Summary: Fourth Wing

The GIST

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is the novel that turned "romantasy", the blend of romance and fantasy, into a publishing phenomenon. Released on May 2, 2023 by Red Tower Books, it is the first book of The Empyrean series and follows twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail, a bookish young woman with a breakable body who is ordered by her own mother into the deadliest school in the kingdom: Basgiath War College, where cadets either bond with a dragon or die trying. It spread through TikTok's community of readers, sat at number one on the New York Times bestseller list for eighteen weeks, sold more than two million copies in its first six months, and has been translated into about thirty languages.

The story grew out of things close to its author: a love of dragons, her husband's military career, and her own life with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic condition that also affects her children and that inspired Violet's fragile joints. Yarros has said she wanted readers with chronic illnesses to see that they can be heroes too. That gives heart to a book that is otherwise proudly built for speed: a brutal school, a slow-burning enemies-to-lovers romance, snarling dragons, and a secret at the top of the kingdom that someone is working very hard to keep.

The Story

The kingdom of Navarre is at war on its borders, defended by riders who fight from the backs of dragons, and its youth are sorted into quadrants that decide the rest of their lives. Violet has spent her whole life preparing for the Scribe Quadrant, the quiet world of archives and history where her late father worked. She is small, and her joints and ligaments give way far more easily than other people's, so she knows pain well. None of that moves her mother. General Lilith Sorrengail, the feared commander of Basgiath, decides at the last moment that her youngest child will become a rider like her siblings. Violet's older sister Mira, already a rider, fights the order and loses, so she does the next best thing. She strips Violet's pack down to essentials, hands her armour made of dragon scales and boots with better grip, and gives her one piece of advice above all: stay away from Xaden Riorson.

The reason lies in recent history. Some years ago a rebellion rose against Navarre's government, and General Sorrengail crushed it. Its leader, Fen Riorson, was executed on her watch. The rebels' children were branded with a magical mark called a rebellion relic and forced into the Riders Quadrant as punishment. Xaden, Fen's son, is now a third-year cadet and the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the college. Violet's own brother, Brennan, was lost in that same war. The marked ones have every reason to want a Sorrengail dead, and at Basgiath there are plenty of ways to make that happen.

The killing starts on the first day. To enter the quadrant, candidates must cross the parapet, a narrow, slick walkway from which many fall before they ever reach the far side. While waiting her turn Violet meets Rhiannon, notices her shoes are wrong for the slippery crossing, and swaps one boot with her so that both have a chance. It is the first sign of how Violet survives: by noticing what others miss. Behind her on the crossing is Jack Barlowe, a vicious cadet who tries to throw her off and, when she gets the better of him at the other side, promises that he will kill her. She also gets her first look at Xaden, and to her great annoyance thinks he is the most beautiful man she has ever seen.

On the other side waits Dain Aetos, her childhood best friend and long-time crush, now a second-year squad leader. Dain is horrified to find her there and urges her to slip away to the scribes. She refuses. She joins his squad, and Xaden promptly has that squad transferred into his own Fourth Wing, where he can keep an eye on her. Violet assumes it is so he can kill her at his convenience.

Life in the quadrant is a series of tests designed to weed out the weak. Dragons burn candidates who flinch. Cadets may kill one another on the sparring mat. Violet cannot win a fair fight, so she does not fight fair. Using a journal her brother kept during his own time at the college, she works out who she will face in advance, and with her knowledge of plants and herbs she quietly poisons her opponents so they are too ill to hurt her. She trades history tutoring for combat lessons with Rhiannon and Sawyer, and with the joker Ridoc the four become a tight band of friends. She beats the Gauntlet, a deadly climbing course, with a dagger and a clever reading of the rulebook, turning the letter of the riders' code against those who want her punished.

One night, out gathering bark for a poison, she stumbles on Xaden holding a secret meeting of marked ones, which is forbidden: three or more of them may not gather. What she overhears is not a plot. He is coaching the younger ones on how to stay alive. He catches her with his signet, the magical gift a rider draws from a dragon, which in his case is command of shadows. She promises silence, and he grudgingly admits he owes her a favour. When they later meet on the sparring mat, he tells her he knows about the poison and that she will have to learn to win without it, and then he starts to teach her how. The tension between them is not all hostility.

Everything leads to Threshing, the day the dragons choose. There are fewer dragons willing to bond than there are cadets, so being chosen is far from certain. Among the dragons is a small golden one that everyone takes for a weakling. Jack and two friends decide to kill it as a liability. Violet, outnumbered and already hurt, stands in their way. Her courage is answered from the sky: Tairn, an enormous black dragon and one of the most powerful on the continent, lands behind her and claims her as his rider, saying he has chosen her for her intelligence, courage and character. Then the little golden dragon, Andarna, speaks in her mind and chooses her too. No rider has ever bonded two dragons. The humans in charge are furious, but the decision belongs to the Empyrean, the dragons' own leadership, and the dragons allow it.

There is a further twist. Tairn's mate is Sgaeyl, the fierce blue dragon bonded to Xaden. Mated dragons cannot bear to be apart for long, and a rider dies if their dragon does. Violet and the man who should hate her most are now tied together for life, and each needs the other to survive. They even find they can speak mind to mind.

Being chosen by the strongest dragon paints a fresh target on Violet's back. Cadets left without a dragon would kill her for a chance at Tairn, and one night a group of them gets into her locked room while she sleeps. Tairn wakes her, Andarna lends her a strange and precious gift, the ability to stop time for a moment, and Xaden rushes in to end the attack. Afterwards he assigns Liam, his loyal foster brother and the best of the first-years, to guard her, and has Imogen, a marked one who had hated her, help with her training.

Through all of this the two men in Violet's life come into focus. Dain kisses her at last, and she feels nothing. He wants to protect her, but he has never believed she could do this. Xaden pushes her, trains her, and takes her word when it counts. Their attraction grows until neither can deny it, even as he refuses to tell her where he and his cousin Bodhi go on certain nights. Meanwhile Violet waits for her own signet to appear, and when it does, in the middle of the college War Games, it is rare and spectacular.

Around the edges, things do not add up. Violet knows from her work in the archives that there are border attacks the cadets are never told about. A book of fables her father gave her has no record of existing in the library. The enemy's gryphon fliers are pressing harder, and the wards that protect the kingdom are weakening. The final War Game sends Xaden's hand-picked group, Violet among them, to an outpost beyond those wards, where she learns what Navarre's leaders have been hiding, and what trusting the wrong person has cost her.

What It's Really About

At its core this is a story about strength that does not look like strength. Violet cannot out-muscle anyone, so she out-thinks them. Her dragon adjusts to her, which dragons seldom do, and she grows from one of the weakest cadets into one of the most formidable. For many readers that portrait of a heroine with a chronic illness is the most meaningful thing in the series.

It is also about who believes in you. The contrast between Dain's smothering protection and Xaden's hard-edged faith in her drives the romance. And beneath the school drama runs a darker thread about what governments hide and how history is written by those in power, which is a fitting worry for a girl raised to be a scribe.

Readers love it for sheer momentum. Reviewers compare it to Divergent with dragons and admit it leans on familiar ingredients: a chosen one, a brooding love interest, a murderous school. Several say the prose is not the point. Yet nearly all agree that it is enormously fun, that the constant threat of death keeps the pages turning, and that the last third is a nonstop thrill ride with real heartbreak in it. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, praising its worldbuilding and characters.

Who Should Read It

Pick this up if you want a fast, addictive fantasy with a romance at its centre, the kind of book that keeps you up for one more chapter. Fans of Sarah J. Maas, of deadly-school stories and of enemies-to-lovers tension will be at home here, as will anyone who has wanted a heroine whose body does not cooperate and who wins anyway. It is written for adults, with explicit love scenes, modern profanity and the deaths of characters you will care about, so it is not for younger teens. Readers after groundbreaking literary fantasy should look elsewhere.