Fourth Wing (Chapter 7 through Chapter 11)
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
Accepting that she has little chance of surviving the sparring tests if they are fair fights, Violet harvests plants that she can use to poison each of her scheduled opponents. During one of her nighttime harvests, she stumbles upon Xaden and a bunch of other rebel children having a secret meeting. This is a capital offense under the Codex, which states that any meeting of three or more rebel children is a seditious conspiracy. Violet waits for the meeting to break up, but when she tries to leave, Xaden catches her. Violet stands her ground and insists that she won’t tell anyone about the meeting. Xaden is just trying to help other cadets, and she doesn’t think it is fair to punish that. Xaden declares that he’ll let her go and repay the favor a some future point. (There is heavy sexual tension throughout this interaction.)
Violet volunteers for breakfast duty (which we soon learn is so that she can poison her opponents). On one morning, as she goes to duty, she and Dain discuss relationships (baiting the potential of romance between the two). Later, Violet attends a class that covers the different breeds of dragon. She learns that there is a black dragon who is currently without a rider, but who absolutely won’t be selecting a rider this year; his last rider died trying to save her brother Brennan during the revolution. Violet is validated by the professor for being smart and compassionate.
By poisoning her opponents, Violet glides through sparring tests. She carefully time each dosage of poison so that her opponents are merely debilitated during the fight, allowing her to pretend that she overpowered them with skill. Xaden catches on to her scheme. He orders one of her poisoned opponents to go to the healers and fights her himself, goading her for her weakness. (This is another scene that is played for the overpowering sexual tension.) After this fight, Dain tries again to persuade Violet to escape from the Rider’s Quadrant, having already made arrangement to transfer her to the Scribes Quadrant in a manner that her mother can’t undo. She pushes back against this, but he wears her down until she agrees to think about it.
Violet and her squad attempt the Gauntlet, a vertical obstacle course designed to simulate the challenges of mounting and clinging to a dragon during combat. During this test, Violet discovers that she is too small and lacking in muscle mass to complete the final two obstacles. What’s more, a cadet named Aurelie dies during the first day of training on the Gauntlet. While mourning Aurelie’s death, Violet witnesses Xaden and some other rebel children returning from another meeting. She affirms that she won’t tell anyone about the meetings, and he advises her to get creative with the Gauntlet.
On the day of the final test, she completes the Gauntlet by vandalizing the course, first pulling a safety rope out of position to help scale a chimney obstacle and then using one of her daggers to get a handhold on a ramp. This leads to an argument with Amber, the leader of the Third Wing. Violet shouts down the accusations that she cheated by evoking a provision of the Codex.
PLOT
Again, the plot continues to hold strong. You can feel the tension building as events roll towards two critical events: the Presentation, when the dragons can assess the cadets in person, and the Threshing, when cadets are thrown into a valley with the unbonded dragons and try to convince a dragon to select them as a rider. Thus far, it is an enjoyable and coherent fantasy narrative.
DEATH FLAGS
Aurelie is the second sympathetic character to die in this book. Her death is also a prime example of how badly handled character death is in this book.
First, prior to scaling the Gauntlet, a huge deal is made about how no one in the squad has died. A professor outright says, “You’re the only squad to remain intact since Parapet. That’s incredible. Your squad leader must be very proud.” There was no doubt that someone from the squad would die in that same chapter.
Second, Aurelie’s characterization is rushed. I think the only other scene where she had a meaningful contribution was when she went full Amazon in the sparring ring in Chapter 5. Here, she is established the candidate most prepared for the Gauntlet, which naturally flagged her as the most likely to die.
When Aurelie dies, there’s no weight. Not only did Yarros telegraph it, we have no reason to care about Aurelie. She’s practically a new character.
Rhiannon should have been the one to die here. It would have made so much more impact. She may only be an accessory to Violet, but that bit of history and emotional connection is more to work with than what we get for Aurelie. Her death would at least have genuine emotional weight. It would also be an actual surprise, as Rhiannon does not seem like someone who would be killed off at this point in the story. Had Rhiannon died, maybe Aurelie could have stepped in as new friend, and Violet could have to grapple with whether she even wants to be Aurelie’s friend after losing the last friend she made in the Quadrant.
CHARACTER
Violet
I am going to need to do two analyses of Violet’s characterization within these chapters. One will assess her character arc as it stands in isolation from the worldbuilding. The other, which will conclude this part, will explore how she is utterly assassinated by the end of Chapter 11, all because the worldbuilding was not taken into consideration when writing her arc.
With that being said, how are things going for Violet’s arc in isolation?
It’s honestly fantastic. We are getting a real sense for her intellect in these chapters. She is faced with two challenges that would be insurmountable for her to overcome with physical strength alone, so she gets creative. She thinks outside of the box.
What’s more, Dain’s latest effort to get her out of the Quadrant shows her personal growth. She still opens her defense with arguments based in her pride, but now, she’s no longer falling back upon the inevitability of her mother’s intervention. She wants to stay for herself. She feels like she is coming into her own and finding a place in the Quadrant, and she’s willing to take the risks for that.
Also, a small note: Violet is established being insanely good at throwing knives in this chapter. This gave me extreme Tris Prior vibes (since, in at least the movie version of Divergent, this was a talent of that Mary Sue as well). To be clear, this is not an objective flaw of character writing. I am not factoring this into my conclusion that Violet is a Mary Sue. Rather, this is a skill that will factor into the gyrating balance between Rule of Cool and realism down the line. Throwing knives are typically a Rule of Cool skill (it’s not nearly as effective as portrayed in media, especially if one is not using a specially weighted knife designed for that purpose. However, its primary utility is to negate Violet's EDS in combat - in other words, it is a patch for a realism problem. I therefore think it's reasonable to question the realistic issues of how someone with EDS can fling multiple knives in a high-stress situations without overextending and damaging multiple joints (fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders). Much like the issue of drawing knives from her sheathes, I think this could have been easily solved by Yarros adding a few lines to acknowledge the problem and explain how Violet accounted for it. Even better, she could have showed us Violet earning this skill and learning how to account for her EDS while doing so.
Xaden
I’m not going to lie: Xaden is very much a cookie-cutter Bad Boy Love Interest. His development at this point consists entirely of overwhelming sexual tension and the reveal of a soft and sympathetic center that our protagonist can reach if she tries really hard. It’s dull and predictable. Still, if you are looking for formulaic romance involving this sort of love interest, I think his characterization and the associated subplot are on-point.
Dain
Dain’s characterization remains consistent. He is an honest man who is doing everything in his power to save the life of his friend from a situation she had no say in entering. Even when he offers her a lifeline, he doesn't force her to take it, merely making a passionate please for her to do so.
However, a problem does arise with regards to him as the Best Friend Love Interest.
Fourth Wing is not subtle about foreshadowing that Violet will choose the Bad Boy Love Interest over the Best Friend Love Interest. This is a point of praise, not a criticism. Thus far, Violet’s character arc has been written in such a manner as to carry her away from Dain. He represents the status quo, the person she was before entering the Quadrant. Xaden represents the rider whom Violet is trying to become. Even without the heavy sexual tension, it is obvious whom Violet should end up with (narratively speaking). The only ways that it would be satisfying for her to choose Dain would be if she has a personal revelation that leads her to abandon her current character arc or if Dain undergoes his own growth to catch up to her.
Taking this into account, I can see how his latest effort to get Violet to leave the Quadrant is an obstacle to Violet's growth. Multiple BookTube reviewers have said they found Dain overbearing and annoying. While that was not my takeaway (as we will get into down below while reevaluating Violet's arc), I don't think it's an unreasonable reaction. He is, in many ways, a voice of doubt and temptation, urging Violet to take the easy way out.
All of this was well-established. I'm sure most of the audience will be on board with Violet turning her back on Dain and going for Xaden. And that's what makes what happens in Chapter 11 (and later chapters, though we’ll get to them later) feel rather … mean-spirited.
A minor detail that was dropped by Dain a few chapters ago is that he was having sex with Amber the previous year. When Amber tries to argue against Violet’s methods for completing the gauntlet, Violet recognizes her based upon that connection. There’s an indication of some amount of jealously on Violet’s part. This is fine by itself, but then we get this catty remark:
No wonder she and Dain are so close - they’re both in love with the Codex.
This is a swipe at Amber, but because she is being equated to Dain, it is also a swipe at him. Bear this in mind. This is going to be the start of the story’s desperate attempts to demonize Dain. It reads as though Yarros wanted Violet to by morally justified (rather than narratively justified) in choosing Xaden over Dain, but because Dain was characterized in such as way as to make that impractical, she has invented an excuse to attack him. Over the next several chapters, she will keep inventing excuses, to the point that Dain is effectively being abused by his own writer (and, for that matter, said writer’s self-insert Mary Sue POV character).
Amber
Amber is a minor obstacle for Violet to overcome. She plays by the rules of the Codex, so Violet evokes the Codex to overcome her. This is one of Amber’s only two contributions to the book, but it will be relevant later.
Heaton
You may be wondering exactly who this character is, given how no reference is made in the story summary. The answer is simple: Heaton is the Token Non-Binary Character of this book.
This is a character whom did not exist prior to the opening of Chapter 11. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dropping of a pronoun when Heaton wishes the squad good luck on the final run of the Gauntlet. Had it ended there, I would have nothing to say. The issue is that the next half a page is dedicated to repeating that pronoun several times. Heaton suddenly becomes both an object of scrutiny, with Violet assessing the patches on this 3rd-year’s uniform and expositing to the audience how these patches reflect different skills, and a topic of discussion, with the other 1st-years talking about how Heaton is acting out of character that morning by the mere act of wishing them good luck. This doesn’t contribute anything meaningful to the narrative, but it does provide Yarros with lots of opportunities to make sure we didn’t overlook Heaton’s pronouns.
I’m still not taking about virtue signaling yet (Chapter 18, I promise). I’ll just say that, originally, I was going to chalk up Heaton’s strange handling to the way that most of the secondary and tertiary characters are handled in this story. Yarros crammed way too many characters into this book and asked us to care about all of them. It wasn’t until I was reflecting on Chapter 18, when the virtue signaling of this book hit critical mass, that this scene jumped out at me for the tokenization that it is. Heaton’s handling simply doesn’t match the majority of other throwaway characters.
Aurelie
This character deserved better. She was not that well-written or interesting, but it would have been nice to at least get to know her before we were asked to be sad about her dying.
What’s in a Name?
A few chapters down the line from this part, I noticed a strange issue with character names in this book. However, on reread, I realized that I should have noticed this as soon as Chapter 8. This is the first scene to feature Professor Kaori in person. (He was also the source of the epigraph quote for Chapter 2, though this is easy to miss.)
Kaori is a name that sounds Japanese - in part because it is indeed a given name in Japan (usually a girl’s name, but there is apparently a combination of kanji that allows it to be a boy’s name). A quick Google search reveals that Kaori is also a surname used in Indonesia. Regardless of which origin one chooses, this name is very obviously East Asian in origin.
This stands out before the overwhelming majority of character names thus far have come from the English language, tying back to names from the cultures of the British Isles. Most exceptions are still originate from Western Europe or the United States. Even Xaden, as exotic as it may sound, is an American portmanteau of Xavier and Jayden. Since everyone thus far has been established as a native of one of the provinces of Navarre, this points to Navarre’s culture, or at least its language, being closely analogous to English. Given that that no indicate is given as to certain groupings of names coming from specific provinces, if is further implied that everyone is of roughly the same ethnicity, or at least of the same race. (Yarros has stated otherwise, but we will get to that in Chapter 18).
Where, then, is Kaori from? What group does he belong do? Nothing that has been presented thus far (or, indeed, that will be presented in this book) points to Navarre being a particularly cosmopolitan kingdom. We will actually learn down the line that this kingdom is isolationist, and has been for centuries. The presence of this character whose name does not fit in with the others is therefore bewildering. It raises the question of where he is from originally and why his ancestors did not culturally assimilate over centuries of Navarre’s isolationism.
This may seem like a small point, but it feeds back into the issue of narrative voice. This story already felt rooted in the modern-day United States, rather than being told by a native of this fantasy world. The appearance of the kind of ethnic diversity that is present in the United States (which is the result of multiple migrations, voluntary or forced, staged across centuries) demands some explanation.
It’s certainly possible to explain Kaori’s heritage. I’m mainly disappointed that Yarros has both chosen to create this problem and to not bother resolving it.
WORLDBUILDING
Oh, boy. This is where things really start to get messy.
Signets
We are introduced to two new Signet powers in this chapter:
Generating illusions, which Professor Kaori uses to conjure up holograms of dragons for the class to study.
Siphoning, which allows the rider to absorb magical power from other sources and either use or redistribute it. It is unclear what exactly “power” means. My own conclusion is that this Signet turns the rider into All For One from My Hero Academia., able to tap into the Signet powers of dragons and other riders and to transfer those powers to other individuals. Another possibility is that it is some form of life force transference (think Force healing).
We also learn two important rules about Signets.
A rider who channels too much magic through a Signet will die.
No Signet is capable of resurrection. The delivery of this rule (which is brought up in conjunction with the siphoning Signet) implies that this is less a hard rule and more of a practical limitation. It may well be possible to resurrect the dead, but the quantity of magic required to do so is so vast that any rider who attempts it would die from channeling too much magic before the process could be successfully completed.
Keep these rules in mind. Kaori, who is presented as an authority on dragons (and whose judgment is to be trusted, given that he validates the Mary Sue in this same scene), is the one to introduce them. What’s more, these limits did not need to be explicitly stated for the narrative to progress. They are only brought up because Jack (who is really being pushed as the bully for Violet to humiliate) kept nagging Kaori about the type of signet that a black dragon could grant, which led to a story about how the black dragon’s previous rider died trying to resurrect Brennan.
Yarros has gone out of her way to establish these as absolute truths of this world. She is directly informing the audience, in no uncertain terms, that any character who dies will stay dead.
Ancalagon Stu
Black dragons are “the rarest”, the most powerful”, “the most cunning”, and “the smartest and the most discerning”. General Melgren’s Signet power comes from his bond to a black dragon. The only other black dragon in existence is the one who gave his rider the siphoning Signet. He is “revered as a battle dragon” among other dragons, is credited with putting down the revolution, possesses the rare and powerful morningstartail, and is explicitly referred to by Kaori as “one of the deadliest dragons in Navarre”. Due to his rider trying to save Brennan, he has a personal connection to Violet. Jack, who has already been established as the bully for Violet to humiliate on top of being a murderous sociopath, wants to bond with him.
Now, given all of this, I am sure many of you will assume that he will be the dragon to bond with Violet. It is good narrative progression, and it also satisfies as many tropes as possible for Young Adult fantasy and Mary Sue power fantasy. They are made for each other.
I will neither confirm or deny this. I will merely ask that you hold off on placing any bets. He’s not the only contender.
The Codex
These chapters establish four new rules about the Codex, the first two of which are explicitly stated while the remaining two are implied.
No more than than three cadets bearing rebellion relics (i.e. three rebel children) may be assigned to the same squad, and any assembly of three or more rebel child cadets will be charged as a seditious conspiracy. This is quoted in the Chapter 7 epigraph. Violet believes it to be an unreasonable rule to enforce when all Xaden and the other rebel children are doing is helping one another to survive.
Any items that a rider candidate carries into the Quadrant - like a knife - is deemed a part of the rider’s body. This makes thievery a capital offense. Violet quotes this to justify using a knife to climb the ramp in the Gauntlet, declaring it to be part of her own body.
The Codex does not prohibit a cadet from transferring out of the Riders Quadrant and into another Quadrant without the official authorization from a superior within the Riders Quadrant. Dain seems quite confident that Violet will face no consequences for escaping into the Scribes Quadrant, despite the fact that the only officer he consulted about this plan was from the Scribes Quadrant, not the Riders Quadrant.
Poisoning is not a violation of the Codex. It never crosses Violet’s mind that she could be punished for poisoning all of her opponents. If anything, her main concern with timing the poisonings is to ensure that she fights her incapacitated opponent rather than being reassigned to fight someone who’s still healthy.
Contradiction - Poisoning
Poisoning is not prohibited by the Codex … but attacking someone in their sleep is? Why?
The implication thus far has been that the dragons want physically strong riders. The deadly obstacle courses, the no-holds-barred sparring matches, and the threat of being attacked in the halls all reflect situations where one needs to be at their physical best to overcome challenges. The entire reason that Violet is in such danger at this school is because she is not suited to engage with these kinds of physical threats. Banning an assault on a sleeping rider slots nicely into that, as it effectively ensures fair play. A weak rider cannot simply kill a strong rider in a moment of necessary vulnerability.
Why, then, would poison - a tool that requires no physical strength or even general battle prowess - be permitted?
Furthermore, the ban upon attacking squad mates feeds into the idea that trust is important in a military unit. This fails in practice because members of the same wing can still kill each other, but the intent is there. Why would there not be dire consequences to abusing one’s position as kitchen staff - a crucial logistical and support role within any military - to poison cadets?
The only possible defense for this is that the Codex allows poisoning to prepare riders for espionage and sabotage. If this was the case, though, then we should have seen some classes or training programs on this subject. We should have heard something about riders and dragons who fill a black ops role. A lot of other cadets should also be using poison. None of these are the case. All evidence indicates that dragons and their riders serve as a frontline rapid-response force that is about as subtle as the average chapter of the Adeptes Astartes. The only concessions that the riders make to counter espionage are to classify certain data and to tightly monitor and control anyone whose Signet might override said security efforts.
This feels like another case of Yarros wanting to have her cake and eat it too. She wanted Violet to be presented as clever by using underhanded tactics to overcome her physical disadvantage. However, as we’ll see a few chapters on, she also wanted there to be a sense of karmic justice in butchering any cadets who tried to do the same thing to Violet. Thus, the rules have a blatant loophole that should have been closed by the Quadrant long before this story started. Violet can’t possibly be the very first person to ever think of poisoning her opponents within the hundreds of years that the Quadrant has existed. Her execution may be brilliant, but the idea itself is not that original. Many people would have attempted it, and at least a few would have gotten caught. Furthermore, if the Quadrant is aware of the potential of poisoning and allows it anyway, many people should be uses this tactic in this book, and Violet's deception shouldn't have worked nearly as long as it did.
Contradiction - Thievery
It makes zero sense that a Codex that encourages survival of the fittest through murder would forbid theft. It makes even less sense that it does so in such absolute terms as what we see here.
Why forbid theft in this environment? Protecting one’s possessions in a relatively lawless environment requires strength. Allowing riders to rob one another - and, by extension, encouraging them to protect their personal resources - seems like a necessary aspect of this survival training.
What if the rider is murdered in the theft? In this world, there is a religious prohibition against holding on to the possessions of the dead, but nothing established for the Codex doubles down on this. Could a rider be murdered and then looted? If a rider is murdered, could other riders loot their possessions from their bunks / rooms without consequence?
Something I touched upon briefly in Chapter 1 is that the Riders Quadrant has a knife culture. Whenever an opponent is defeated in an sparring match, the winner gets to take one of loser’s knives as a trophy. If the rules against thievery are this strict, what happens if the only knives the loser possesses are ones that said rider brought into the Quadrant? Would the winner be executed for claiming a prize? If a knife is given willingly as a gift, and then that gift is stolen, is that permitted as a theft from someone who didn’t bring the item with them, or is forbidden as a violation of the person who brought the item and is allowing someone else to hold on to it?
I genuinely think that Yarros wrote herself into a corner on the Gauntlet scene and had to make up this piece of the Code to give Violet an out. This rule is not mentioned or even implied before Violet defends her actions to Amber. Violet flagrantly cheated, so some excuse needed to be devised to pretend that she actually earned her completion of the Gauntlet.
Which segways us nicely into …
CHARACTER ASSASSINATION
Violet’s character arc is, in isolation, fantastically written.
However, character arcs do not exist in isolation. They are contextualized by the plot and worldbuilding. This is especially true in fantasy or science fiction stories that fold the worldbuilding into the arc. Because Violet’s arc is using her progression through the Quadrant for the arc, her arc must be assessed in light of the world in which it occurs.
With that in mind, Violet’s arc is hollow.
She has earned nothing. She has not grown. A running theme within Fourth Wing is that the stresses of the Quadrant grind away pretense and reveal who a person really is. Violet has been revealed as one the most selfish, loathsome, and narcissistic characters whom I have every had the displeasure of reading about. She has the full weight of Protagonist Centered Morality to validate her actions, and yet she still manages to come off worse than Nahri from The City of Brass. The only reason she’s not worse than Ana from Blood Heir is that she lacks Ana’s body count.
All of this comes back to the worldbuilding. Yarros did not think through the implications that the Quadrant and the Codex would have on Violet’s arc. As a result of putting this specific character in this specific setting, nearly every element that should have marked a fantastic progression in Violet’s personal growth instead reveals the depth of her flaws and her steadfast refusal to overcome those flaws.
Chapter 9 - The Beginning of the Descent
Dain’s latest attempt to get Violet to leave the Riders Quadrant does not assassinate Violet outright, but it does invalidate her accomplishment in poisoning her sparring opponents.
Violet’s reaction to learning that Dain has gone behind her back to arrange an escape plan is to accuse him of thinking that she can’t cut it in this place. She explicitly mentions him walking her to breakfast duty (which is to keep her from being jumped and murdered in the hallway) as a sign that he doesn’t believe her. When he points out that Xaden kicked her ass on the sparring mat, she plants her feet and argues that she’s out-lived a quarter of the 1st-years at this point. Dain reminds her about riders culling liabilities to the wing, and she gets defensive.
She Can’t Cut It
Dain isn’t telling Violet that she can’t cut it, but her instinctive fear that she might be perceived that way is on-point. She CAN’T cut it in the Quadrant. It’s why she needs poisons to succeed. It’s why she needs impenetrable body armor.
I love that Violet has the cunning to use poison to overcome challenges. I’m the type of competitive person who likes to stretch rules as far as possible and enter the gray areas between those rules to overcome otherwise unwinnable scenarios. While I think that the Codex allowing poisons is laughable, if we accept it to be true, it is very much a gray area.
Here’s the thing, though: people who can win a game by playing strictly by the book prove that by playing strictly by the book. Violet has not proven this. She has only survived by going against the intended purpose of the Codex, by eschewing the strength that was supposed to be cultivated by this environment, and by embracing the underhanded tactics that are implicitly condemned by the rule against killing sleeping opponents (or, for that matter, the rule against thievery).
So, no. If Yarros wanted to convince us that Violet has what it takes to cut it here, then Violet should have expressed her cunning in other ways. She shouldn’t have needed the body armor, and she should have won the sparring tests via methods other than poisoning her opponents (such as, say, attacking her opponents’ weak points, something that she’s going to brag about being able to do in just a few chapters).
The Liability
Violet is absolutely a liability to this wing. She has done nothing to prove otherwise. If anything, poisoning her opponents confirms that she is only able to survive by actively tearing down her comrades.
I think what really makes this jarring is the nature of the Riders Quadrant. This is a military academy. Everyone here is preparing to serve in a war. Being a rider may come with a great deal of pride, wealth, and prestige, but that is derived from their value as military assets. Violet’s protests about being a liability therefore clash with the basic realities of her situation. Regardless of whether she can be diagnosed with a specific condition, she is not physically able to meet the demands placed upon her as a rider. She cannot earn the pride, wealth, or prestige.
This is precisely why militaries have standards for physical, intellectual, and psychological fitness. They have no obligation to accommodate those who are not fit for duty. They also cannot afford the luxury of weakening themselves by lowering their standards, unless the alternative is a dire deficit of manpower.
The only example I can name, in all of the real world and fiction, of a military force that DOES make the kind of accommodations that Violet feels entitled to is the Civil Service from Starship Troopers. This is because the Civil Service is as much a vehicle for maintaining the social system of the Terran Federation as it is a military force. They will not reject or discharge a recruit of any reason short of the recruit being psychologically incapable of consenting to the oath of service. To borrow an example given by Arch in one of his lore videos on the Terran Federation, you could enlist in the Civil Service as a blind paraplegic, and they would be legally obligated to find you something useful to do. They can't even issue medical discharges to grievously wounded members unless said members consent to the discharge.
The Scribes Quadrant, incidentally, are a training academy that supports the same military as the dragon riders. They feed officers into the intelligence and logistical arm. Violet’s cunning and intellect would offer far more benefit to them than her lack of physical ability would offer the riders.
Why It Matters
Up until Chapter 9, none of this mattered. Yes, these problems existed from the moment Violet arrived, but she didn’t have any choice. If she tried to leave, her mother would drag her back into the Quadrant, one way or another. She had to do whatever was necessary just to survive. Whether or not she was earning her position was a moot point when the alternative was death.
Dain provides her a choice. His escape route would save Violet. If she takes it, the Scribes Quadrant would shelter her until she is sworn in as one of their own, at which point her mother’s authority would mean nothing. She has an out.
Violet refuses this out. She may not explicitly do so in Chapter 9, but her character progression makes it inevitable as soon as this line near the end of the argument with Dain:
My heart stutters, and I sway, his reasoning tugging me toward exactly what he’s suggesting. But you’ve made it this far, a part of me whispers.
Violet is no longer forced to be here. She is aware of this. Nevertheless, she chooses to stay for her own pride. And because she has that choice, the contradictions and flaws in her decisions cannot be ignored. She is choosing to cheat her way through this death school that is killing candidates who actually belong here. Her arc suffers as a result.
Chapter 11 - Broken Arc
Chapter 11 steers Violet’s development off a cliff. The fact that Violet cunningly exploits the Codex to validate her method of completing the Gauntlet should be another point that demonstrates her intelligence. However, by the rules established by the worldbuilding of said Gauntlet and based upon the emotional beats hit in Chapters 7 and 10, Violet winning the argument in this manner makes her so abhorrent that even the Protagonist-Centered Morality can’t run interference for her.
Failing the Test
Amber is right. Violet’s method of overcoming the Gauntlet absolutely marks her as a liability. Let’s allow Violet herself to explain why.
The last two obstacles on the Gauntlet are a chimney structure that the riders need to shimmy up and a ramp that is described as so steep as to be nearly vertical. Violet repeatedly fails both obstacles during the training runs. She has this to say about it:
The section of the course that’s my downfall is meant to simulate the strength and agility it takes to mount a dragon, and it’s becoming clear that my size is going to fuck me.
Not only is this an obstacle that proves that she doesn’t meet the physical standards to be a dragon rider, but it is also reinforced that these obstacles are meant to reflect a dragon’s body. Since it’s been a while since the story summary, here’s a refresher on how she overcomes said obstacles.
She repositions one of the safety ropes that are tethered above the chimney, hooking it into the chimney so that she can climb up it rather than bracing herself against the chimney walls.
She stabs the ramp with a knife to haul herself up it.
The fact that climbing the rope was not a default option (these ropes are explicitly there so candidates can get down safely if they fail to complete the Gauntlet) indicates that riders do not have the benefits of any sort of gear to mount their dragons. Future chapters will even show us that dragon riding is done bareback, with no safety equipment and no magical aid from the dragons to stay on (several rider trainees will die in flight training because they fall off their dragons). Violet needing to use a rope proves that she is unfit.
The ramp is supposed to reflect the challenge of scrambling up a dragon’s foreleg to get to the ideal seat for the rider. Violet can only accomplish this by stabbing the dragon.
Arguing Codex compliance is a moot point. We are supposed to root for Violet overcoming a challenge that she didn’t overcome. If the Gauntlet was more a test of an extreme scenario - if dragons typically wear saddles and harnesses with safety ropes, or if the riders had some variation of the maker hooks from Dune or the vertical maneuvering equipment from Attack on Titan - then an argument could be made that Violet displayed a cool head and good improvisation in a situation where she would have been deprived of a rider’s usual gear. The fact that she needs to cheat to succeed in the baseline scenario invalidates her accomplishment.
(Violet also faces no consequences for this. The fact that her solution to the ramp was to stab the dragon only comes up once in a throwaway line. I feel like Yarros herself knew this was a problem and wanted to sweep it aside quickly.)
Silly Dead Girl, the Codex is for Losers
Violet is the wrong character to quote the Codex as justification for her actions. Her refusal to report Xaden and the other rebel children for seditious conspiracy, all because her personal feeling that the Codex was unfair, proves that she doesn’t actually care for the Codex when it doesn’t directly benefit her. Quoting it to Amber in this scene just proves that she is a self-serving individual who will say whatever she thinks she must to get her own way.
Now, the context of the discussion lends her some justification (from a narrative sense, regardless of whether it would hold water in real-world ethics). Amber - whom does not have command over her - is directly accusing her of cheating and of being a liability. Violet is trying to win the argument as quickly as possible. Chapter 12, wherein the Presentation to the dragons takes place, is immediately after this scene. Every minute spent arguing this risks that either Violet’s squad will look bad in front of the dragons or that the higher-ups of the Quadrant might get involved in this issue. I almost applaud Violet for reading her opponent and recognizing that an argument rooted in the Codex might work as well on Amber as it would on Dain.
Unfortunately, Chapter 11 overlooks a crucial detail:
Aurelie is dead.
Aurelie did not operate in the gray areas of the Codex. She did not bend the rules. What little we know about her demonstrates that she worked hard to meet the standards of the riders, just like everyone else here who isn’t Violet. And, while doing that, she died. Chapter 10 wants us to feel bad about that. In fact, since this book is written in 1st-person POV, it wants us to feel bad about it because of how Violet was emotionally affected by that event.
Violet’s decision to flip around and cheat her way through the Gauntlet, twisting the Codex to validate her cheating via technicalities that blatantly violate the entire intent of the Codex, spits on the death of a character that we were told to care about. Aurelie didn’t die on the obstacles that Violet cheated to overcome, but she did die while playing by the rules. Violet’s supposed triumph over the Gauntlet and Amber (and the smugness she displays while beating Amber down) implies that her way of doing things makes her better than the people who comply by the rules. A character we were supposed to care about a chapter ago is now presented as inferior for trying to play fairly.
And, in so doing, it exposes the grim reality of Violet’s character arc.
The Murderer
At least one person must die for Violet to remain in the Quadrant.
It’s basic math. There are a finite number of dragons willing to take riders each year. Unbonded cadets are encouraged to murder one another (and, as we will see later, bonded cadets) in order to eliminate competition for a dragon’s attention. We have, by this point in the story, learned that any cadet that is unbonded at the end of the 1st year is forced to repeat the year, thereby exposing themselves once more to all of the deadly challenges and the murder risk of that year. While Dain was able to arrange a safe escape from Violet to the Scribes Quadrant, it is unclear whether such a pipeline exists for unbonded cadets at the end of an unsuccessful 1st year, but this is unlikely. Chapter 13 will establish that Violet is afraid of being endlessly cycled through 1st year until she dies, which implies that no other out exists. We also know that outright desertion is a capital offense based upon Chapter 3.
With everything Violet is aware of at this point in the story, an unbonded cadet must either secure a bond with one of the limited number of available dragons or die. She is actively working to claim a dragon, despite not being qualified. With full knowledge and full consent, with full awareness that she has another option, she is choosing to force someone else’s death (if not kill them herself) to steal an honor that she does not deserve and cannot earn.
One detail that I’ve skipped over thus far is that Violet has gone out of her away to avoid killing anyone. She could have shanked any of her poisoned opponents on the sparring mat without any consequences, yet has deliberately avoided this. When she inevitably has to kill later in this book, it affects her deeply.
Yet she is willing to guarantee the death of another cadet for the sake of her ego. She is smart enough to do this math. She chooses to do it anyway, all so that no one will think she is a liability, while simultaneously proving again and again that she is indeed unworthy of this honor.
This is not a hero. This is a villain.
The Takeaway
Violet’s character arc, more than anything else, is what convinces me that the biggest problem with this book is Yarros’s inexperience with Epic Fantasy.
The arc works perfectly in isolation. It is what convinces me that, despite the problems of this book, Yarros is indeed a very experienced writer who deserves all of her success. I’m unlikely to pick up any of her Romance novels anytime soon, given that they simply aren’t my preferred entertainment, but I have immense confidence that they are well-written in terms of characterization. That is how good she is at writing cohesive and compelling arcs.
It’s the worldbuilding that destroys Violet. All her development is ruined when one actually stops to consider the implication of her decisions in light of the setting. When one further reflects upon previous plot beats that are also tied into the setting, like character deaths or the chances Violet is given to avoid danger, moments that should have been Violet’s opportunity to shine instead become abhorrent.
I sincerely hope that Yarros is a quick learner who is receptive to feedback. I can’t see how The Empyrean series can progress through the five books when the setting itself is actively as war with the character arcs. Violet only works as a character if the reader is willing to embrace the power fantasy and not think critically about anything happening outside of it. I shudder to think of what’s going to happen as the stakes of the story ramp up over subsequent installments.
And this is just the end of Chapter 11. We are less than 30% through this book. Things are only going to get worse.
MARY SUE, I CHOOSE YOU!
The next part will delve into Chapters 12 through 14. It’s a short segment, but also a critical one to this story. These chapters the events of the Presentation, where Violet and the other 1st years are inspected by the dragons, and the Threshing, when they get a chance to be selected as a rider.
These are honestly some very exciting chapters. I think they should have been the climax, rather than barely taking us to the 34% mark. These are narratively rewarding moments that everything thus far has been building towards.
Sadly, they are not immune to the problems that plague the rest of this book. The worldbuilding is only going to get worse, and Violet’s character will only be further assassinated because of it.
This is going to get wild. I’ll see you all next week. Have a good day.
