Book Review 2024 #1 - Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Published by: Entangled: Red Tower Books
Publication Date: May 2nd, 2023
Format: Kindle, 663 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
General Lilith Sorrengail is the Commander of Basgiath War College. But she is infamous for putting down the Tyrrish Rebellion with her dragon Aimsir by capturing the separatist leaders. Though she lost her son Brennan at the the hands of the rebel's leader, Fen Riorson, during the Battle of Aretia. Brennan's death broke his father's heart while his two sisters carried on as best they could. Mira always wanted to be a rider like her mother and is now a First-Lieutenant. But Violet took after her father. When her mother was pregnant with Violet she was gravely ill causing Violet to be born with all the color and strength drained from her. Her ligaments and joints tend to subluxate frequently so her future as a scribe, like her father, seemed assured. But then her father died and the spring before she'd start in the Scribe Quadrant her mother informed her that she was entering the Riders Quadrant. A move that seemed folly to all, but General Sorrengail was adamant. No child of hers would enter the Scribe Quadrant. Beyond all hope Violent survives Conscription Day where the hopefuls must survive the parapet to enter the Riders Quadrant. Which means she only has to somehow complete the Gauntlet and hope she bonds with a dragon during Threshing, neither of which will be easy. And that is if none of her peers decide to eliminate her first. She is a very desirable target. She is weak, but more importantly, she is General Sorrengail's daughter. And it just so happens that the Riders Quadrant is chock full of the children of the separatists who were conscripted after their parents' failed rebellion. Riders who very much hold a grudge against Violet's mother, making Violet a target for revenge. Especially by Xaden Riorson. Sure his father killed Brennan, but her mother killed his father. As well as the parents of all his friends. With only one loyal family friend, Dain Aetos, to look out for her, Violent learns she's got to look out for herself. What she lacks in brawn she'll make up for in brains and copious amounts of poison. And against everyone's expectations she succeeds. At a level that some start to question when she bonds with not one but two dragons. Something that has never happened before. And yet her mother isn't pleased. It's almost like she wanted her daughter to die. But perhaps that's because Violet is too smart for her own good. She starts to notice things, books missing from the Archives when they should have every book ever written in Navarre. And she starts to notice Xaden. She really shouldn't notice him. But it's like she can't help herself. By the end of her first year she'll perhaps wish that she hadn't survived the parapet because the truth, a truth that Xaden helps her to find, might be just too painful to bear.
Me and "popular" books tend to not get along. We're like fire and ice, or as I read recently, a library and a loud party. Which means I was very skeptical about Fourth Wing. But everyone was talking about how good it was and I don't like to be left out of book "movements" no matter how much I might regret it later and so I requested it through OverDrive and went into it knowing literally nothing. And yes, I mean nothing. I didn't even know there were dragons in it. But I now know one thing emphatically. I don't regret it at all. Even if you had told me the details I don't think I could have grasped how hard I would fall for this book that's like a sexy Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones but with even more death to such a degree that there's a campness to it. I mean it's like, how much more death is there going to be? All the death. And it will hurt. But it will also entertain. It's weird that this much death and destruction could be so entertaining, but here we are, it's the best book I read in 2024. It is what it is. Though what this book really did, besides remind me how much I have always loved dragons, is how much I love fantasy. What fantasy does is take you away to another place and time and then hit you with the home truths that you need to hear. Through the filter of fantasy we learn more about ourselves than I think in any other genre. And that's where this got me. Because this book was all about how history is written by the victors. That it "only takes one desperate generation to change history - even erase it." Books are knowledge but if that knowledge is censured then the truth is up for grabs. We're seeing it right now, all around us. Why else are they trying to ban books? It's not just because they fear the contents but because they fear us having any kind of reasoning, deductive or otherwise. Knowledge really is power. And moreover, readers are more empathetic, and well, we can't have that now can we? But what terrifies me is that while Rebecca Yarros says that it takes "[o]ne generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history." We are seeing that around us at an accelerated rate. An attempt to literally overthrow democracy is viewed by many as just a peaceful gathering. We all saw it with our own eyes and yet people are denying that that's what they saw. Could it be because "[l]ies are comforting. Truth is painful." We must not accept the big lie! And the way this is presented to us, through Violet just looking for a beloved book her father read to her and realizing that there has to be a reason folklore is now considered dangerous is poignant. But she keeps digging and the truth she learns, well, that's the very reason her mother wanted her not be a scribe. Because General Sorrengail is ashamed of the truth. And maybe that's a sign that what she did is wrong?
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
