Fourth Wing

Quoting Dr. Seuss “oh I did not like it, not one little bit””

Frankly, it is hard to believe I have read the same book everyone else is reading and rating 5 stars. I don't even know how to write a review about it.

What I liked about the book:
- FMC with disabilities and I always like to see people embracing their difficulties and achieve what they are meant to be.
- banter and spice.
- The ending was not bad and I believe it can lead to a better second book.
- Dragons and magic. The riders have a lot of interesting powers that I hope to see more in the future.

What I think it could have been done better:
- The story and writing is very juvenile and in no way should it be marketed as adult fantasy. The characters feel like horny teenagers with poor communication skills.
- The writing is just awful. Everything is written as teenagers would speak in school. This is obvious aligned with the school setting but the characters are in their 20's. Moreover, Violet was supposed to be a scribe, I would expect her to use more vocabulary and proper sentences.
- The characters were poorly developed and lacked depth. Both MCs have characteristics that are distinct from other romantasy books, however, as those where not explored, they ended up looking like copy cats of other novels. This is especially relevant for Violet as we could have seen her develop and end up only reading about it.
- The world building is absurdly vague and most of it passed as info dump in random moments (e.g. violet reciting everything she knows as a strategy to stay calm).
- You can have beautiful men and not objectify them. I only know Xaden is nice because he has done multiple incredibly nice gestures. Violet, however, appears only able to speak about his beautiful and strong body. Absolutely no one would find this ok if it was a male writer describing women. If we don't like to see women objectified, it is only fair to treat men with the same level of respect.
- Every little thing about this book was obvious since the beginning.
- Some parts of the plot just don't make any sense to me:
- in the last quarter of the book Violet is very concerned about where Xander is going to be placed after graduation as the long distance relationship would be very hard.. why would she think this? It was established quite earlier in the book that the mated dragons could no be separate for more than 3 days! She is never going to be separate from him for long, they would just need to be changing places.- We know feathertails don't bond because they can accidentally give their gifts to humans and therefore, they are guarded and never leave the vale. Since dragons are very protective of their hatchlings, and strictly followers of their rules, it would be impossible for 100 dragons to simply accept the presence of one feathertail in presentation day to analyze bonding candidates.

I do believe the story has potencial to become better and I still plan to give a chance to the next book in this series. However, don't pick up this book expecting adult fantasy, this is YA romance marketed as adult due to the smut.

TLDR: maybe I'm just old