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Rebecca Yarros: Fourth Wing - The Empyrean book 1

 This book had so much hype on Bookstagram and the cover is beautiful. I picked it up hoping for a good fantasy read.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros follows Violet Sorrengail, daughter of the tough commanding general as she enters Basageth to become a dragon rider. Frail and easily injured, Violet must fight for her position in the college each and every day: outwitting the other recruits and surviving her squad leader, the son of the dangerous rebels. Can Violet make it to be paired with a dragon?

I honestly got into this book looking for a good fantasy story. I was sorely disappointed. For all of its hype on Instagram, I found this book poorly written. Yarros used the f-word at every opportunity, even when it wasn't appropriate or necessary. This felt lazy to me and unimaginative.

I didn't love the story either. It was a bit predictable and the main character bothered me. She acted like a teenager but was supposed to be 21. In fact, when characters started sleeping together, I had to remind myself that they were adults - they all acted like they were 17. Violet felt flat and whiney (I've endured a lot of whiney characters, but I just couldn't get behind Violet). I'm sure it gets better, but I ultimately gave up. I felt like the story was just a lazy conduit for smut, which I'm not all that interested in.

Smutty romantasy isn't my vibe, and so I DNF'd this book. I'm not one to put a book down and not finish it (see my review of Before the Storm...), but this book was it for me. I found very little redeeming about it. I know it's probably an unpopular opinion, and that's OK with me. Maybe someday when I have nothing else to read, I'll pick it up again and attempt to finish it.

I rate this book PG-13 + for nudity, sex, and swearing

I gave this book ⭐


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