Fourth Wing (Final Retrospective)
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 elements throughout the book.
OVERVIEW
In the words of the Longman: What a horrifying disaster.
I am certain that this book was published entirely on the back of Yarros's reputation and the mistaken assumption that she would write a Romantasy to feed current market trends. I simply cannot wrap my head around any other reason that this excuse for Epic Fantasy could ever have been traditionally published.
Yarros is an established and experienced writer, but it was agonizing just how far of her element she was here. The worldbuilding is actively at war with everything else. The plot has the coherency of a fever dream. The only character who isn't abhorrent, demonized, flat, or assassinated is Liam, and he's rewarded for it by dying to give an unworthy climax some emotional substance.
Not everything in this book is bad. The arc that Yarros conceptualized for Violet would have been phenomenal if properly executed. Pieces of the worldbuilding are interesting, and a few are even quite solid. With minimal rewrites, this story could have been reconfigured into an epic narrative that keeps most or all of the events and the core aspects of the world while providing a coherent and powerful story for the audience.
At the end of the day, those rewrites were not made. Almost nothing was properly executed, even if the shape of the concept can be seen. A handful of good things does not inherently make for a good or even acceptable story. Effort needs to be taken to make them all work together.
PLOT
Romance Subplot
The romance subplot is probably the best-executed element of the story. It is, conveniently, split into two halves: before Threshing, and after.
Before Threshing, this subplot is driven by the development of Violet’s character. We see Violet grow apart from Dain. He represents the version of herself that she is leaving behind. Her rejecting him is a necessary stage within her personal evolution, and thus, I believe that even readers who prefer Dain as a love interest will find some satisfaction in this development.
After Threshing, the romance consists of nothing but ever-escalating sexual tension, sex, being showered in gifts and special attention by Xaden, and justifying the choice of Xaden by lashing out at Dain. This is a wish-fulfillment fantasy on a sexual, material, and emotional level. I personally find it lacking, but I don't have any objective literary criticism against it at a conceptual level.
While I think the half prior to Threshing is better written overall, I believe that both work. It all depends on the type of romance one wants to read about. I think that it is even possible to knit these together. This is why I don't question how Yarros became such a prolific Romance author. There is a market for these types of stories, and I'm certain that all of her previous Romance novels fit perfectly within that niche.
The issue is that this book is not in the Romance genre. This book is not even a Romantic Fantasy. We are looking at a subplot within an Epic Fantasy, and said subplot is undermined by the fundamental realities of the setting. The nature of the murder school destroys Violet's character arc, setting her rejection of Dain on a foundation of narcissism and delusions. The nature of the broader world and plot developments in the back half of the book assassinate the Bad Boy Love Interest and set up a betrayal twist that ultimately make Violet look even worse.
Many weeks ago, I proposed that Yarros conceived the romance subplot before anything else in the this book, with the planned end coming right after Threshing. This conclusion was drawn based on the fact that the rest of the plot felt like filler after Violet rejects Dain. However, it is entirely possible that it is the other way around: that Yarros only planned out the romance subplot through Threshing, made up the rest of the plot as she went along, and then stretched things with Xaden to prevent the romance subplot from terminating halfway through the book (or, worse, having to write about the relationship that would follow Violet's decision).
Everything Else
The plot of this book feels like a first draft - or, at most, a second draft where limited foreshadowing for later events was sprinkled on rather than rewriting as necessary to build towards those events.
So much of this book feels like filler because it is not properly set up and has no lasting consequences. The Squad Battle is referenced vaguely a handful of times after Threshing, is resolved in a single chapter, and is then forgotten. The War Games are when Violet's Signet manifests, but the event itself is mentioned in one chapter and wraps up in the next (save for the final exercise that serves as the climax, though within the context of the story, I’m not sure that was officially part of War Games. It comes across more as a pretense of Melgren to test Xaden’s loyalties). The rivalry with Jack is revived briefly whenever Yarros wants Violet to humiliate him again and then returns to the background. The murder school elements are repeatedly set up and never paid off, save for one attempted murder that makes no sense in terms of logistics and requires a character assassination.
Yarros could absolutely have unified all of the disparate events and subplots in this book into a cohesive narrative with a sense of consequence and progression. She chose not to. At best, she didn't understand that a long story where many magical events happen is not what makes for good Epic Fantasy. I am not confident about her ability to deliver upon a five-book series if she doesn't drastically improve.
CHARACTERS
I feel like I've run this topic into the ground through the review, so I'll keep this brief.
None of the characters in this book are bad in concept. I'd go so far as to say that, outside of a few tertiary characters who exist to be slotted into specific scenes and then forgotten (like Dylan in Chapter 1, Aurelie in Chapter 10, and Heaton whenever Yarros wants to virtue signal with pronouns), all of them are functional. It's the worldbuilding and the meandering plot that ultimately rip characters apart, either assassinating them to drive events forward or altering the context in which they are interpreted.
The characters are what ultimately tipped me off that Yarros's inexperience with Epic Fantasy is the core of this book’s problems, rather than her being generally incompetent as a writer. I suspect that, if this precise cast of characters was run through an analogous series of events in a real-world setting, everyone would come out far more favorably. Even Violet would be vastly more sympathetic if her arc wasn't stretched to wrap around the murder school.
WORLDBUILDING
This world is fundamentally broken. It is to Epic Fantasy what The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker are to Star Wars. The lack of understanding of how the fantastical elements interact with one another, the plot, and the characters is staggering. I have not read any of Yarros's other works, yet I would be genuinely shocked of any of them had more than light Speculative elements. There is very little here that demonstrates any consideration for internal consistency or basic cause and effect.
There are multiple elements of this world, particularly involving the dragons, that have been ripped from other media with no understanding of why they worked in that original media. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with taking direct inspiration from other stories. The issue is that copy-pasting superficial details rarely works. People may remember the superficial details, but the reason why they are remembered usually comes down to the specifics of their original execution.
Yarros does not demonstrate either an understanding of the works that she appears to have copied from or an understanding of how those borrowed elements interact within the setting she herself has created. The result is a catastrophic mess that actively destroys everything else the story tries to accomplish.
POWER FANTASY
Much like Shadow of the Conqueror, Fourth Wing is a power fantasy. This quality is actively detrimental to the reading experience for anyone who is not wholly invested in that power fantasy experience. However, the method by which Fourth Wing executes this is not as bad as Shadow of the Conqueror. There is a single point where I feel Fourth Wing is worse, but on the whole, this power fantasy is less overtly destructive to the narrative.
Axis of Evil
The biggest defense I gave for Daylen Namaran's character is that, for all of his wicked deeds, he is supposed to be the villain. We are supposed to despise him. The book even goes so far as to deny him any credit for his accomplishments within the story itself and to punish him with the fate that he tried to avoid at the start of the book. He's unpleasant to read about, and Shad Brooks didn't properly reflect that unpleasantness in how characters reacted to Daylen, but the book ultimately does not let him off the hook.
Contrast that with Fourth Wing, where Yarros made Violet the axis around which all morality pivots and yet still failed to hide that she is a delusional narcissist.
Violet's double standards and hypocrisy are through the roof. She is vicious and selfish. These issues are amplified by the fact that she acts like a woman raised within a modern American mindset (namely, the way she reacts to people's notions about her based on her EDS) despite living in a world that should be utterly at odds with that mindset (i.e. a setting where Survival of the Fittest is apparently a deeply ingrained cultural value). The incompatibility of narrative voice with the setting makes Violet sound utterly delusional and entitled. Therefore, when the narrative repeatedly validates her and rewards her, it is infuriating, not empowering.
By the Power of Sue
The power fantasy of Shadow of the Conqueror damaged the fabric of the narrative. The book was marketed and structured as a fantasy adventure with action and external stakes. Because Daylen's immense power levels made him impossible to challenge for a full 50% of the book, the bulk of the book was devoid of genuine tension.
Fourth Wing does not have this problem. Yes, Violet is a super-special Mary Sue who is handed not one but two special dragons with special magical powers, shows a special talent for throwing knives, is gifted with special knives, knows sign language so that she can show off her special virtue, is gifted a special saddle, and begins the book with a special suit of plot armor … but none of these things disrupt or undermine the narrative. They are, at most, accessories to writing problems that would exist even if Violet was not a Sue.
I think the reason for this is the nature of Violet's power fantasy. The power fantasy with Daylen is about physical prowess. It therefore actively devalues a narrative where external, physical conflicts drive the stakes and establish tension. The power fantasy here is instead about emotional and moral prowess - in other words, it is about being “right”. Violet is constantly validated in every sense, humiliates and dominates those who get in her way, is sexual gratified, and is celebrated for “succeeding” in an environment where it should have been impossible. This relentless pursuit of being validated destroys her as a character, but since the actual core of the narrative is about external, physical challenges, the story manages to remain mostly intact.
Therefore, while I think people are free to dislike this book because it Yarros's power fantasy featuring her self-insert Mary Sue, I do not think it is reasonable to criticize it based solely upon that fact. (Criticize it for the many, MANY objective issues we've covered instead.)
Dropping the Mask
Since this book shares qualities with Shadow of the Conqueror, I want to preemptively address a specific criticism that I have previous seen pop up with regards to that book. At the time of writing this review, I have not seen anyone employ this against Yarros. However, if the full series of The Empyrean is published, and if the quality does not improve, I would not be surprised if there is backlash. I believe it is only a matter of time before someone tries to play this card.
The criticism to which I am referring is to cherry-pick elements from the work, often taking them wildly out of context, and using them to mock, slander/libel, attack, or otherwise criticize the author's personal character and beliefs, rather than keeping focus on the literary work.
To avoid putting any of my readers on the spot, I will take my own reviews as an example. You may recall that, while analyzing the virtue signaling in Jade City, I commented that Lee's actual stance towards “queerness” may be the direct opposite of what she signalled within the book. I then followed this up with a disclaimer to clarify that I was merely drawing conclusions from a text in a vacuum and was not making any declarative statements about Lee's true beliefs or character. Imagine if, instead of presenting that disclaimer, I doubled down and began loudly proclaiming that Lee herself is prejudiced against anyone who is not heterosexual.
Why do I bring this up?
Yarros's self-insert Mary Sue is a villain. Every situation arranged to demonize those who wrong or inconvenience her reeks of desperation to see things from the Mary Sue's point of view, and those efforts still fail. The virtue signalling is handled in such a way that it has the same self-defeating implications as the handling of Anden did. This book reads like Violet is a college girl who used her newfound independence to burn every bridge to positive influences and throw herself into toxic behaviors and relationships and is now desperately trying to justify her actions. Worst of all, Yarros wants us to root for this character anyway. We are supposed to be of Violet's side in all of her horrible behavior.
However, I will not map any of Violet’s flaws onto Yarros herself, especially when this book is my only point of evidence about her. I do not condone anyone else doing so. I encourage everyone to give the Yarros the benefit of the doubt in this regard.
First, a good writer is capable of writing character who has a different personality and values than themselves. This includes writing morally dubious individuals. Regardless of Yarros's other flaws as a writer, taking the absolute position that Violet must be a reflection of Yarros's true self only really reflects upon the literary weaknesses of the person making that accusation. It tells me that the person making the criticism is incapable of writing someone with a different mindset, not that Yarros is the incapable one.
Second, power fantasies of the self-insert Mary Sue variety have a strange habit of blowing things out of proportion. The author sets out to write with an interpretation of the character already firmly fixed in place. As a result, crucial details that undermine the intended interpretation are missed. It would not be impossible to change Violet into the moral paragon Yarros conceived her to be with just a handful of minor edits to the narrative. It would just require the elimination of a few of the more damning thoughts and reframing of a few descriptions and reactions.
Therefore, while I loathe Violet, I will not transcribe that loathing onto Yarros, no matter how obvious the association between them may be.
(I do want to add the caveat that this benefit of the doubt does not extend to recurring themes that define a story or spread across multiple stories. There is a breaking point where writers actively proclaim their worldview to their audience. However, even in those cases, criticisms of writers for personal values should not intermingle with objective analysis of their work. These things need to be kept as separate as possible to preserve the integrity of both.)
HAVING IT BOTH WAYS
Gritty realism and Rule of Cool are not a strict binary. (I apologize if my wording in this critique implied otherwise.) An author may have both within a setting.
To do this, the rules of the story need to be consistent. They can't be random. They should not be a series of switches that can be toggled to service the needs of the plot. Audiences need to understand what is possible and what is not for stakes and tension to function.
This is at its most important in Fantasy and Science Fiction. The very nature of these stories is that they operate by a different set of rules than the real world, whether that difference is as small as the inclusion of a piece of technology that is theoretically possible or a magic system that runs counter to our current understanding of physics. The audience can't rely upon rules that are taken for granted in our own world. Toggling rules on and off will have disastrous consequences for such a story. The inconsistency makes it unclear what is and isn’t possible, thereby undermining any effort to establish stakes or tension.
Yarros had several switches, some of which were toggled multiple times.
Masculine traits threaten Violet in physical combat, but all other women are Amazons, and Violet is later able to overpower men through training despite said men also undergoing their own training at the same time.
Jack is simultaneously an overwhelming physical threat and a pathetic coward who is easily overpowered.
The Codex enforces strict military regulations for when murder is acceptable, but those rules are selectively enforced as needed to keep Violet or recurring antagonists alive.
Killing Quadrant trainees in their sleep or stealing from them is not permitted, but poisoning them is.
The Quadrant strives to build unity within the wing, but murder between squads in the same wing is permitted.
The deadly nature of the school is enforced with a running death toll for the first half of the book and then forgotten when it would directly affect Violet (since the remaining number of unbonded cadets are supposed to be gunning for her).
Violet is simultaneously a victim who needs handicaps and underhanded tricks to survive and an empowered individual who needs people to stop doubting her success.
Violet wants to be recognized for succeeding under the Codex and is angry when Dain allows her to bear the consequences of operating under the Codex.
The dragons have disproportionate influence over the humans of Navarre and are the ones who mandate the murder school, yet Violet is given preferential treatment by her dragon, and the rider leadership are emphasized as the villains rather than the dragons to whom they should be answering.
I'm sure I missed a few. The point is, Yarros changes the rules as necessary to milk reactions from the audience or to justify Violet's actions while condemning her opponents. It might have been possible to ignore one or two of these examples, but their combined weight cracks through immersion and exposes the artificiality of the narrative.
ART IMITATES LIFE
I think that Fourth Wing is a good example of the wrong way for a writer to utilize personal experiences to lend authenticity to a text.
There’s nothing objectively wrong with injecting oneself into one’s writing. The romanticized ideal of the troubled writer exists because great works of literature have been produced by this method. However, as with everything else, execution is key.
Speculation
I strongly suspect that Yarros prioritized injecting aspects of her own life into Fourth Wing over the integrity of the story. There are multiple elements of the book, namely character traits and dynamics, that don’t quite mesh with the setting or the premise. These include, but are not limited to:
Violet’s insecurities about having EDS, which feel like they belong to someone raised with modern American sensibilities about physical disability rather than someone born in this brutal setting.
Violet not understanding why the rule against 1st-years writing letters exists, despite spending years living at the war college and being well-educated.
The efforts to demonize Dain.
Jack being a Murderous Sociopath Classmate who isn’t executed despite multiple violations of the first Codex rule we learned.
The unnecessary complication of Andarna being a Token Foster / Adopted Child, rather than just being Tairn's biological offspring.
Given that the first and last of these points have obvious connections to Yarros’s own life, it is probable that the other incongruous elements are also drawn from her own experiences. This is messy enough when one considers the ripple effects of the worldbuilding (which I’m not going to belabor here). However, it also has an unfortunate knock-on effect with the power fantasy.
Many writers use their writing as a way to vent about their life experiences - to unload personal baggage, one might say. (Again, nothing wrong with this in concept, only in execution.) Naturally, when a writer does this, they may choose to present a version of these experiences that either reflect their personal perspective, without delving too deep into the broader context, or which is actively skewed to make them seem more sympathetic. In some scenarios, the writer may be actively trying to get the audience to validate their perspective. This could go so far as to try to precisely capture a specific version of events.
I can’t shake the feeling that Fourth Wing represents one of these latter scenarios. There’s a palpable sense that Yarros’s power fantasy includes being validated about a series of very specific events in her life where she feels that she was wronged or just wants others to agree that she was in the right. Obviously, there’s no way to confirm this without in-depth knowledge of Yarros’s personal history and overall character, but the fact that I’ve getting this vibe really isn’t a good sign.
What really pushed me to this conclusion was the handling of Dain. Yarros had a functional arc for Violet’s relationship with him. She ruled him out as a love interest in a natural way. Yet, despite that, she wouldn’t let up on Dain. She just keeps hammering away at him, demonizing him at every turn. It feels like she is trying to reconstruct a series of real conversations and scenarios, all involving one specific person (possibly an ex-boyfriend), which she has replayed in her mind again and again for years before pouring them out onto the page.
Maybe this wouldn’t have been noticeable in a story set in the real world. These scenarios could have played out with little changes and made Violet come off an the unambiguous victim of a toxic relationship. However, Yarros was so committed to wrapping these precise scenarios around a fantasy that wasn’t built to support them that she ended up casting Violet in an unfavorable light.
The Takeaway
Reflecting every detail of a real scenario within a fictional one requires either than the plot and characters be written specifically to facilitate that scenario or that contrivances be used to force those details into place. This problem intensifies the farther a story is from our real world, as now the worldbuilding also needs to be molded around the situation. Additionally, efforts to force the matter via the emotions of the character(s) standing in for the author can result in character(s) who are out of touch with reality, mentally / emotionally stunted, and / or the actual villains in the scenario.
I myself have tried to apply experiences from my own life into fiction. This hasn’t always worked so well, and it has required significant redrafting of the stories in question. The lesson I learned from this experience is that, sometimes, a writer needs to learn to let things go.
When it comes to the details of the personal experience being relayed, focus on the emotional core and the broad strokes. Adapt everything else as necessary to make the scenario fit your story. If one really wants to cover every detail as part of seeking catharsis through storytelling, the solution is to split those details across multiple scenarios (or multiple stories) so that each detail can develop naturally.
Yarros is writing an entire series here. It would not have been hard for her to split up this struggle with Dain over multiple books (or multiple antagonists). This would have allowed his flaws to be supplied to the audience in more organic situations and helped to build sympathy for Violet whilst avoiding situations that ultimately make him seem like the real victim.
When it comes to how others interpret what's on the page … writers can’t control that. Audience perceptions can be steered to some extent, but efforts to control final conclusions can only backfire. If you are sharing a personal experience through writing because you hope the audience will validate you, I strongly recommend finding another outlet. It will be far less painful than having the audience align themselves against you.
Again, this would have been easy for Yarros to fix. All she had to do was dial back on the details in the narrative that repeatedly framed Dain as the bad guy. Violet’s character arc spoke for itself. There was no need to drag Dain down and uplift Xaden just to get us on her side.
EPIGRAPHS
I’ve mentioned the epigraphs that open the chapters a few times throughout this analysis, but I haven’t addressed the problem with them as a whole.
An epigraph, for those not aware, is a quote that opens a piece of writing. Whenever you open a book and find that the author has quoted some famous novel, poem, or historical figure on the last page before the story properly starts, that quote is an epigraph. Epigraphs can be applied to individual chapters just as well as books as a whole. In the case of fiction, they also don’t need to be references to anything in the real world. They can instead reflect elements within the world.
I like chapter epigraphs. They are something I try to use myself. I was inspired to do this many years ago after reading Karen Traviss’s Star Wars novels (in particular, her Republic Commando books, though I think she did it for the Legacy of the Force series as well). When chapter epigraphs are done well, as was the case with the Republic Commando novels, they provide a peek behind the curtain, showing things happening in the background of the story. They can introduce fun tidbits of lore, show how characters we’d otherwise never see are reacting to the events of the story, and enhance the tone. To take Traviss as an example, she used her epigraphs to flesh out Mandalorian culture, present Order 66 to the audience in the same terms that it would have been explained to the clones (back in the good old days when the audience could be trusted to accept that clones were nuanced and weren’t killing Jedi because the clones were bad people), and to build anticipation for Order 66 and the rise of the Empire through little vignettes that showed Palpatine’s tightening grip on the galaxy.
Fourth Wing’s epigraphs are not done well. There are a few that are decent - I think the epigraph for Chapter 1 is fine in concept, and the epigraph for Chapter 7 works as a way to feed the audience information about rebel children not being allowed to assemble - but the vast majority do not enhance the story. The most obvious problem is that several of the epigraphs come after the chapters where they would be relevant. It reads as though the book was reorganized during a rewrite without repositioning the epigraphs accordingly. The other problem is that a lot of the epigraphs feel hollow. They repeat established information or hammer on a tonal note that is a already overplayed.
Like so much else in this book, I get the sense that Yarros saw chapter epigraphs in other fantasy works, though they were cool, and decided to slap them in without any real plan for what she would actually write in them. In the case of the hollow ones, it furthers reads like she eventually gave up and starting slapping in lines that should just be placeholders. I do appreciate how hard it is to think of good epigraphs on top of everything else an author needs to think of while writing, yet acknowledging that problem doesn’t fix it. An author needs to have a plan and follow through with it if epigraphs are going to be employed.
THEMES
The ability of this book to carry a theme is extremely hampered by the unfocussed plot. That said, there are two ideas here that are coherent and consistent enough to be worth discussing.
Self-Actualization
This book could be seen Violet's journey to discover her true self, leaving behind the status quo imposed by her EDS and becoming a powerful rider. This is what defines the romance subplot's early stages and fits and gradually progression of her power level.
The problem here is that Violet doesn't actually earn her power. She doesn't succeed by realizing her true talents. Any time that she is not cheating or going against the ethos of the riders, she is handed achievements without earning them, shielded from challenges by others, or spared from the consequences of her actions and decisions. For just one example, Chapter 18 informs us that she's fallen off Tairn at least enough times to kill the entire 1st-year class, only surviving because he chooses again and again to catch her, yet we are supposed to accept that she doesn't need Dain's advice on how to avoid falling off in the future.
At the same time, Violet will not acknowledge either her disability or the handicaps she’s receiving to negate it. She gets incredibly offended when anyone points out her limitations and brags about her unearned accomplishments as if they are proof that her limitations don't exist. It's like her dialogue regarding her abilities was written for an entirely different character.
Violet is the character who's supposed to manifest this theme, yet her very characterization actively destroys it.
Erasure of History
“One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.”
This line by Tairn, delivered to Violet after she learns the truth about the venin and how Navarre buried that truth, is a blunt delivery of the idea Yarros seemingly wanted to convey here. We have previously been over the issues with this entire aspect of the story, both from a worldbuilding perspective and the manner in which the plot tackles that entire aspect of the story. Despite these issues, I think that the theme itself had some potential. Navarre’s general shadiness at least supports the idea, and I think the main reason it doesn’t work in tandem with the rebellion is a matter of the timeline. I think a better-structured plot with a better explanation for how the rebellion related to the venin might have been able to properly explore this idea.
SEQUEL
By the time you read this, Iron Flame will have been out for well over a month. I have already finished it and begun work on its review. However, when I first drafted this part of the review, there were still two months to go before Iron Flame’s release. I therefore thought it worthwhile to assess the sequel's marketing, writing from the perspective of a reader who has completed this first book and is considering whether to read the second. What follows is mostly untouched from that original, pre-Iron Flame draft.
Overview (Barnes & Noble Pre-Order Page)
“The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.” —Xaden Riorson
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.
Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.
Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.
But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.
Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
The advertised cover of this book bears the following inscription.
Burn. It. Down.
Disconnect
No.
Just … no.
With everything established thus far, the premise of Iron Flame cannot happen.
The leadership of Navarre now know that Xaden and his co-conspirators are traitors. Xaden's protection deal is now null and void. Every rider with a rebellion relic, along with every other rebel child, should now be executed. Violet, by virtue of hiding the secret of Xaden's Codex-violating meetings from rider leadership (remember, Fourth Wing establishes that rider leadership only knows because Dain read her memories) and being present for Xaden chosing treason, will surely be executed as soon as she resurfaces. At a bare minimum, she would be forced to choose between either execution or allowing Dain to review her memories of the event, thereby spilling the beans about everything. Her dragons would be held accountable by the Empyrean for their involvement in this conspiracy and possibly executed in turn (thereby killing Violet anyway).
For Violet to just … go back to school … flies in the face of both common sense and the way that Yarros had established Navarre and the Riders Quadrant to work. This is insane. There are plot holes no matter how one approaches it. At the absolute best, this can only function of Yarros introduces some new mechanic in the start of Iron Flame just to justify the story's existence, which would take us into, “Somehow, Palpatine returned,” levels of contrivance.
Also, does anyone else think that THIS sounds like the story that should have been the back half of Fourth Wing? The fact that Threshing is the only event from the previous book that is mentioned here implies that this book is taking place immediately after Violet gets her dragon. Why are the War Games not mentioned? Why is there nothing about the rebellion? (The bit about betraying Xaden is so mild that it makes more sense that it would refer to him violating the Codex by assembling with other rebel children, not to him having betrayed Navarre during the War Games.) Why are we focused on a secret inside the Quadrant instead of the secret we just learned about the world outside of Navarre?
I am now swinging back in the direction of the back half of Fourth Wing being entirely filler. This blurb sounds like nothing after Threshing matters. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yarros outlined these books in advance, wrote the blurbs based on those outlines, and then edited in all the filler to pad out the length of Fourth Wing.
A MESSAGE TO THE AUTHOR
Ms. Yarros, in the unlikely event that you somehow read through this entire review series, I want you to understand that I have nothing against you personally. I do not begrudge you your overall professional success. I don't even mind the success you garnered with this book (or that you may yet garner with the rest of the series).
The fact remains that, regardless of how much respect I may have for you, you still wrote an objectively bad Epic Fantasy novel. Basic rewrites that would have corrected the vast majority of the issues were not done. Your self-insert Mary Sue is impossible to get invested in unless one completely disconnects from rational thought - not because she is impossible to relate to, but because she simply does not mesh with the world you constructed for her story to play out.
And, as I will be covering in the coming months, Iron Flame is even worse.
Please, I beg you, find some beta readers who are wholly disconnected from the Romance genre. Find people whose first priority is the genre in which you have chosen to publish this series. Have them comb through your world and your plots, and when they give you notes, take them to heart. Take the time to properly edit your work so that those notes can be used to their fullest potential. Just find people whom you can trust to study your work closely and provide some honest feedback when you’re about to send your story off the rails. Your work will be all the better for it.
As incredible as it may sound after the writing of this series, I have faith in your ability to turn The Empyrean around. You just need to be willing to do some rewrites. There may yet be time to save the remaining three books you have promised for this series if you act now.
WHY IS THIS POPULAR?
This last part of the retrospective is being written on November 12th. It has been 5 days since the release of Iron Flame. Thanks to pre-ordering it via Barnes & Noble, I was able to download it to my phone and start reading it within minutes of its release. Already, I am on Chapter 12 of 66, and I have marked the text with 211 annotations. The first of three scenes of graphic pornography is roughly 150 pages in my future. (I was able to identify all three with a single keyword search, as Yarros really likes using a certain shorthand term for a female anatomical feature.)
Sometime between setting up the pornography hazard bookmarks and pondering the fact Yarros had an interview on Good Morning America as part of a publicity tour for Iron Flame, a question came to mind: why is this series so explosively popular?
The first book is objectively awful. The second book is worse, as on top of sharing the first book’s flaws, it fails at being a sequel. Why, then, is it being treated by the publishing world as the Second Coming of Twilight?
I think that there a four potential explanations here. Three of them are straightforward and based upon the actual content of the books. The last is a bit of a tinfoil hat moment, but I’d like you to hear me out all the same.
Tourist Trap
This book is Epic Fantasy written for people who don’t care about Epic Fantasy. It may be marketed as Epic Fantasy, but Yarros was primarily interested in writing for Romance audiences who, at best, read Paranormal Romances during the Twilight craze. I have heard secondhand that Yarros admitted to writing in a “low-brow” voice in an interview in an attempt to promote accessibility.
In other words, the sales of this book are being propelled by tourists - people are not fans of the genre. They do not notice or care about the gaping problems that someone who spends more time in the genre will have no trouble spotting. They are here to enjoy the superficial detail of dragons and magic and death schools and then go back to reading whatever they were reading before.
This is not intended as a knock against such readers. Publishing is a business, and you are a customer base purchasing a product of your choosing. I’m merely observing that a good chunk of the people who praise this book represent a subjective experience that simply isn’t bothered by the objective flaws. Said readers probably would never have picked up this book if it were a well-written Epic Fantasy.
The Customer is Always Right
Validation is quite the drug, and both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame supply it.
As mentioned above, the real power fantasy of this series is not the overwhelming power that is handed to the self-insert Mary Sue. It is the fantasy of being “right”. It is about relentless validation, wish fulfillment, and the tearing down of those who get in one’s way.
It would not surprise me if many readers felt a sense of catharsis while reading this power fantasy. I do see the appeal of it. The power fantasy falls apart because the worldbuilding undermines it, but I’m not blind to the fact that this was at least intended as a story about a young woman whom succeeded despite her disability, proved wrong all those whom doubted her or held her back, and received praise and love from those whom she respected and loved.
As the drug of validation goes, this series offers quite the hit.
Sex Sells
This series provides graphic pornography.in a pretty fantasy wrapper.
Inside Job
Okay, tinfoil hat time.
Fourth Wing was published in May of 2023. (I haven’t been listing the month in the Stats as it wasn’t included inside the book itself.) That’s just a six-month gap from it to Iron Flame. At the time of writing this, it does not appear that the release dates for Books 3 through 5 have been announced, but the short gap between the first and second books is enough to get the cogs turning.
Six months is an unfathomably short period of time in publishing terms. Most books take two years to go from the author handing the manuscript off to an agent to the official release of the book in stores. What’s more, it’s not often that you see Epic Fantasy novels turned around so quickly. Their sheer size (and these two books are indeed massive, with Fourth Wing clocking in at 553 pages and Iron Flame at 745 pages) makes them a nightmare to draft and edit on a short timetable. A full year (or even two) is more typical. Even the Twilight books were released a full year apart.
For Iron Flame to release a mere six months after Fourth Wing, it would already have finished edits and been lined up for marketing by the time Fourth Wing came out. The publisher wanted these books on shelves as quickly as possible.
Which leads me to my theory: Red Tower Books, their overlords at Entangled Publishing, and/or American book retailers (I think Barnes & Noble is invested in it, but given that Amazon has purchased the TV rights to this series already, I wouldn’t be shocked if they were in on it as well) are trying to force the next Twilight craze.
They chose a Romance author with a proven track record and audience who wanted to spread out into Epic Fantasy, thereby expanding their potential audience across multiple demographics. They greenlit her entire epic and staring slamming content into the tubes at a rate that would give a Disney+ production pause. They threw themselves into promoting it as broadly and loudly as possible, both to generate hype and to keep that fire burning.
Maybe I’ve just been watching too might Midnight’s Edge (which is a delightful channel if you want to explore the mechanics and machinations of the American film and TV industry), but this just doesn’t seem organic to me. This seems preplanned.
WHAT'S NEXT
Originally, my next review series was going to be a positive one. I want to dissect The Goblet of Fire and do a case study on how a plot was complex as Fourth Wing can be. The book was read, I was getting my notes together, but due to a combination of factors, I hadn’t starting drafting up the series yet.
Then Iron Flame came out, and I couldn’t help but start it. I was expecting it to be bad, but I had hoped it would at least be better than Fourth Wing. Instead, it is worse. It both compounds problems from Fourth Wing and introduces new ones. It fails both as a standalone story and a sequel. There is a LOT we can talk about, and a lot we can learn, so it is going to require another book club-style deep dive.
I do need a bit of time to write that series. I wrote the Fourth Wing series over summer vacation. Winter vacation is not nearly as long, and I have other projects and commitments in that time period. Tentatively, I’ll say that the prelude to the Iron Flame series will be posted on February 1st. The review of Chapters 1 and 2 will then go up February 2nd, and we will proceed with weekly releases every Friday after that. My hope is that, as soon as we wrap up that series, we can roll right into the Goblet of Fire analysis without interruptions.
In any case, I'm looking forward to 2024. I hope to see you all then. Merry Christmas.
