The Thing About Dragons

A Fourth Wing Review

Before I get into my actual review of the book - I wanted to share a little bit about the cosplay.

It was a super last-minute, thrown together cosplay and because of that I’m not thrilled with it. I intend to make some changes, and tweak a few things but we will see if I ever want to wear this one again.

The scales are 3D printed using a dual color filament. They’re printed on screen mesh to give them some flexibility and (in theory) make them easy to attach. The latter proved not to be true.

The fabric is YaYa Han’s Scuba Hex fabric in black. I made the vest by creating my own template, tracing that onto the scuba hex fabric and sewing it together. The actual vest portion looks great IMO, but adding the scales made everything incredibly messy.

Things I will change: I think I’m going to make the scales out of foam and glue them onto a tank top to wear under the vest. That way they peak through without being the main attraction.

But OK, on to the book.

Y’all, I’m going to be honest (and keep in mind that I’ve already pre-ordered the next book in the series), but I think Fourth Wing was entertaining but predictable at best.

It was a fun, light, easy-to-read book but I’m wildly surprised at the acclaim it’s getting. It was not well written (but I guess the same is true of 50 Shades of Grey), so I suppose we know what the ladies want at the end of the day.

I felt like I was reading a middle school drama that was trying to be life or death. In the midst of all the killing and brutality were “OMG he’s so hot” and that just took me right out of the story. That phrase also sums up the lack of descriptors in the book. Instead of showing us that he is indeed a beautiful human man, we’re just given “OMG he’s so hot.” And I’m sorry I’m really hung up on that one phrase, they say it so much in the book that it stuck. I never felt that emotional connection with any of the characters and I definitely never felt the emotional connection between the characters (with the exception of those smutty, smutty scenes in which they were definitely feeling an emotion).

*This is a good time to point out, if you haven’t read the book - it does fall into the smut category.

The scenery didn’t seem to make any sense in my mind map - I could never get a bearing of where they were or how the campus was laid out. The war college kids had to cross the parapet but yet there was a secret door to the scholars wing?

I actually started “reading” this book as an audiobook and had to stop because it was too silly when having someone else read it to me.

So, while I did finish reading the book and again, I have pre-ordered Iron Flame, and I’m eager to read it, I don’t think it’s well written. I don’t have a scathing review for it, I just think it could be better. Maybe Iron Flame will be an improvement.

Only time will tell.

If you haven’t pre-ordered your copy yet, you can buy it here.

Happy reading!