Bean’s review of Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1) > Likes and Comments

Incredible, comprehensive and well-written review! The points on the military complex were especially informative—just wish everyone else praising the book took a minute to use their brains about the disaster narrative there 💀

Thank you for this! I just started the book and was asking myself what the point of the war and violence was, and I appreciate that you took the time to think all of this through so I can save myself the time and read something else!

tyrosine wrote: "Incredible, comprehensive and well-written review! The points on the military complex were especially informative—just wish everyone else praising the book took a minute to use their brains about t..."

thanks bestie! i know people read for enjoyment but i don't understand why that means they refuse to engage with its flaws. you can do both!

Ariel (ariel_reads) wrote: "Thank you for this! I just started the book and was asking myself what the point of the war and violence was, and I appreciate that you took the time to think all of this through so I can save myse..."

yeah, if you're not really enamored by the characters, there isn't much of a point to keep reading. glad i could be of service!

Every time I see people talk about this book or want to jump into it, the fact you bring up the author is a military fundie just makes me nope the fuck out.

I will never pay money to read this book. If I do read this book, it's to rip it apart.

"normalize shaming people who support the military" hahah well said

ngl I did enjoy the book personally but I enjoyed this review more

What thoughtful and insightful analysis! I recently finished this book and found the political climate in Fourth Wing to be rather dull. You point out that much of the book's world-building outlines the consequences of Navarrian politics, but seldom offers a satisfactory or plausible explanation behind why anything happens really. I definitely think that's why I felt much of the exposition was so unclear and chaotic.

Also, your commentary regarding the militaristic themes within Fourth Wing is so spot on. Thanks for writing such a well-done review.

I have been reading your reviews for many of your books, and while I know that everyone has different reading styles and what they like and I am keeping that in mind while writing this, I disagree solely on some of your stuff because of why I think the book works. I think we just have different reading styles and that is okay.

I personally believe that you misunderstood the point behind a lot of the things you said. I believe that the "trying not to die'' idea works with this book. The entire world of Fourth Wing is that it IS normal for people to die and be murdered. You seemed to have a problem with it by the looks of your review, I could be reading it wrong, so if that is not what you think then correct me. You say that it isn't the nature of things to "kill or be killed" in the real world. Which obviously it is not in OUR world, but in the fourth wing world, that is how she wrote it. The point IS to create high stakes. That is why Violet is trying not to die because it is so normal.

I am just curious that you do not like that people just die in this book, but you rated The Hunger Games four stars, where people are being killed for no reason too. We know little to nothing about the rebellion that happened to cause The Hunger Games. We know that there was a rebellion, but we do not know what happened that was so bad that they wanted to kill off kids from the districts. That is just my opinion. If you are going to be upset about the fact that there is no reason for people to die except to "create high stakes" then be consistent across the board.

Yarros does define them as enemies. Mira blatantly tells Violet to stay away from Xaden. To me, it is just a one sided enemy to lovers. *SPOILERS* Xaden knew about Brennan being alive the entire time. Even in the beginning when Violet says they are even in regards to Violet's mother killing his dad, and his dad "killed" her brother, he says "hardly" because he knows Brennan is alive. I know you said there was a difference between ideological enemies and circumstantial enemies, but then you say circumstantial enemies aren't enemies at all. That does not make sense. It was a one sided feeling because Violet has been misinformed by basically everything about the war, the rebellion, and so many other things. That is also a major point of the entire book, as we see throughout the book, and more importantly at the end. I'll probably say this a couple more times but, if you have not read Iron Flame yet, I suggest reading it because it explains more of the rebellion.

You talked about the love triangle. I agree that she almost immediately shut Dain down but making him undesirable, but *POSSIBLE SPOILERS* If you read Iron Flame, there is a little reconciliation there. And in the end of the book, there is a real possibility we might get a Dain and Violet romance after all in the third book. It is important to remember that this is supposed to be a five book series so it may not be that everything gets tied up in later books. Also, Dain's usefulness is that he can see memories and is a rule follower which we see in Fourth Wing. That is the point of him being in that position because he is valuable, not necessarily because he is skilled. That is where the messed up part of the higher leaders comes in. They do not care about skill, they care about taking advantage of people.

I will say one thing about the writing. I did not like the info dumping. While I get it is supposed to be a part of the character and how she stays calm, there should have been a better way to do it because she did drop some important information in those sections. That is something I agree with you on.

I disagree with your take on the dragons. We do not know much about the dragons because the characters do not know either. The dragons do their own thing, they just have an agreement between Basgiath because they protect each other. If you read Iron Flame, it is strongly insinuated that we will learn more about the dragons in the third book. They are meant to be mysterious, but those story lines may open up in the future so it is not something that I would be upset about.

As said before, we are not supposed to know much about the rebellion because Violet does not know much about it. Almost all information about the truth has been erased because the leaders are trying to get rid of the truth and start their own. Again there is a second book, and there will be three more. We will not know everything in the first book. We have to be patient and understand that it is a building story, not a standalone.

Doing rereads of both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame will show you things you did not see before. Comments made, interactions between all characters have meaning that we do not understand at first but when you reread it, there are some things revealed to us that maybe we did not notice before. I think books like this are fun because it makes me want to reread them to catch things I did not catch before, but that is just me.

None of this is meant to be disrespectful, I would just like to share my thoughts with you and feedback that I have about why some of your thoughts do not necessarily make sense to me. I hope to hear back from you.

Emily wrote: "I have been reading your reviews for many of your books, and while I know that everyone has different reading styles and what they like and I am keeping that in mind while writing this, I disagree ..."

Hello. I'm sure you mean no disrespect, and I really am appreciative for the amount of time you spent both reading my post and engaging with it enough to respond to me thoughtfully, but maybe next time don't open your comment with "I believe you misunderstand the point behind a lot of the book" 😭.

First things first, you're conflating two different points of my review with the "kill or be killed" line. When I am critiquing the idea of "kill or be killed", I'm doing it in the context of the book's worldbuilding as it pertains to the necessity of a military. I mean it as a thematic device. When a book introduces a war, and gives a reason for said war, it's commentary on the nature of war. When I critique how she set up "kill or be killed" and say it's not like our world, I'm not saying that books /have to be/ like our world, but I'm saying that the way she's set up the logic in the book doesn't align enough with how the real world works enough to make a meaningful critique of the nature of war.

I'm sure Iron Flame expands on it, but my problem isn't necessarily that we don't know the reason, it's that the main characters don't know the reason and they don't really care. This book has nothing meaningful to say about propaganda, or even why people follow orders that they don't believe in. Not a single person in that war college has strong feelings about /why/ they're going to war. Historically, that isn't really how war works. There's always some sort of really intense propaganda to mobilize people into wanting to defend their country but I didn't really have any sense for why anyone was there unless they were forced to or a psychopath. And even then, as they're forced to, there was no real resentment. They're just there and try to make the best of it. That's something that doesn't have to wait until later books. Yarros redacted a lot of the reasons for the war to make it a mystery for the reader, but that doesn't mean that the characters in world have to accept the mystery at face value.

My other critique of the killing is as a plot device. In this world, it does not make sense for the killing to be as rampant as it is and under very specific contexts. You can kill people on the parapet, but not after you cross it. You can kill people on the mat without consequences, but not in their room. It doesn't make sense for people to allow killing at the school for a couple of reasons.

1) So many people are dying in the war, you'd really want to prevent people dying domestically because they can still help with the war effort in other ways even if they're not strong enough to be soldiers.

2) The military is about discipline and unity and allowing students to kill other students during training actively fucks that up. It creates undisciplined soldiers who resent one another.

The context in which people were allowed to kill another in Hunger Games was very specific and logical within the world. It was a means of control and to show how society makes a spectacle of violence. If, during the Hunger Games, the tributes started killing one another during training and received no punishments from the game makers, then it would be breaking the logic of the games, and would feel like artificial tension that does not belong in the narrative. Fourth Wing breaks logic, Hunger Games does not.

Even if Fourth Wing just took place in a fucked up universe where people are just cruel and can get away with killing people, it just seems too inconsistent with its rules about the where and the when. I love the Red Rising series, and it is very violent, and can get a little inconsistent about when it allows death, but every time it does break its rules, it's for a good reason and meant to reflect something about the themes of the book. Fourth Wing does not feel that way, and instead hastily stitches together conflicting logic in a way that's distracting.

Plainly put, if the motivation to propel the story forward is "how is Violet going to survive?", I simply did not care. I felt like not enough care was setting up the foundation of these rules about killing and the needless cruelty of the world for me to be invested. It meant nothing in the larger context other than a reason for there to be tension, and so it felt cheap to me.

When it comes to e2l, I don't really care a lot about the label, but it's understood by many people to have a certain kind of connotation (they hate each other, have to overcome their differences). I was just pointing out how, while they are technically enemies circumstantially, that hatred dynamic was not there. Again, I don't really care about if it fits that definition/dynamic if the pairing is good, but others who /are/ looking to see if that dynamic is presented in a book that's advertised as enemies to lovers have found my insight to be helpful.

Lastly, when it comes to Dain, I really do not think I'm going to read Iron Flame. This review is only meant to reflect what happens in this book, and in this book, there wasn't an interesting romantic dynamic.

I think it's interesting that you stress the importance of having patience with the book and waiting for the entire series. I have read series with a slow start and my patience was rewarded as I continue forward. Based on Fourth Wing, I don't think I will be rewarded in the same way. Just at its most foundational level, I do not like the prose, and so a book would have to have a REALLY good plot or REALLY interesting characters to convince me to overlook that enough to willingly pick up its sequel. And this book simply did not do it for me. Like any series, there's no promise that your reader will pick up your next book, and so part of the first book's success lays in if you make the book compelling enough to interest them in the second. That was not the case for me. A book in a series should be able to stand on its own merit, and anything that happens in the sequels doesn't retroactively make the first book good. Maybe more interesting, sure, but that's only if you liked it to begin with.

I'm glad you like Fourth Wing, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the series. I just don't think this one is for me, and I'm hoping my reply clarifies why.

Selma wrote: "What thoughtful and insightful analysis! I recently finished this book and found the political climate in Fourth Wing to be rather dull. You point out that much of the book's world-building outline..."

Thank you! I feel like a lot of media analysis isn't done through that lens so I'm glad you appreciated mine!

A lot of your comments clarify things i was questioning. I think there were some things maybe i misunderstood in your first review. I apologize for making saying you misunderstand. I know we are all different in what we like when it comes to reading, and I think we are almost polar opposites but that is okay. I agree with some of your clarifications. I think maybe we just view things differently in the book and that is okay. It was interesting to hear your views on the book and to see another perspective. I look forward to reading more of your reviews.