Yesterday I attempted to listen to Fourth Wing while on a 3 hour plus car ride. Since it had me as a captive audience for 3 hours I made it through 6 chapters. I couldn’t stand the book. I’ve read the other criticism of the book in r/books and I disagree with their assessments of why this book is terrible. Here is the real reason you should leave this book on the shelf.
The worst part of Fourth Wing is that all of the suspense of the book is dependent on what I refer to as the Hannah Montana Principle. In every episode of Hannah Montana the suspense lies in that some person or group will uncover Hannah’s secret identity. The entire premise of the show relies on her secret identity remaining secret. Therefore for the show to continue Hannah’s identity must remain secret and thus the actual threat of discovery is non-existent and there is no real suspense.
In Fourth Wing every encounter with a new character is highlighted by how this new individual wants to kill the main character for whatever pathetic reason the person has determined to be worthy of justifying her murder. All suspense is hung on whether or not this interaction will be the one that leads to her death. Only it is clear that if she dies then the book must end and since the reader is far from the end of the story then it is evident that the main character does not die and all suspense is therefore removed. Honestly I wish the author would go ahead and kill the main character every few chapters and continue on with a new character so that their only tool for creating suspense might actually mean something
The second greatest flaw of the Fourth Wing I refer to as The Flash Anti-Morality Principle. In so many episodes of The Flash we see The Flash chasing down a villain who has knowingly murdered vast numbers of innocent people. The Flash somehow subdues the powerful villain rendering them momentarily harmless. In that moment the Flash determines that killing the villain would be immoral and instead allows them to go free because the villain is too powerful for any prison to hold them in captivity. The next day the Flash is totally surprised to learn that the villain has returned to killing more innocent people.
While in the first few chapters that I read this scenario only came up once I got the feeling that it was bound to be a main theme of the series. Anyone who has had the misfortune of reading more of the book feel free to dispute this.
These two reasons are why I could not recommend this book to anyone. The whole stealing/borrowing fantasy elements from other series/novels doesn’t bother me at all. I expect that to happen and somewhat enjoy seeing fantasy elements shared between different worlds. But this book leans so heavily into the non-existent suspense as a principal driving force of character motivation that it makes it unreadable.
by WizardOfIF