Fourth Wing is Great, But at What?

Does genre have any bearing on how you rate a story?

If we looked at Captain America: Civil War as a super-hero action movie, it measures up well. It hits the tropes it needs to: there’s heroic action, there’s teamwork, they even sneak a few adjudicated origin stories in. It also does its own thing well, at least for a superhero movie. It revisited the spy-movie-like intrigue of Captain America: Winter Soldier, it brings in moral dilemma that doesn't overstay it's welcome but does serve a point in the plot. There are a few strong character arcs, especially given the length of the story and the number of characters. We get to see Captain America struggle with a conflict between his friend and his duty for the first time. We get to see some of Tony Stark's long-term issues with his parents (rather, his lack thereof), we get to see him step into a new role as father-figure to Peter Parker, and he suddenly must confront the idea that his closest friends are responsible for hurting his friends and family. And T'Challa, despite being introduced in a movie with about five hundred superheroes, has a clean character arc where he learns that he must overcome his desire for revenge and seek instead for justice, especially since he's going to be stepping into a new role as king. All these things make Captain America: Civil War a good superhero movie.
But what if we look at it as a drama?
It has dramatic elements, the family drama with multiple characters, a friends to enemies plot line, fights between lovers. Yet, it also spends too much of its runtime on schlocky action and cheesy jokes. And the dramatic tension of the movie doesn't really get paid off as often or as conclusively as you'd hope for a real drama. In the end, the friends fight, and the split ways, but then, that's the end of it. We're left without feeling like we've learned much about the human experience, without insight into how we'd deal with our own, less supernatural issues. The cinematography is fine, but it doesn't do much to aid in the storytelling. It's the windowpane prose of the golden screen. The writing does its job, but the script doesn't trust itself to stay serious for too long without lapsing into comedy. We mustn't let the viewer get too uncomfortable, too introspective. Let's drown their contemplation with bright lights and sarcastic remarks and explosions and new characters, cheap thrills after a solid setup.
These really are two distinct views of the same movie, and neither has much to do with Fourth Wing. But we face an interesting problem with Fourth Wing. Those critical of Captain America: Civil War based on its cinematography or dramatic elements are largely dismissed. No, they're not wrong, but they're simply asking the movie to be something it's not. Most would agree that it should be judged as a superhero action film because it is a superhero action film. That's the target demographic, that's who it was sold to, that's who enjoys it.
The problem with Fourth Wing is that it's a book shelved as Fantasy, but it doesn't appeal to the Fantasy fan.

Romantasy, and Rebecca Yarros

Fourth Wing is a romantasy novel written by Rebecca Yarros. Romantasy is interesting because it's not really a genre. Not in the strictest sense, and not until recently. Fantastical romance has existed for a long time and has dominated the romance sales charts in the past. There have also been books shelved in Fantasy that are more slanted towards romance. This is common in YA fantasy; a lot of the angst against Twilight would have been avoided had it been pitched as YA Romance first instead of YA Fantasy.
Yarros is also not a Fantasy author. She's a romance author writing a fantasy novel. That is a romance as well. I'm not a fan of shoehorning authors, and I don't mean to demean Yarros in any way for writing romance. It's just that the romance reader and the fantasy reader are looking for vastly different things. And Yarros seems content with writing romance, is not afraid to be defined as a romance author. It is interesting, then, to see that Fourth Wing has been much more successful than the rest of her work. Her style and marriage between fantasy and romance have struck a chord with readers.
Perhaps that's because Romantasy is a genre all its own with its own readers. The reason I push against that is simple: most readers have no idea that romantasy is a thing. If you read Fantasy books, you tend to go to the fantasy section to look for books, both in online and physical bookstores. If you read thrillers, you seek them out in the bookstore. Romance novels occupy their own corner, or rather, their whole sizeable section in a Barnes and Noble. And you will not find a section titled Romantasy. You might see a stand now, placed aside the BookTok fixture that the store put in in 2021 when they figured out that people were buying books after TikTok recommendations. And just like the BookTok display, while readers should be able to puzzle together the meaning of Romantasy from context, few walk into the store seeking that out.
So, we face an interesting dilemma. Fourth Wing has the cover of a fantasy novel, it has the synopsis of a fantasy novel, it's shelved with fantasy novels. A lot of readers picking the book up, then, are fantasy readers. What are they looking for, what does the book purport to provide?

YA sensibilities and the new adult audience

Fourth Wing has a lot of things going for it aside from the romance. We'll cover the romance. The synopsis is a wonderful mix of completely generic tropes and brand-new directions. Oh, a gifted girl goes to an academy for training magical dragon riders? How unique. Except this academy is not a high school, it is a university, promising a more mature cast and higher stakes. The book straddles the common dragon stereotypes. These are not friendly, cuddly dragons, not human's best friend with claws, scales, and fire. These are dangerous dragons, killing humans casually and without remorse. Except, they still form bonds with humans, form friendly relationships with humans. Violet bonds with not one, but two dragons, and both are helpful and accommodating. The academy is deadly, and it's sexy, a grown-up version of Hogwarts. Except the majority of the characters don't act with much more maturity than college freshman, and the story insists on the idea that a group of highly-trained soldiers who require years of training and investment to fight in a war where they are in short supply would also be allowed to kill each other regularly and the take discipline lightly.

Fourth Wing styles itself as an adult novel but it also does everything it can to appeal to former YA readers. The savvy reader might point out that Fourth Wing is a New Adult book. I would argue that New Adult is not a real designation either, once again on the basis that they are not grouped in that way. Very few books self-identify as new adult, and Fourth Wing is not an exception. Over time, it has become clear that many Young Adult readers have no interest in moving up to Adult fiction. The barrier is rarely the age of the characters. No, Fourth Wing proves that many are perfectly alright with the cast aging up to a different stage in life. Instead, many find the style of prose and pacing in Adult fiction to not match their tastes. Fourth Wing has windowpane prose, and a rapid pace. We begin the tale as Violet is preparing for her exam the very next day. The reader doesn't need to wade through one hundred pages of exposition before they can reach "the good part."

Now, if you've read modern Adult Fantasy, you might be protesting this notion. The biggest name in Adult Fantasy in the last decade has been Brandon Sanderson, and while he writes long books, he also uses windowpane prose, has many fast-paced books, and features many characters in the age-bracket that Fourth Wing does. You can also find a lot of the same things in Red Rising, which is also sometimes considered YA despite doing its level best to include violence and situations beyond the pale for YA. It does not, however, feature smut.

Fourth Wing, then, hits the unfortunate middle where it feels like a YA story through and through, and then there's a detailed sex scene thrown in to assure the reader that they're not reading that kid stuff. It's a disappointing facsimile of maturity that many stories engage in, and it's done little better here. At least Fourth Wing can excuse it as a Romance novel at heart, but it does little to make the story itself feel more Adult.

Plotting and worldbuilding

None of this would matter much if Fourth Wing had gotten the core conceits of Fantasy right. No one considers A Song of Ice and Fire of trying to age up its material through lurid scenes alone. The books are solid, nay excellent, fantasy novels through and through that deal with adults and adult problems. Fourth Wing weaves an adjudicated fantasy plot together with a fully realized romance plot, and it comes out with a mess. It opens as a standard girl goes to dangerous magic school story. It has the difficult acceptance test(s), friendships and rivalries, and the feeling of being behind. But then, the dragons enter the story, and the plot progression screams to a halt. Instead of feeling like the story is going anywhere with the seeds planted earlier, it meanders as it firmly establishes the romance plot line. We progress through the rest of school at a leisurely pace. Sure, there are trumped-up troubles and dangers, but they are loose and unconnected.

We know that Violet has enemies who want to kill her at the school. We know that Xaden must protect her to keep himself alive, ostensibly. But Violet's motivation doesn't go much beyond surviving and bedding Xaden. The book doesn't remember to pick up the rest of its plot threads until the third act, four hundred pages into a five-hundred-page book. Suddenly, we're dealing with half-remembered myths and legends, a betrayal of trust, and a desperate fight for survival. All at once it tries to draw the fantasy reader back in, to reassure them that all the time invested will be paid off. It's somewhat effective, but precisely because the story spends so much time on romance, it doesn't have time to achieve tension without leaning on crutches that hurt it. Violet goes from powerful to stupidly powerful, able to dwarf the effectiveness of those around her by using the power that always lived in her. She doesn't get a large payoff for her hard work earlier; she doesn’t have her arc resolve insecurities and personal issues she's always carried with her. Instead, she pulls power out of nowhere and the story ends on a large crash and boom.

Is the world established in the third act interesting? Yes. In fact, one could write an entire novel around it. This novel, however, doesn't have time to do that. The worldbuilding around dragons, drakes and wyverns is interesting if not entirely original. It just gets mostly thrown into the end of the story. The idea of the real status of the world being different than the reports is established early, but the book refrains from interfacing with the truly cool elements. It just goes with the vague, "things aren't as they seem," and "you can't trust the official histories, but instead old myths." As a result, the big reveal at the end isn't satisfying as much as a relief. There really was more going on than Violet and Xaden being attracted to each other. Still, it doesn't instill confidence that a sequel will solve the issues for a Fantasy reader.

Again, similar books with similar lengths have done much more for worldbuilding and plotting while maintaining windowpane prose. The plot of Red Rising takes the main character through much more in fewer pages. It establishes the setting, all the sides and most of their motivations while also bringing in a plot and a basic romance. The issue is that Fourth Wing is not a short novel. Its length puts it right at home alongside Adult Fantasy and on the long side of Romance. Ultimately, offers a richer setting to a romance novel instead of offering a richer romance to a fantasy novel.

Characters and romance

Thus, we reach in the end the characters. Violet and Xaden are the two main characters, the protagonist, and her love interest. Violet feels like a confusing collection of whoremones and character traits. She was going to be a scribe, so she's a genius. Well, she knows history and can understand troop movements and strategy. Now, one might ask why scribes would understand more about military theory than people going to the equivalent of officer school, but if you can’t suspend your disbelief on that, you're already in the wrong place. It was established early that Violet has a weak constitution. However, about half-way through the novel, that notion is abandoned. She suddenly becomes not just as capable as her peers, but able to fight at a level above most. It takes away the only meaningful flaw in her character, not that it's explored in much detail. There was a lot of potential set up in the first few chapters with Violet having confidence issues and a lack of motivation. Instead, all those issues are shunted to the side so that her entire character can revolve around her relationship to Xaden.

Xaden's character is also a tragedy of the romance plot. Skipping to the end, Xaden's only POV chapter annihilates his character and his motivations. In the beginning, he is established as cold and calculating, but also as being responsible for his people. He shields them and guides them. His tension with Violet early on set the stage for an interesting and complex relationship. Then, the two become entangled because of the dragons, and it loses all real tension. Unfortunately, the book insists on working with a strange, half-adhered too version of modern sensibilities. Of course, the reader must play pretend with the characters as they act as if there is any real solution for Xaden and Violet besides marriage. And yes, marriage, not dating, not a fling, because they are bound for the rest of their lives already, unable to be apart for more than a few days. They also are attracted to each other for reasons outside of their own control. Instead of Xaden having to struggle with his duty, it is revealed that he was always attracted to Violet. No, he fell in love at first sight. And yet, we must all pretend as if it would not be a perfectly natural - no, the only natural - course of action for the two of them to get married. On top of this, Xaden's character growth is also stunted, doomed to be reduced to "in love with Violet." His final scene is fully devoted to how devoted he is to Violet, as if his desires begin and end with her.

All this works from a pure romance perspective. It does not, however, play well with the fantasy elements this novel is packaged in. If you doubt me, simply look at Amazon, look at Barnes and Noble, at your own local bookstore. This is a pop-romance novel in a candy-coated fantasy shell. If you're a romance or even romantasy reader, you'll probably enjoy. All others can save time avoiding this one.