Welcome to the brutal and elite world of Basgiath War College, where everyone has an agenda, and every night could be your last . . .
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general - also known as her tough-as-talons mother - has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.
But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away . . . because dragons don't bond to 'fragile' humans. They incinerate them.
With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother's daughter - like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.
She'll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.
Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.
Alliances will be forged. Lives will be lost. Traitors will become allies . . . or even lovers. But sleep with one eye open because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
My thoughts
The hype surrounding the release of this book was absolutely insane. I feel like both the author and their publisher did an amazing job in targeting their audience and increasing the excitement levels of the release in ways in which I’ve not seen since the publish dates for a new Sarah J Maas book are announced.
By the time the book was finally able to be bought it was somewhat like a hunger games trial just to grab a copy from the local bookstore or supermarket. As sales increased so did the demand for special editions which included sprayed edges and a beautiful red cover rather than the standard gold which people were going feral for. There was a point in which shelves were empty and re-stocks were sold out almost immediately – I saw many a reel of people just driving bookstore to bookstore just hoping to nab a copy.
For me, I avoided the initial rush to get my hands on a copy simply because I hate a cliffhanger. Most of my reading is via Kindle Unlimited and I’ll often avoid a book series if it unfinished. I like to binge my books. 6 book series? No problem. Give me a weekend, locked doors, snacks and wine and I’m living my absolute dream. From the snippet spoilers I had seen online Fourth Wing had a pretty big cliffhanger. While I had managed to avoid what the cliffhanger was about I knew that going in it would have massive signs at the end flashing ‘danger! huge cliff ahead’. I also knew given its popularity that the second book would be in the works pretty quickly with publishers wanting to keep riding that wave. So, I decided to wait and see. Fortunately, the publication date for Iron Flame was just 6 months after Fourth Wing and to be honest I was feeling pretty smug that I could enjoy Fourth Wing and immediately start on book 2 (mind you this was before it was announced by Rebecca Yarros that this would be a 5 book series!) without the angst of not knowing what was going to happen next.
To say once I started reading the book that I was disappointed would be an understatement. I’m not sure if it was just a case of the book not living up to the hype or if my expectations were just so high the book could never achieve the level of greatness I was expecting. I went from excitement to boredom in the space of a couple of chapters – where were the dragons?! Why is this war college killing off so many people before they even start classes if its so important to win the war?! For the high stakes drama? I just found it pointless and rather than increasing the drama I found myself to be less and less interested.
I knew from the blurb that there would be dragons, a war college setting and an enemies to lovers trope. For me the whole book was spoiled in the description. The first boy to be mean to Violet – guess who the enemy to lover is... Move over Rhysand - booktok and bookstagram have a new book boyfriend to drool over. My problem was that there was absolutely nothing original about him. It was almost like an insert a copy paste of every other mean boy with brooding attitude, dark hair and some kind of shadow power. Don’t get me wrong I usually eat this up along with everyone else but not even Xaden could stop me from being bored. The story behind him and Violet as characters just did not hold up well enough for me to overlook that these might be characters I have read somewhere before.
The prose in the book was just… not good. For me it read like a YA novel – this is not a bad thing, there are so many YA books that I adore but sexy times should not found in YA books in my opinion. I love a spicy book but when I’ve just spent half of it feeling like I’m reading a YA for spice to be thrown in was completely left field. Oh! Our dragons are mates so surprise when they are getting it on we’ll need to do the same – I still hate you but at least we’ll get some. Eye. Roll. I would have much preferred for this book to be relatively spice free and then Violet and Xadens relationship to be explored and developed further with increasing spice as the series progresses. While the scenes weren’t completely awful, to me just their placement in the book seemed to just be there for the ‘is this a spicy book? Tick!’. The side characters were dull and I honestly could not tell you any of their names and I just did not care enough about them - how can you care about a character when if they're not being killed by their classmates, they're dying in classes, killed off by professors and eaten by their chosen dragon. There is a side character that is killed off in this book that I can admit was a bit heart wrenching to read but after it was over I found myself thinking why?! He wasn't central enough to the story to be a groundbreaking death, I didn't feel like violet had bonded with him enough for her to be truly upset for longer than feeling the horror of watching someone you know die. Yes this is war and people will die but we as a reader have to care enough for them for it to have any impact. I feel like Yarros could have written any of the side characters in to die in that scene and it would have read exactly the same.
I read this book back at the end of October and it took me ages to decide if I was going to write this review or not. I figured I’d give it a couple of months and try to do a re-read and see if my perspective changes with time. It didn’t. On my second read through I found myself skipping past the first 14 chapters to just get to where Violet meets her dragons and then quickly lost interest again. If you’re on the fence on whether to buy this book or not, my advice would be to save yourself some money and just borrow a copy from the library. If you love it – great! Go ahead and order one for your bookshelf at home. If you don’t the only thing you’ve wasted is your time. Failing that just read the description on the back – congratulations you’ve just read Fourth Wing.
It's safe to say that I will not be hurrying off to buy or read the next instalment of this series. If history has taught us anything the second book is never as good as the first and tends to be an info dump-filler book. Given my complete indifference about Fourth Wing, I'll be giving Iron Flame a pass.
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