Rating: 5🌈

“A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. 

A rider without their dragon is dead.”

—Article One, Section One The Dragon Rider’s Codex”

Ages ,decades ago, when I first read and fell deeply in love with Anne McCaffrey and her Dragonriders of Pern , there hasn’t been a book written about dragonriders and dragons that I’ve been able to pass on.  They call to me, with their dragon’s roar of a siren’s song. And read them I must. 

Completely by accident I came across this author and series, Fourth Wing (The Empyrean Book 1) by Rebecca Yarros, about another young woman who becomes a dragon rider. 

The world building and characters are incredible, and the writing passionately fraught with mystery and drama. Especially the circumstances under which a somewhat frail 22 year old Violet Sorrengail finds herself thrown into, not into her desired path of becoming a Scribe, but into the brutal world and journey towards the possibility of becoming a dragon rider. 

Yarros has surprises and twists around every narrative bend.  This is at its heart a gripping tale, a young woman who has to fight for her life, under conditions she never imagined she’d be in, learning about herself, and who she really is at her core.  Plus there’s these amazing sentient dragons with a governing power and outlook that’s framing part of the same world, a perspective that’s only revealed a bit at a time. 

This story is framed around Violet’s struggles to overcome her physical limitations while surviving everything, mentally, emotionally, and physically that the school and her fellow students are throwing at her. This includes attempts on her life, as the less candidates there are than those standing have the better chance of being successful in becoming a rider. 

The experiences and school itself are brutal in every sense of the word.  And it makes for such compelling moments that I couldn’t put the book down. 

The Basgiath War College is so well written, each aspect of it developed so that as the storylines expand and become more complex, so too do the different elements to the College, including the history.  

This attention to detail and the way it’s so beautifully woven into the story continues with the students and their teachers, the families, and right to the dragons, who are breathtaking in scope.

This isn’t a LGBT story. While sexuality is part of the story,  in terms of what gender riders are attracted to  plays no importance. Some have lovers of the same gender, here the main character has a hetero relationship. 

Yarrow is also developing political themes and conflicts, current and historical one that figure heavily into relationships and status struggles.  While densely packed with plots and characters, Fourth Wing never feels weighed down by the elements its characters have to endure and carry forward into the second book.

This is an extraordinary story and the characters grab on to the reader’s heart immediately. As do these events that are shaping up to become an exciting, emotional epic series.

If you love dragons, adventure, and epic fantasy, put this on your list of books to read. 

The Empyrean series is best enjoyed in order.

Reading Order:

Book #1 Fourth Wing

Book #2 Iron Flame

Book #3 Onyx Storm releasing Jan 21,2025

Buy link

        Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, 1)

    

Blurb 

Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from #1 New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general―also known as her tough-as-talons mother―has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away…because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter―like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda―because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.

The Empyrean series is best enjoyed in order.

Reading Order:

Book #1 Fourth Wing

Book #2 Iron Flame

— Fourth Wing (The Empyrean Book 1) by Rebecca Yarros

• Publisher: Entangled: Red Tower Books (May 2, 2023)
• Publication date: May 2, 2023
• Language: English
• Print length: 643 pages