First rant of 2023: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is the worst book I’ve read in a while (SPOILERS)

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IG: @bookswithzara
Twitter: @bookswithzara

Music credit: Memories by Blue Lab Beats

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[kefinkamed]

The sheer amount of hype and the Maas-like feral fandom behaviour instantly put me off reading this book. You have basically confirmed all my suspicions but I am still grateful because I may have given it a go at some point merely to see whether it has any potential. So you´ve saved me a lot of time and frustration, thank you! ❤

So basically, the author took ACOTAR, Eragon, Hunger Games and Daenerys Targaryen dragon trope, the hippogriff trope from Harry Potter, and threw it in a broken blender on the highest setting, right?

[starflash]

As an author of a fantasy romance, these kinds of books give me hope and make me sad. I'm putting so much hard work into my novel to ensure it all is done objectively well but sometimes I feel like the effort isn't worth it because books like this do so well.

I dont want to do my readers a disservice so I'm putting my all into it.

[ToriTalks]

"Her personality in this was ... her hair?"

I'm rolling. Love it. I had no interest in this book but I'm thoroughly enjoying your review on it 😆

[ninninin]

I agree with your rant, what irks me so much is that the book isn't just fluffy fun mediocre reading, it is BAD. This is objectively awful, the plot is nonsensical, the characters shallow and bland, the writing is cringe. Why do people like this?! I do not understand, and it makes me mad because there is so much fun stuff out there that also is an easy read but at least the plot is well done. Even SJM at least can tell a story! She can draw me in with some interesting twists and cool side characters. Here, the side characters all die and no one even cares. Awful book!

[jim-bob]

Yarros desperately trying to slide her omegaverse heat fettish in under the radar. But we found it, people will always find it

[zhisu]

It feels so "written as she goes" and nothing was planned or edited. it's very much surface level fantasy that anyone can write without trying.

[blacknbluecollarreader]

THIS. WAS. PERFECT. I keep telling myself that I need to read a bad book so I can give better reviews. However, reviews such as these do give me examples on what to look for. If that makes sense. So. THANK. YOU. ZARA.

[Paromita_M]

When a review says "At least in ACOTAR..." 🤣
Popcorn time 🍿 😎

[yelena]

I really do blame Tiktok for this. So many awful terrible books blow up and earn so much money, really sad in a way, but if you want to write a book go for it, if these poorly written dumb books can blow up, yours can too. Go forth and publish! 👍✌️🙏❤️✨

[jessmddn]

THANK YOU.

I knew I didn't want to read it but all the gals at work and social media were screaming about it and I fell for it. After it ended... I continued to get more and more pissed it's so popular. Dragons.. WHERE? World building? Don't know a thing about it (mage lights... not one mention of mages..?) For someone supposedly so smart, the character was dense as heck. I was so pissed I wasted time on this story. I felt it was a lazy story and excuse for smut.

Glad I'm not alone!

[Ghaziabadpoonch]

refreshing! Most Booktubers censor their views so much, that it seems very disingenuous.

[vincenzofromwiisports]

i hate it so much when random side characters die for the purpose of adding tension when they didn’t even do anything for the story before or after their death + this book was painfully unfunny too i genuinely did not enjoy any of it lmao

[xlanila]

I laughed when you said that everything will get solved in the next book because the author appeared on my ForYou page on TikTok a few days ago and when asked how long this series will be, she said there are 5 confimed books (so four more sequels), but "there might be more". And I said "Damn, is it that serious?".

When the first book is this weak in worldbuilding, characters and even plot, the series basically has a very weak foundation, I have no idea how she'll try to make it work. I assume she'll go on a full political route and that would be pretty exciting, to me at least, but... again, there's no solid basis to build upon. And with romance being such a big part, the politics, world and everything will occasionally have to be thrown out of the way and completely forgotten about. I genuinely believe Mrs. Yarros wants to write a compelling, immersive story. She clearly has a vision, proof being the fact that she has ideas for at least four more books, but the romance always takes over and everything else has to be less developed. This will affect the rest of the books immensely. Romance fans won't be upset about it, but those who expect more will definitely be disappointed.

My two cents on this: she should've given up on writing a series. Just take the politics out, create a small interesting world with dragons, make your main couple rivals in a dragon riding school (maybe they're both extremely ambitious and eager to make their parents proud so they're always in a competition with one another) and give them a slow burn love story. Make it a novel. There's literally nothing wrong with it being pure romance. No need for (not)dead brothers, dead fathers and dead kids.

Well, I wish her good luck with the rest of the series.
Thank you for this video! I hope you have a great day!

[percyferry]

I agree! I could not even make it to chaoter 3. The dialogue is cheesy, the characters are paper thin. The whole thing reads like bad young adult fiction!

[faeryeclair]

hey, my name is zara too! and i absolutely HATED this book. i did NOT understand the hype and the characters were so one-dimensional. there were many plot holes and horrible world building, and a very trashy representation of a disability. i didnt understand why people were raving about it, and i very much was mislead-im a minor, but i didn't hear that it was NA from tiktok, and assumed it was another YA book. boy was i surprised.. highly wished i was able to DNF books (it always bothers me too much so im unable to do it) because i would've.

[Leannegtl]

I'm so glad I'm not alone. I'm only reading this because a friend insisted. I tried the sample and found it very blah. But because she really wants me to read it, I tried again now, months later. I hated it so much the first time around that I was actually annoyed I had to reread the first part so I was up to speed again. I'm almost 150 pages in now and all I can say is the 'smut' people say is in this book must be the kicker, because NONE of the characters are interesting enough to be invested in, the MC herself couldn't be picked from a crowd because of how little attention is given to her own personality, the one liners are incredibly weak and downright cringy, the number of times the MC's heart was "beating too hard from fear" makes it seem unbelievable and her internal dialogue is so poor it feels like a teenager wrote this. That's just 135 pages in of almost 500 pages. How much worse can it get?

[epiphoney]

Its popularity is interesting though. I keep looking at new reviews on goodreads, and most of them are very positive. I guess people are getting used to non-sensical movie logic, and some parts of the book are enough for them emotionally. The pretty hardcover is completely sold-out in America. The second book is already coming out 6 months later, with three more books to go. I feel like these things are rushed.

[annbechtel]

I will admit I got some popcorn to watch this “review / rant”. I loved every second of this video. I knew before I cracked the spin of this book what I would get considering the two author who blurbed it (Armetrout & Wolfe as it’s 1million% their book styles lol). Your review, SPOT ON, and I would have listened to more of what you had on your list of criticisms ❤️❤️🤣😂

[KatieColson]

YES! Thank you for posting this. Such a good review

[AuthorJohnADouglas]

Your neighborhood just did not want to cooperate with your taping, did it?

I’ll happily miss this one based on what you and others are saying.