violet.”
PLOT
Most of the issues here are a continuation of the problems from the previous part.
Battle
Having a big battle as the finale fits as the climax to come after the previous three chapters of buildup. However, it is not the climax that the book as a whole has built towards. Outside of the drama from Liam's death (which is built on him being a sympathetic character, not anything related to the plot), I couldn't get invested in any of it. The narrative itself has not justified the investment.
Romance Subplot
The drama with the romance subplot continues to lean on bad characterization. It is very clearly being done because Yarros wants relationship drama set up for the sequel. This is fine in principle, but the execution falls flat.
Aside from the artificial nature of this conflict, it's hard to get invested because of the nature of this romance subplot. Violet leaving Dain behind and choosing Xaden was a function of her personal character arc (or, at least, the arc that Yarros had conceptualized). Throwing in a betrayal twist is not a natural continuation of this story. If Yarros wanted to get us properly invested, she needed to start from scratch. More specifically, she should have waited until the sequel, established the relationship as the status quo, and then introduced the conflict as a new factor.
Rebellion
This comes completely out of left field.
The idea that Xaden and the rebel children would run weapons to Poromiel works as a twist. They are trying to carry in the will of their parents as best they can. They are also, be necessity, a small operation, one that can exist without completely destroying the established dynamics of the world.
Introducing the idea that the capital city of Tyrrendor is being rebuilt, and that another revolution is being prepared there, is not only a rather extreme escalation but also contrived nonsense.
The book has not built towards this conflict on any level. At least all of the previous shifts in the plot leaned on the premise of Violet being in the murder school. This just manifests during the time when the story should be wrapping up. I am all for introducing hooks for a sequel at the end of the book, but they should be hooks for a SEQUEL, not a radically different narrative.
What's more, this sequel hook hinges on our self-insert Mary Sue joining the conflict. We have not been given a reason why she would agree. We do not understand what her thought process was for this decision. This does not reflect a step in her personal journey. All I can conclude form it is that Yarros is copying the rebellion elements from other works (like Eragon and Divergent) out of a sense of obligation.
Venin Objective
During the battle, the venin are established as searching for some object within the trading post. This object, which the riders recover in the aftermath, is some sort of “small iron box" with magical runes protecting it. I can only assume that this is setup for the venin conflict later in the series, as it does not get explanation in this book.
In terms of sequel hooks, this works a lot better (provided, of course, that we accept the rebellion and the conflict outside Navarre as the new backbone for this story). It builds upon a conflict that already exists. It also introduces just enough information to tease the audience and build interest, rather than being an info dump that realigns the status quo at the last minute.
The Brennan Twist
This twist is on par with the resurrection in The City of Brass in terms of nonsense and contrivance. It doesn't affect the climax, which is a point in its favor, but it loses that point for violating the rules established by the story itself.
We were told, in no uncertain terms, by a character that Yarros wanted to establish as a trustworthy authority, that Brennan could not come back. Resurrection is not possible in this setting. This was told to us in a very direct manner, despite that information not being necessary for anything else in the story to work. The only way Yarros could have hammered on this any harder would have been to show us the corpse of Brennan’s dragon. At this point, it doesn’t matter whether Brennan was literally resurrected or was never truly dead in the first place. The only way that this is not a plot hole is if Yarros outright lied to the audience.
Then there is the issue of why Brennan is supporting a rebellion that he previous helped put down. We know nothing about him outside of him loving his family and possessing a mending Signet. Maybe if we understood his personal beliefs, this twist could have been supported by character work, but as it is, we've supposed to buy that he is just here and helping the rebellion because he is a good guy and the rebels are the good guys.
How was Brennan's death verified in the first place? We were told that Tairn's previous rider died trying to resurrect him. Because dragons don't talk to humans who aren't their own riders (or their mate's riders), the military leadership of Navarre could not have learned this from Tairn. They would have had to recover the bodies themselves. If that were the case, Brennan should be extra dead, as the people of Navarre exclusively practice cremation (and it was previously established that all of Brennan's possessions were burned, indicating that a funeral did take place). If the answer is that Tairn told other dragons, and those dragons told the rider leadership, that means either the dragons took Tairn at his word without asking to verify with his memories (something that was done when sentencing Amber to death) or that Tairn somehow falsified memories of Brennan bring dead. In either of those circumstances, did the riders seriously not attempt to recover Brennan's body and give every military honor to a war hero?
What makes this twist particularly insulting, though, is that Yarros clearly thought it was the greatest thing ever, and she tried to tease the audience with it using the same trick she pulled for the Amber twist.
While Violet is dying, she overhears vague snatches of conversation. Xaden argues with the others about getting her to someone with a mending Signet. They protest - without saying anything that would explicitly reveal the rebellion, despite not having a reason to dance around the subject - about how Xaden will ruin everything. Xaden settles the conversation with this line:
“We have to get her to him. We ride.”
I knew, at this point, that Brennan was alive. He is the only other established, named rider with a mending Signet. Bringing him back from the dead was also the most obvious twist that could have been masked by pronouns.
Then this line came in near the end of the chapter:
“Xaden?” a familiar voice calls out, but I can’t place it.
The effort put into masking this twist from the audience is ridiculous, given how nonsensical and meritless it ultimately is. Yarros tipped a worthless hand to the audience with some of the worst bluffing a writer can do.
ACTION
As mentioned while discussing the War Games in Chapter 28, Yarros makes a big deal out of how hard it was to stay on a dragon, but she turns physics off so people can duel each other while standing on a dragon mid-flight. There is a sequence in a battle where venin jump off of wyverns and board Tairn. The fact that these magical beings can cling to the dragon is fine in isolation, as it emphasizes that they are something unnatural. The problem is that Violet then gets out of her saddle, stands on Tairn's back, and duels with one of the venin (who is wielding a sword, and thus has superior reach over her daggers on top of all the supernatural advantages that venin posses) while Tairn is hurtling through the air (meaning that, even if his body was perfectly rigid, she would be blasted by a wall of air pressure as he continued to move forward in a straight line). It's ridiculous.
Also, there's a point where Liam falls off his dragon and onto Tairn at “breakneck speed”, yet is moving slow enough for Violet to catch his hands. She injures herself doing this, but I get the impression that this was a rare instance of Yarros acknowledging the EDS rather than remaining faithful to physics.
CHARACTER
Violet
The only new addition here is that Violet agrees to join with this rebellion. This does not build on her prior characterization. I can only assume that she agreed because she is the self-insert Mary Sue and the axis of the Protagonist-Centered Morality. If she did not agree, Yarros could not frame the rebels as the heroes.
Putting the last chapter in Xaden's POV means that Violet’s reactions to both the rebellion and Brennan bring alive are extremely muted compared to what we have gotten for the rest of the book. A cynical part of me wonders if Yarros couldn't actually think of how Violet would process the new information. It feels like she shifted the POV so that she could force the decision needed for the sequel to take place while also avoiding the need to properly characterize Violet in the process of making that decision.
Xaden
Putting Chapter 39 from Xaden's POV gives us a rather curious look into his character.
In the kindest terms: he's a hopeless romantic. He is head over heels for Violet. He is blind to her flaws and mentally praises her at every opportunity.
This makes Violet seem … shallow and self-serving.
Her focus with Xaden is always the sexual gratification he can bring her. She objectifies him in virtually every scene where she interacts with him, even scenes where the focus is supposedly on emotional connection. Even her declaration of love is grounded purely in her physical desire for him, rather than because of any emotional fulfillment he's offered.
This wouldn't be an issue is Xaden thought the same way. We could chalk Violet's inner monologue up to a stylistic choice of what thoughts to share with the audience, or we could assume that these two characters are kindred spirits. However, Xaden's thoughts of Violet are rooted in emotions and in meeting her needs. The one time he thinks of her sexually, it is a brief moment that framed in the least crass and most romantic way possible, with the objective being to show his utter devotion to Violet. The disconnect really doesn't make Violet look good.
Again, thinking cynically: this whole chapter could be a patch to cover for Yarros not actually knowing what to write for Violet's inner monologue. She needed to change the POV. Since Xaden is a Love Interest, she fed into the fantasy of a perfect lover and showered Violet is emotional validation, rather than worrying about consistent characterization.
WORLDBUILDING
Venin & Wyverns
During the battle, it is established that the relationship between venin and wyverns is opposite of that of riders and dragons - i.e. killing a venin is instant death for any bonded wyverns. This is clearly a mechanic to justify flooding the battlefield with an arbitrary number of wyverns and then resolving said conflict, but it does appear to be consistent with the rest of the lore.
Venin can apparently only be killed by the blades made from the dragon wards. This makes sense mechanically: if they are corrupted beings fueled by magic, jamming a piece of anti-magic into them should have horrible consequences for their health. The issue is that Yarros immediately goes back on this by having Violet kill them with lightning. Does this mean that ANY dragon magic can kill them? I suppose that makes sense for Mira's wards, but shouldn't Xaden's shadows instantly kill them? Would a metal-manipulating Signet make any metal object as effective as a ward weapon? Iron Flame will go on to show that dragon fire has magical properties, so why does a venin survive a blast a dragon fire in this fight scene?
The battle further establishes that wyverns breathe blue fire and have multiple tails with venomous stingers (at least, I assume they have stingers, for we are only told that their tails are venomous). This lore is fine. I assume it will be relevant in the sequels.
Signets
Yarros radically escalates the power of Signets for this final battle.
By this, I am not referring to the fact that Violet's Signet is so overpowered. That still fits within the provided lore. My problem is Xaden.
In this scene, he exhibits such god-tier control of shadows that he makes Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist look like a pathetic child. He:
Strangles a wyvern with shadows.
Uses shadows to form a lasso so that he can share and swing himself onto his dragon without her having to land.
Engulfs a vast horde of wyverns in a globe of shadows. This isn't mere darkness - it is described as if the wyverns are struggling to claw their way through it.
He does all of this without burning out, which is something that riders are supposed to worry about.
Why does he even need a dragon (other than as a magical battery)? He is a one-man army. Bear in mind that all of these are just his applications in combat. He has previously been demonstrated as being able to turn invisible in dark places and to sense people who are in the dark.
We have previously been told that Xaden's Signet was powerful, but only in that he can control shadows (i.e. that he can use them for black ops work). Nothing pointed to him being able to channel the Dragon Force from Fairy Tail. This means that, in theory, any Signet power should be capable of this level of raw, overwhelming destruction without burning out the rider.
Why has Navarre not used their riders to conquer the world? They should be unstoppable. Dragons may need to worry about gryphons, wyverns, and venin, but they also turn humans into living weapons that are more than capable of defending them.
For that matter, if riders are god-tier sorcerers, why has so much emphasis been put on their ability to fight hand-to-hand and to ride dragons bareback? They should be exclusively training to wield their Signets and leave the protection of their bodies to their dragons. The Riders Quadrant could certainly drive riders to attain peak physically endurance to ensure that they can survive channeling as much magic as possible, but otherwise, everything else about this murder school is a pointless waste. The only thing dragons should care about is whether a rider can surviving channeling vast amounts of magic.
(Iron Flame attempts to nerf Xaden’s god-tier shadow sorcery with a throwaway line that implies that restraining dozens of wyverns took all of his strength. This is a great example of why sequels can’t erase plot holes. The fact that any rider can immobilize “dozens and dozens” of creatures that are larger than dragons, even briefly, is the kind of power that can single-handedly end massive battles. Xaden is still overpowered even if this is the limit of his strength.)
Rider Leadership
How did Navarre know about the impending venin attack? The venin are either able to make themselves invisible as they travel or outright teleport, as they are stated to spontaneously appear at the trading post. The fact that the gryphon riders anticipated the attacks makes sense, as the wyverns come out of Poromiel. It’s not a stretch that perhaps the gryphon riders were monitoring wyverns and made deductions from their movements. However, where is Navarre’s intel coming from? (Yarros makes vague noises that point towards an explanation in Iron Flame, and we will certain touch upon those when we get to that review. For now, Fourth Wing does not even acknowledge this mystery, it remains a plot hole.)
Feathertails
Chapter 39 takes place three days after the battle at the climax. Because Violet used Andarna's power to stop time, one of the first things she asks Xaden is how Andarna is recovering. We then get this.
“Don’t panic. Everything is fine. Andarna isn’t quite the same, but she’s…her.” She’s fucking huge now, but I’m not about to say that to Violet. Her gift is also gone, according to Tairn, but there’s plenty of time to share that news.
Again, it has only been three days. How is Andarna suddenly “fucking huge”? Did using her power cause her to rapidly mature? Why was this never previously brought up as a possible consequence of using said power? Have dragons never had to deal with it before? Given how reckless Andarna is, why did she not use her gift to age herself up until she was big enough for Violet to ride?
(Again, Iron Flame tries to explain this retroactively, but what we get there is both its own can of worms and does not successfully address these questions.)
It is rather convenient that Andarna no longer has this story-breaking power. It makes me wonder if Yarros made it up purely because she'd written three action scenes that couldn't be resolved any other way. If so, that's not inherently bad writing. What is bad writing is that she's trying to erase the power the instant it has served its purpose. If she has enough awareness to try to contain the damage to the same book as when this power was introduced, she was capable of not introducing it in the first place.
There is also the not-so-small matter that Yarros has already outright lied to the audience to facilitate the Brennan twist. We therefore have good reason to believe that the time stop power can manifest again when needed for the plot.
The Apostasy
This chapter reaffirms that the people of Tyrrendor referred to their rebellion as an “apostasy”. It was established back in Chapter 31 that this fact is common knowledge. However, Chapter 39 calls special attention to this fact, with Xaden having the following thought about how the rest of Navarre won't use Tyrrendor's terminology.
Funny how people rename everything that makes them feel uncomfortable. We lost faith that our king would ever do the right thing. And they call us traitors.
Well, Xaden, since you want to make a big deal about using the proper names for things, let’s explore this one, shall we?
Merriam-Webster defines “apostasy” as:
(1) an act of refusing to continue to follow, obey, or recognize a religious faith;
(2) abandonment of a previous loyalty
It's a word that isn't seen much in the modern day. While it can be applied to a political context, it is predominantly used in a religious one. I therefore feel quite comfortable in declaring that Xaden's father and the other rebels were absolute morons for calling their rebellion this.
A good way to push people from passively supporting your cause through inaction to actively resisting it is for you to openly declare that you opposes their values. Establishing that you oppose divine truth is just about the most blunt way of doing this. This is a particularly terrible starting point when you are trying to convince people that you are the source of the actual truth.
The name is also unnecessary overkill. Navarre's king has not been established as any sort of divine figure. This isn't the Imperium of Man. However, the land does have established religious beliefs. This name implies that Tyrrendor intended to undermine the religious beliefs of Navarre, thereby offending not only the people whose personal beliefs are being opposed but also any devout worshipper of the gods who will now see the rebellion as being godless.
And then there is the awkward fact that, despite announcing themselves as apostates, the rebels didn't bother to explain to anyone WHY they were apostates. As we touch upon in the last part, the rebellion ended just five years prior to the start of this book. People would not immediately forget the revelation that there are monsters from their bedtime stories ravaging the lands outside of Navarre. If the well-educated Violet knows what Tyrrendor called their rebellion but not why they called it that, it can only mean that Xaden's father went with the most provocative name for his rebellion that he could without bothering to justify the name.
Round Two
Yarros knows that having the rebellion rebuild the capital city of Tyrrendor and operate out of it while simultaneously staying off Navarre's radar makes no sense. I know that she knows this, as she tries to explain it.
Violet is initially taken aback by the rebuilding effort. She asks Xaden how they managed to do this without drawing attention to themselves. She has an initial conclusion that opens a massive plot hole, which I will get into down below, as said hole has implications that go beyond the rebellion. For now, I'll focus on Xaden's follow-up to her conclusion.
“That and we’re not big enough to warrant the attention of the scribes anymore. We’re not hidden. We’re just not … advertising our existence.” Which is also the reason this place is still technically … mine. Nobles weren’t exactly eager to throw their money at a scorched city or be taxed on unusable land. Eventually they’ll notice. Eventually I’ll lose it. Then I’ll lose my head.
This is ludicrous on so many levels.
First, why has the kingdom of Navarre not been monitoring this location? The fact that Tyrrendor is still a functional province indicates that the provincial capital was relocated, so the people most likely to rally here would be rebels preparing for another go. This site should be under constant surveillance.
Second, it is not believable that the scribes do not know about this massive construction project. Does Yarros not realize just how much time and expense gets sunk into acquiring resources for construction? Even if all of the materials for this rebuilding were locally sourced, those sources are probably already bring tapped to sustain projects elsewhere in Tyrrendor as well. This isn't like when a government does creative accounting to hide that the toilets they purchased are being installed at a secret military facility. This is an uptick in taxable commerical activity that should draw some attention.
Third, why is this land still owned by Xaden? Why would it not have been seized by the crown, if only to hold temporarily until a loyalist noble could be identified to take over? If Tyrrendor had industries - and it most likely did, as relatively few cities are established purely to serve as a political center - then why would there not be investment opportunities in rebuilding the city and claiming ownership over those restored industries? Given that those industries could potentially bankroll a new rebellion, Navarre should at least establish a garrison to prevent rebels from claiming that wealth, much the same way that drug rings are often targeted as a means to cut funding to terrorist groups.
Fourth … at the time Xaden says this, it has been only six years since the rebellion. Navarrre is still hyper-aware of the risk of another conflict. Maybe this might make sense if it was 20 years after the conflict, when everyone had calmed down and assumed the risk of rebellion was a distant memory, but this rapid rebuilding would be like if the Axis powers had tried to reestablish their governments from WWII while in the middle of the post-war Allied occupation.
We actually have a good historical precedent to look to here: Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy during the American City War. The city deteriorated under the strain of supporting the war effort. The Siege of Petersburg ended with much of it being burned to the ground. After this, the Union did not merely turn a blind eye to the ashes. The Reconstruction included the city of Richmond, and government reforms were implemented from the rebuilt capital. When the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan tried to reestablish the Confederacy, it had to do so through decentralized cells, and even then, it was still rooted out and shattered (in 1871 - so, also six years after the end of the previous rebellion).
If Yarros really wanted this rebellion, she should have had the rebels assembling in caves or some other remote, hidden location. It may be cliche in fiction, but it has been proven time and again to be effective in the real world.
Future Sight
Remember how, way back in Chapter 2 to Chapter 6, we discussed the contradictory mechanics of General Melgren's ability to see the future? An ability that has not been relevant in any prior point in the story?
Well, this ability is not relevant now, either. We were told that he sees outcomes of battles - only the outcomes. At most, this means that his Signet is the equivalent to a supercomputer that takes his inputs and spits out a result. He is not omniscient. He's not even viewing the flow of time as an outsider (as is the case with Doctor Manhattan). While Navarre should have found out about the rebellion if it is operating out of the old capital, it makes perfect sense that Melgren’s Signet would not automatically grant him knowledge of the rebellion's existence.
For some reason, though, Yarros thinks that he should have known. Her attempts to plug this perceived plot hole opens an actual plot hole.
This is how Violet concludes that Navarre hasn't learned about the rebuilding effort, before Xaden gives his explanation.
She points to my rebellion relic and says, “Melgren can’t see the outcome when more than three of you are together. That’s why you’re not allowed to assemble.”
Unlike many other tacked-on developments in this book, I have full confidence that Yarros conceived this element from the beginning. It was introduced with the epigraph for Chapter 7. It is the foundation for every incident of Xaden sneaking around with other rebel children. What's more, the paragraph right after this has Xaden validate Violet's intelligence as if she were Grand Admiral Thrawn. We are supposed to think this is a masterful twist.
No, Ms. Yarros. Violet is not Thrawn. At best, she's Danso from Son of the Storm. This is a massive leap in logic, and it blows yet another hole in your story.
First, this is a society that is so paranoid about its security and brutally efficient about tying up loose ends that it executes inntinnsics just for having the potential to accidentally steal military secrets. Said rider is not reviewed for a security clearance and gets no benefit of the doubt for loyalty. The execution is instant. If riders with rebellion relics - the children of traitors, whom have personal motivation to hate Navarre, whom were originally going to be executed with their parents - can exploit a blind spot in Melgren's Signet, and this society is aware of that blind spot, then the rider leadership wouldn't simply add a rule to the Codex. They would renege on their deal with Xaden and execute every last rebel child as a precaution.
Second, the whole reason for arranging this test of loyalty was that Navarre had proof that Xaden and his followers were knowing violating the terms of Xaden's agreement. The problem is that, again, this is a brutal and cautious society. Xaden’s deal with them was already a test of loyalty; the fact that the rebel children were allowed to live after the blind spot was identified was another one. Thanks to their knowledge of the secret meetings, Navarre now knows that the rebel children have effectively failed two tests of loyalty. Every last rebel child should have been executed at that point.
Third, even if Xaden and the rebel children are just so valuable that rider leadership would prefer to give them one more chance to fall in line, it is absurd that Melgren would allow that test to also operate in his blind spot. The squads for the War Games should have been pre-determined to isolate Xaden and his confirmed co-conspirators. They should have been put in separate squads without other rebel children, where they would both be visible to Melgren’s Signet and severely outnumbered by loyal riders. Melgren could read the future and see what Xaden and each co-conspirator would choose. He could then round up and execute everyone who fails this test before they are ever deployed. (Given that the rule against rebel children assembling is to account for that blind spot, he also could have just had Xaden and his co-conspirators executed for violating the Codex after Xaden built the squad but before they departed from the Quadrant.)
The massive plot holes that Yarros created with this unnecessary explanation are a textbook example of why future sight (and time travel, for that matter) are such dangerous devices to use in storytelling. It is so easy for writers to overlook obvious ways by which their plot could be resolved with these tools. This book would have been better off with not trying to answer this question (or, better still, not giving Melgren future sight in the first place, and just letting the Codex rule against rebel children assembling be a standard precaution to control their ability to organize).
Melgren's Dragon
A minor detail covered way back at the start of the book is that the rebellion relics were bestowed by Melgren's dragon.
Did the dragon not realize that he was blinding his rider by doing this?
Did he realize and do it deliberately?
In the former possibility, Melgren's dragon is an idiot who created a problem by doing something abnormal for dragons to do. In the latter, the dragons are actively resisting the rider leadership of Navarre at the highest levels, which they shouldn't need to do secretly if Navarre is so dependent upon them.
THE AUTOPSY
And with that … we have finished this awful book.
Congratulations to everyone who read it, as well as everyone who made it to the end of this review series. Gold stars all around.
Next week, we shall close up this series with a final retrospective. I do not intend this to be a comprehensive summary of what we've discovered over the past three months. Rather, we will reflect on the overall trends and speculate as to what we can expect from Iron Flame (which, while it will have been out for more than a month at the time this is posted, was still two months away at the time of writing the retrospective).
Thank you all for coming on this journey with me. I hope to see you all next week for the conclusion. Have a good day.
