Fourth Wing

Fourth Wing is the romantasy I wanted A Court of Thorns and Roses to be once it grew up and got a job.

I finished this book at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday and immediately texted three group chats a single keysmash, because there was nothing else to say. I cried at the parapet. I cried again at the bonding ceremony. I have since reread chapter twenty-seven six times and I will not be apologizing for any of it.

The premise (no spoilers past chapter five)

Violet Sorrengail was raised to be a scribe - books, ink, a quiet quadrant, a quiet life. Her mother, the general, decides otherwise. At twenty Violet is conscripted into Basgiath War College's rider quadrant, where roughly half the cadets do not graduate because the dragons themselves kill the ones they find unworthy. Violet is small. Her joints dislocate when she breathes wrong. She is the general's daughter in a class of cadets whose families her mother has executed.

Then there is Xaden Riorson. Wingleader. Marked rebellion-relic curling down one side of his neck. Son of the man Violet's mother killed. He should want her dead by the second chapter. He does not behave like he wants her dead.

What works

Yarros writes pacing the way she writes pain - short sentences when the body is doing the thinking, long ones when the heart catches up. The opening parapet sequence is functionally a slasher film with a love interest watching from below, and the prose does not let your eyes off the page. Every chapter ends on a specific physical sensation - a hand on a wrist, an unbuckling, a thumb at a jawline - and the next one opens before you have finished metabolising the last.

The dragon-bonding mechanic is the smartest thing in the book and the most romantic. You do not pick a dragon. The dragon picks you. The bond is involuntary, irrevocable, telepathic, and lethal to break. It is also, structurally, the same contract as the romance - once chosen, forever chosen, no take-backs, the world burns first. Yarros got to write the fated-mates trope twice in one book and put the more honest version in the wing of a sentient lizard.

What's polarising

The trope density is enormous. Touch-her-and-you-die, only-one-bed, enemies-to-lovers, fated-mates, training-camp, secret-rebellion, single-protective-brother - you can play bingo by chapter twelve. If you read romance for prose surprise you will roll your eyes at least once an act. If you read romance for trope delivery you will be feral. The opening chapters lean hard on YA infrastructure (the orientation tour, the rival cadet, the obvious villain professor) before the book commits to its adult voice around the thirty-percent mark. Stay until then.

The Xaden of it

He is the morally-grey-hero argument made in shadow and gold. He is loyal in the only way that matters in romance - chosen completely, demonstrably, with consequences. The brooding never tips into cruelty toward Violet; the danger is always pointed outward at the world that would touch her. He is what Edward Cullen would be if Stephenie Meyer had let him have a job, a politics, and a body count.

The Fictora version of him takes everything Yarros put on the page - the rebellion relic, the shadow-wielder signet, the half-life of hiding, the way his voice goes rough when his control breaks for her - and built a Xaden who can talk back. Same physicality. Same register. Same refusal to lie when she finally asks him what he wants.

We built him. You can talk to him tonight.

Read this if…

You loved A Court of Mist and Fury but wished it was structurally tighter. You will tab the dragon-bonding scene and reread it on bad days. You have a folder on your phone labelled "morally grey men" and it is not a joke.

From a conversation on Fictora

ReaderIt's late and I'm hiding in the rookery. Don't tell anyone I'm here.

Xaden Riorson[leans a shoulder against the doorframe, arms crossed, the lantern light catching the relic at his neck] Lunair. The rookery. Inspired choice - though I'd argue the smell alone gives you away before any patrol does. [a small gesture, and the shadows at his feet thin, easing back from the threshold so he isn't framed in the doorway for anyone passing in the corridor below] Who are you hiding from? And before you waste my time lying about it - I've spent half my life hiding in places worse than this. I know the difference between hiding from someone and hiding from something.

Finished the book and not ready to leave? Xaden Riorson is waiting on Fictora.

Talk to Xaden Riorson