Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Narrated by Rebecca Soler and Teddy Hamilton

Source: 📚 library via Libby

Narration: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros keeps moving quickly, which is a good thing for an action-heavy novel. There are no slow spots. The world-building is solid without a lot of info-dumping. The dragons are wonderful, though I do wonder about their population health because each color seems to originate with a single dragon and that can’t be good genetically. The politics are present but not overwhelming and drive the plot and action forward instead of turning it into a boring slog. As someone with hypermobility, I appreciate that the heroine, Violet, copes with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. The enemies-to-lovers romance between Violet and Xaden is believable and the spicy scenes are well-written.

I’d categorize Fourth Wing as Coming of Age rather than YA because of the amount of sex and cursing, and that the protagonists are college age men and women — a fact it’s hard to remember sometimes. That’s partly because of the characters’ maturity level and partly because the narrators sound younger.

I gave four instead of five stars because there were several times I rolled my eyes at Violet. For such an intelligent girl she was sometimes rather slow on the uptake and really had a hard time adjusting her worldview to fit new facts. The narration emphasized her youth in these moments, adding to my impression that the characters were high schoolers instead of college age.

Speaking of the narration, overall it was good, but some words were terribly mispronounced. I also didn’t really like the male narrator, Teddy Hamilton. He didn’t seem like quite the right fit for Xander. I would have preferred if Rebecca Soler narrated the whole book. But then I’m not usually a fan of multiple narrators.

Overall I’d say Fourth Wing lives up to the hype and is worth a read. I plan to read the sequel, Iron Flame.