Would you turn the page?

I said last week that it would be more reasonable and fair to try this challenge here with a fantasy novel that is a bestseller. Of course that means some of you might possibly have already encountered this book and have an opinion about it, but let’s try it anyway.

I will add, I’ve never heard of this author or this series. I’m not looking at it closely; I’m trying to keep just to the first page myself, not read the description or the reviews or even really look at the cover. All I did was google “number one fantasy novel Amazon,” click through, and download the sample. I will add that this novel is the #3 fantasy on Amazon today. A sequel is #1, but I backed up to the first book in the series for this challenge.

Let’s take a look at the first page:

***

Conscription Day is always the deadliest. Maybe that’s why the sunrise is especially beautiful this morning — because I know it might be my last.

I tighten the straps of my heavy canvas rucksack and trudge up the wide staircase and trudge up the wide staircase of the stone fortress I call home. My chest heaves with exertion, my lungs burning by the time I reach the stone corridor leading to General Sorrengal’s Office. This is what six months of intense physical training has given me — the ability to barely climb six flights of stairs with a thirty-pound pack.

I’m so fucked.

The thousands of twenty-year-olds waiting outside the gate to enter their chosen quadrant for service are the smartest and strongest in Navarre. Hundreds of them have been preparing for the Riders Quadrant, the chance to become one of the elite, since birth. I’ve had exactly six months.

The expressionless guards lining the wide hallway at the top of the landing avoid my eyes as I pass, but that’s nothing new. Besides, being ignored is the best possible scenario for me.

Basgiath War College isn’t known for being kind to … well, anyone, even those of us whose mothers are in command.

Every Navarran officer, whether they choose to be schooled as healers, scribes, infantry, or riders, is molded within these cruel walls over three years, honed to be weapons to secure our mountainous borders from the violent invasion attempts of the kingdom of Poromiel and their gryphon riders. The weak don’t survive here, especially not in the Riders Quadrant. The dragons make sure of that.

***

O-kay. So, this what do you think?

I think this is apparently aimed at Hunger Game fans, and I think it’s SUPER cliched. Wow, a young person who is an outsider, but whose mother is apparently also the commandant of the war college — two cliches jammed violently together even though they make no sense in combination. Almost no setting, rather clumsy explanation of the world … this is the number one fantasy series on Amazon right now? Well, gryphons and dragons are all very well, but I’m completely unimpressed with this opening.

What book is this?

This is The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

This book has one and a half million ratings and a 4.8 star rating. Lots of laudatory quotes from NYT bestselling authors. Many Gosh Wow comments from Kirkus and wherever.

I guess maybe this book has wide appeal. I mean, I suppose it must have wide appeal. My general opinion is that really popular books must be doing something right, though maybe not something that matters a lot to me. But, based solely on the first page, I have zero interest in going on with the sample.

If any of you have actually read it, I would be very interested in your opinions.

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