Reading Fourth Wing for the First Time
Photo taken from Google.
By: Crystal Best
Imagine a world filled with dragons and enemies surrounding your borders. And once you turn twenty you have to do Conscription Day where you decide what quadrant you join whether that’s Infantry, Healers, Scribes, or a Rider -the ones who ride the dragons themselves. Depending on what you choose will change the course of your life forever, whether you live a long life or a short one.
This is essentially the basis of the world of Fourth Wing. This story overtook Tik-Tok for the longest time a couple of years ago and recently came back in heat due to the third book coming out.
I was luckily able to avoid all the spoilers of the book by outsmarting the algorithm, but I couldn’t avoid the people talking about it. I am a huge fantasy fan and am kinda writing my own, but I was worried that Fourth Wing was way too overhyped. It didn’t help that I read Cruel Prince around when it came out and didn’t enjoy it at all, and that was almost as hyped as Fourth Wing so I didn’t have the greatest trust.
So through convincing friends and others, I decided to suck it up and force myself to embark on the journey of Fourth Wing. Note that I tried to read it a year or two ago and quit within the first couple of pages, so I was already expecting the slow start and urge to quit again.
April 7th: 11:15 am - 12:20 pm
When I first started my hope for it wasn’t great. The map looks amazing and the description was incredible, but I thought that it might be overrated. Straight out of the gate we meet her mother and sister, who I both hate.
Now that I read some more, I don’t hate the sister as much anymore, but my feelings for the mom are the same. She can be gone and I would celebrate the moon.
Anyways Violet (the main character or MC; Might sometimes be referred to as the Goat or Queen further into the article) is forced by her mother to be a rider. Her sister preps her up and says one important thing: “don’t trust anyone.” Essentially the best plan is to make allies not friends.
What does Violet do the minute she is away from her sister? Make friends with the person in front of her and behind her. I don’t understand what “don’t trust anyone” means in Navarre, but I'm pretty sure it doesn’t mean don’t talk to anyone according to Violet.
I had a reader tingle, where you’ve read so many books that you have a feeling what’s going to happen, and that happened with Dylan, some bright eyed character who already proposed to a girl back home. He was the first one on the parapet and quickly the first one off. I knew he was going to die, just not that quickly.
We also met what I assumed was her love interest that comes in the form of Xaden Riorson who (no shock at all) is the son of the man who started the rebellion against the country and went against Violet’s mother. Since his dad was a part of the rebellion he had the relic on him. All kids of any person a part of the rebellion were cursed with the rebellion relic on their arm and had to go into the Riders quadrant.
She seemed to have developed a crush on him, but her sister made it clear to stay away from him since he would try to get her killed. Especially since her mother is the reason he has the rebellion relic and that his dad is dead.
I met Jack Barlowe (the boy who should die) and instantly hated him. Mostly because he’s trying to kill my queen Violet, but also he’s just a jerk just because he can be. He doesn’t even have a rebellion relic, he is just a straight up bad person. Now he’s targeting her and she had the perfect opportunity to just deal with him before he was going to do worse later.
I met Dain (the childhood best friends; Might be referred to as the Irritation) and he seemed sweet but like he was a little too much with how protective he was. He kept trying to convince her to go to the Scribe quadrant (which in his defense she was supposed to be in) but she explained that there was no leaving because of her mother. Even because of that he was still pushing and it was just annoying, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt since they are such close friends.
April 8th: 5:30-9:00 pm
“I will not die today” - Violet Sorrengail
We started to go to the classes of the Bagsith and I felt myself for some reason become way more interested in the story when we did War Briefing, talking and analyzing the different battles happening around Navarre. I’ve always had a weird fascination with planning or war talks in books that just peaks my interest. As an author I know it sucks to write sometimes because it all has to make sense, but I still have a weird love for it.
This also was enjoyable because it showed how smart Violet was. I can not deal with a dumb MC, it actively aggravates me. I have not finished books simply because the MC was to dumb to handle, so for her to flex how smart she really was made me pleased.
After this Dain was doing his begging to go to the Scribe quadrant again and I feel like this is when my hate for him started. I get it, you don’t want her to be there but talking to her like a child and explaining all flaws is not helping the situation. Especially since she also doesn’t want to be there but knows that the minute she is in the other quadrant her mother will drag her back there. Which she explained to him already (literally every time he says that stupid plan!), but he thinks he can work around it.
We then go to sparring and get ready for hand to hand combat between the first years as that’s the next challenge. They were practicing and you know Jack Barlowe being the jerk he was being aggressive in his spar and “accidently” killing the kid he was training with. I won’t lie, I was stunned silent. I knew he was going to kill a couple of people, but doing it in front of the Professor and seeming confident that he wasn’t going to get in trouble threw me off for a minute.
We go through some other spars before it’s Violet’s turn and of course she is going against another child of the rebellion, Imogen, and she is out for blood. As much as I would love to describe to you the but whooping she gets, I simply just don’t have the time (nor the embarrassment of reliving it) to explain it. By the end of it she had a broken arm and Dain was being Dain.
Once again I say, I get he cares for her, but him picking her up and taking her to the medical area was just dumb. He didn’t do that for any of the other first years which is just putting a bigger target on Violet instead of lessening it. Like bro, you're making the situation worse. I think she is slowly starting to see that too.
April 9th: 8:30 - 11:00 pm
“This place… cuts away the bull**** and the niceties, revealing whoever you are at your core.” - Dain Aetos
After she wakes up from her injury it seems Mira left her a book that her older brother, Brennan, who passed away during service gave her to help her out. He is the actual MVP. Giving the book helped her out on knowing who exactly she is going against during the challenge and any extra advice on what to do at Basgaith. He’s literally saving her life from the grave.
Violet accidentally spied on Xaden and because of this I trust him to a degree. Like he still is trying to kill Violet, but I think he has a good heart since he was trying to help all the other people who had the rebellion relic too. He was like a big brother to all of them, so I felt a little soft at that.
“You look all frail and breakable, but you're really a violent little thing, aren’t you.” - Xaden Riorson
We started reading the sparring challenges and Violet was winning every one in the smart one. She would literally poison the competitors before she had to go against them which made beating them easier. Now, as Xaden loved to point out in the long run that isn’t smart since when she is on the battlefield she can’t exactly poison them all, but hey, I say she can surely try.
Then Xaden humbled her since she accidentally poisoned her competitor too early and got the win early and he decided to spar her. Well more like flirt sparring her though, since she seemed to enjoy it no matter how angry she was about it.
“Don’t die. I would hate to be an only child.” - Mira Sorrengail
We got to the next challenge, the Gauntlet and to me it was one of my favorite challenges. Considering it’s the last one before we get to go to the actual dragons. It was good overall though she was not great at the challenge. But Aurelie, who is a part of the squad, has a brother who already ran the gauntlet and said it was the best part. She was super excited and even helped Violet from not falling, but it wasn’t long before she accidentally slipped on an obstacle and fell. She will be missed especially considering she was the one most excited to willingly join the Riders quadrant.
April 10th: 9:20-9:50 am; 11:10-11:35 am
“The right way isn’t the only way” - Xaden Riorson.
So my Goat completed the Gauntlet and I can’t tell you how tamed I tried to be when she did it. Yelling in class should be an exception for something this amazing happening. The way she pulled herself up and everything *chef’s kiss*.
But the audacity of the girl Amanda trying to discredit her was enough for me to dislike her forever and of course she’s friends with my sworn irritation Dain. Yet, Violet took her down a peg or two and gave her a place she deserves as a dumb person who should know the Codex better.
“Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities.” - Xaden Riorson
Now that we are at the presentation and they are talking about the dragons supposed a feathertail came. For a while, I blanked on it but after kindly asking my friends it’s the one dragon that supposedly never leaves the Vale or bonds with anyone. Now ignoring the part where Violet is just the main character and would most likely get the rare dragon, for the world I guess if a black dragon is there she could bond with it because she’s a bit different than the average rider and smart. The other dragon I guess she can bond with is the feathertail because supposedly it doesn’t like violence or war. Which is right down Violet’s alley considering she doesn’t want to really kill anyone or be directly in the war. This is my final guess before Threshing happens.
April 11th: 8:00-11:30 pm
“A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.” - Known saying of Rider’s Quadrant
Did I stay up to 11:30 to read about a girl getting a dragon? Yes I did. Did I have school the next day? Of course. Did I still scream at the top of my lungs, danced, pumped my fists, and reread the scene of her getting the dragon over and over again? A thousand percent. Yet I regret nothing.
I swear the author wants me to suffer. What do you mean she fell? Like chic you trained for this? I don’t care that he’s bigger; you trained for this! We can’t be falling and not him having to use his power just to make sure she stays on. I just can’t Violet, I can’t.
Also for the record I'm a genius. I guessed that she would be with either dragon. I didn’t think she would get both, but still I guessed it. Not including how it applies in the story, at the end of the day she is the MC and most of them need to get something rare for them to be shown like that, which this was the case.
It seems my screaming didn't go unnoticed as my brother walked asking questions about why I'm still up late to which I avoided answering and simply said the mantra of all readers “one more chapter.” Waited for him to leave before I silently screamed in joy and went back to reading.
Even just meeting him, I love Tairn (The black dragon). He has such a vibe to me and Andarna is a sweetheart who just wants some fun outside of the vale and decided to bond while at it.
“Strength of courage is more important than physical strength.” - Tairn
After Threshing we are about halfway through the books and most readers know this well. First half is slow to read and takes a long time, and the second half is fast and seems to end quickly.
Which it kind of did for me. Also the fact that I finished the last half in one and half days, with me truly finishing the book at 5 am on Sunday, but still it was fast.
Another fact is that a lot and nothing also happened for the second half of the book. Like a lot happened for the plot and the character growth, but at the same time it’s nothing truly important until the around the last 100 pages of the book that truly worth to go in depth about.
So I will briefly go over important parts of the book that were cool or got me excited and are pretty important to the plot.
April 12th: 9:30 pm - 5:00 am
“Nature likes all things in balance” - Andarna
The first is things that to me were awesome and very necessary things to happen. Like Xaden and Violet kissing and eventually getting together like the cute couple they were, but got interrupted because of the War Games (Which are not important till the end).
Her dragon Tairn, is mated with Xaden"s dragon which means they can't be too far from each other or something bad happens with the Dragons. So he just shows up because his dragon wants to be with her man. Which is very much understandable.
Violet didn’t exactly develop a sigil yet, but found out she can freeze time when she channels Andarna’s power, but can’t do all the time or it can deplete her for good (hence why Feathertails were never allowed out). She eventually get a sigil that channels Tarin’s power in a form of lightning.
Oren dying was nice to see since he was out for Violet because he couldn’t get a dragon and he thought he could steal hers. As you can see that did not happen since he wanted to break code (Can’t kill another rider while they are sleeping, but any other time fair game) in the first place and Xaden took care of him. Amber was an unexpected one, but she never liked Violet since she “cheated” on the Gauntlet, so she had to be executed for breaking the same code as Oren and for breaching a Rider’s room.
Jack Barlowe died which was much needed. He should have been dead on day one! Also the way he tried to take down my boy Liam, he deserved to die by lightning from Violet. Though it did annoy me how much she regretted that. He has been trying to kill you this whole time and now you don't have to worry as much since he’s gone, but she’s a better person than I am. Problem would have been dealt with if possible on the first ever challenge into the quadrant.
We have some more little, but important things that happen. Met with Mira which was nice to see her and Violet reunite. Had a quick run in with the enemy and was forced to leave Mira early. Dain continued to be an irritation that he is and was weirdly touching Violet (If he touches someone he can read their memories). I know that they are close but after he tried to force search her mind once I was starting to get a bad feeling every time he reached for physical touch. Especially on her face.
“I am the sky and the power of every storm that has ever been. I am infinite.” - Violet Sorrengail
Now to roughly the last 100 pages of the book. We make it to the last challenge of the War Games and the section leaders along with the wing leaders make a team and defend a base. Xaden, of course, picks Violet since it's supposed to last multiple days but also because they are together. Like he would rather be with his girl.
We go and find out this dude was working with the enemies that we've literally been fighting. But only because they are fighting the supposed to be mythical creatures of Vernin, which are real. I had a feeling of this! Because early in the book Violet mentioned a book she got from her father and he would read it to her all the time when she was young. She went to the archives that has every possible book in the country yet it didn't have the book which was strange because they were trying to keep it a secret.
It also seems that their county knows that the Vernins are alive and purposefully ignore it and continue to live under their protection of the dragons letting the other countries deal with problems and suffer (Fitting isn’t it?). Anyways they are fighting against the power and the ignorance of the country and taking an enemy that can eventually take them out once the countries are taken over if not sooner.
Then Xaden and Violet essentially have a falling out because you know, he lied to her about this and a few other things, but then again not everyone is like her where they will just randomly drop important information to somebody.
Anyways they were still loyal to each other and all of the rebellion arcs started to fight the Vernin that came upon one of the nearby countries' towns. It seems that the base they were assigned was a trap started from Dain reading her mind (which I had a suspension of happening) and they decided to screw the college and go save innocents.
An epic ensues on the dragons and trying to save everyone along with figuring out why the Vernin were there in the first place. Then the author did the unthinkable: she took away from my second favorite character. She took away Liam and the way he didn’t even die was because of someone else or because he lost in some fight or something. No he died because his dragon died. She nearly had me crying because all he wanted was Violet to take care of his sister for when she came next year and to take him next to his dragon.
Like I just don’t get how a dragon dies and so does the rider, but if a rider dies the dragon is fine and can bond again the next year depending on how attached they are (with Tarirn as the exception of course). Where is the balance? Why shouldn’t they also die if the rider does? Wouldn’t that be fairer and also has it to where, I don’t know, certain dragons could care more about the people they choose?
But maybe it is fair and I’m still annoyed that the author killed him. We’ll say that’s the reason.
Either way the battle must go on and it sure does. They continue fighting but more and more Wyvern come (basically off-brand dragons) and the leader Vernins. Then my girl, my queen, goes off with slowing down time and using her lightning to kill one of the leader Vernin, which in turn killed off a whole bunch of Wyvern, but that took to much energy (along with her being poisoned earlier in the fight) and she fell off again. But between Adarna, Train, and Xaden they save her (as they should considering there are two more books after this one and two more in the process).
Still too close for comfort and now that she woke up (after three days) and she is still ad at Xaden, I can already tell that is going to be very annoying to read in the next book since he still clearly loves her and she loves him.
Then on the last page they pull the craziest plot twist of the MVP Brennan is actually alive. I expect a full explanation in the next book on how and why he is alive.
Overall Experience
“It only takes one desperate generation to change history—even erase it” - Violet Sorrengails’s Dad
Overall the book was really good. I see why people are obsessed with it, if you like a good classic romance fantasy book but with a twist this is a great book to read.
I hate to say I’m officially a fourth wing fan and will be reading the next book as soon as I can along with getting book merch repping the Basgiath college like I go there.
Some easy thoughts are that out of everyone I met in the book, I love Tairn. He is my favorite in general and I will support all his rights, sarcasm, and wrongs for as long as I read. I have a group that must not be touched during the duration of this series or I will throw hands with the author personally. This includes Ridoc, Rhi, Sawyer, Violet, and Xaden. I can have other people come in that I like and may not want to die but at the end of the day I rock with these characters no matter what.
Theories that I have on the book that were either not talked about or possibly hinted but not told are that the father clearly knew what was going on about the Vernin and was trying to help the otherside. I also think that he didn’t die naturally (They said he died of a heart attack from the “death” of Brennan”) but in fact was killed by the kingdom for knowing too much. He was Scribe so I’m sure he was digging all over the place for more information that they weren't saying along with possible hidden records of the past battles with them. I think he told Brennan about them or maybe he found out himself and that’s why he faked his death so he can help the revolution better. I think the rebellion happened simply because they wanted to help the people and tell everyone the truth about the Vernin so the kingdom had them silenced and suppressed. My last guess when the very last book of the series comes out is that Violet dies at the end because of the beginning of the book being transcribed by someone and keeping their names true in the story in honor of Molek (Their god of death).
As a future author this helped me figure out how to have a description in the middle of dialogue. Along with how there are truly different ways to progress a story with trials. As a reader, it was a great way to get into a world that is at its base somewhat like our own. Both sides seem in the wrong to the other, but all they really wanted is to live in peace. This also shows that perspective is everything. Under a certain perspective and with limited information someone you could think is a hero could be a villain to someone else. That’s why you always have to be aware of the otherside feelings and what their possible perspectives are.
