Review: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

From the publisher:
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.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.

Review:
For months, Fourth Wing has been all over every single book related social media account I follow. When ARCs came out, not a single person who read it had a bad thing to say. And then it was released and there were people who didn’t like it and I was torn between reading it and writing it off as another BookTok done me wrong situation. I apparently pre-ordered it when it was still in the ARC phase, so it showed up in all its sprayed edge currently being resold on Mercari for $1000+ glory and I mentioned having it to a friend… who then decided we should buddy read it. Our goal was ten chapters a week for a month. I blew threw it in two days.. and now I get it. I understand the hype.

I have been struggling to get into anything lately and for the first few chapters of this, it was the same. And then the dragons came. And it became unputdownable.

Were there things that I saw coming a million miles away? Yes. Did I completely call that thing that happened at the end? From the beginning. Was it a work of literary fiction written like only the masters of old could? No, it's a dragon fantasy. Was it entertaining? Very much so. Was Grumpy Daddy Dragon the best? YES.

I really enjoyed that Violet understood her limitations. She never planned to be at this super cutthroat quadrant and she did her best within the boundaries of her disease. She also stuck to her convictions and her brain and that ultimately is what earned her the respect of *most* of those who wanted to kill her and her dragon and therefore her place as a dragon rider.

I finished this, I immediately preordered the second and now am impatiently waiting for the rest of my friends to finish so we can discuss and I can throw out my theories.

5/5 stars