Book Report - 'Fourth Wing (The Empyrean Book 1)' by Rebecca Yarros

Fourth Wing isn't what I expected when it was recommended to me by my kids' school librarian, but I'm not mad about it.

I love new book recommendations. When someone recommends a book to you, it says a lot about them. Sometimes the book doesn't fit my personal preference, but I try to give an honest attempt at any book that gets recommended to me. This is especially true for people like librarians, who tend to read a lot of books.

When the school librarian recommended Fourth Wing, it moved immediately to to the top of my reading list. Unfortunately, it was already at the top of a lot of other people's reading list. The five copies of the audiobook that my local library had in circulation were already heavily requested. It took several weeks before I was able to get my digital hands on it.

Near the beginning, Fourth Wing comes across like pretty standard fare high fantasy fiction. There's a little drama, plenty of magic and dragons as one would expect, and just the general feel of a well-established fantasy universe. I was pretty quickly hooked.

Then, about 70% into the book, we swapped from a typical fantasy novel to what I could best describe as the novelization of an adult film. Plot? Oh no, we lost that. Dragons? Nope, don't need those either. Just intense, graphic sex. I learned then what the "Romantacy" genre was all about.

I want to call out right now that I don't mind romance in novels. I don't care about smut, I don't disrespect people who read it, it just isn't for me. I'm not opposed to it, it's just boring. Romance in novels does nothing for me emotionally, and I feel like the writing is so often repetitive and un-entertaining.

As such, I was pretty disappointed when I got 15+ hours into a pretty good fantasy novel and hit the heavy-handed romance. I was already invested, and the end wasn't more than a few hours away. I decided to push through it and make sure I could provide a comprehensive review of the material.

After just a few hours, the sex was basically done. In total, it probably wasn't more than 10-15% of the total length of the book. We suddenly found the plot again, and got thrown into a climactic battle. We were back into the fantasy that originally hooked me on the book. I was startled and confused, but entertained enough to enjoy the book again.

The conclusion of Fourth Wing opens up some pretty intense political intrigue and some plot twists that I didn't remotely expect. I'm excited to explore those more in the sequels of the Empyrean series; I only hope that the ratio of fantasy to sex stays similar to Fourth Wing. I'll tolerate the romance for a good fantasy story, but I don't want to get progressively more sex at the cost of plot.

With the romantasy genre being huge on BookTok right now, it certainly isn't going anywhere for a while. The only other applicable book that I've listened to, "A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas, was way less appealing to me. The best way I can describe the difference is that Fourth Wing is a fantasy book with some romance, where A Court of Thorns and Roses is a romance book set in a fantasy universe. They sound similar and they're related, but one is WAY more interesting.

If you like high fantasy and you don't mind romance, I do think Fourth Wing was remarkably well-written. The characters are interesting and believable, with some dynamic relationships between family and peers. Watching that unfold was really interesting and the sex was concise enough to stomach. Just realize that when it gets to the sex, Yarros is very descriptive. Consider yourself warned.

Resources:
Yarros, R., Soler, R., & Hamilton, T. (2023). _Fourth Wing_. Recorded Books, Inc.