I've watched enough videos reviewing Fourth Wing that I just had to check it out for myself, so here's this blog for me to essentially live blog my reaction to the book, give thoughts and commentary, and just have fun with a text that I think is pretty fun.
The goal of this blog is to not bash or hate this series. I will be critical with it, but I do believe this series is quite fun and has a lot of good going for it overall. And in all honesty, I need a fun read at this time lol (too much dry academia in my life. i need to give my brain a bit of a break).
I'm also 1000% here for dragons. No other romantasy series has captured my attention quite like this one and I'm pretty sure it's because of the dragons.
So! If you want to stick around and follow this blog, please do! I'm interested in chatting with people about it, their reactions, thoughts, feelings, and theories on where the series is going next.
Feel free to comment, ask, chat, whatever! I am here for it.
The idea of precogs is really cool, in theory, but there's a reason when it's done well it's always with so many limitations (tbf, I think most powers that are done well need limits to make them interesting). So, to go full anime nerd for a second, because there are some great examples in anime, you have OdaSaku in BSD, who can see a handful of seconds into the future when he's in a deadly situation, enough to change what's happening sometimes (it's even noted in series that if it's a slow death, he might have already fallen for the trap before he's got the vision) and while the anime makes him look very chill about this, the novel is a constant stream of anxiety. MHA has Nighteye who can only see the future of one person, once in 24hours, and only if he makes direct eye contact, and while the general consensus was it couldn't be changed for a long while, it turns out temporal powers and other weird stuff can kinda screw with it.
And when it comes to Melgren, I really want to know what counts as a battle. Like how is an assassination attempt a battle, Violet? Does he have to actively look for a battle, or is it on all the time? That must be a headache. But again, to reference anime, there's a cool concept from Symphogear of philosphical weaponry, where the Sword Breaker would destroy anything defined as a sword, causing some real issues for Tsubasa who defines herself as her family's sword. Imagine something like Melgren's signet working like that, that a battle must be defined as a battle either by Melgren or the people involved. Like imagine, he can see the outcome of a battle of wits or wills or a battle of the mind. I think it's another case of RY doing things that sounded really cool and not thinking through the consequences and impact on the world.
oh these are some GREAT points and please feel free to nerd out about Anime in my inbox any time. i think it brings up a lot of great comparisons for us to work with when we consider the implications of precogs and other psychic abilities in the world of FW.
i like the example you bring up from BSD and MHA. both of them have constraints for what the characters can see and do with their ability to see the future. and it also doesn't treat the future as fixed, which i fear is being done in FW because we don't KNOW anything about the limits of their abilities
especially for Melgren because we've known of his signet for longer. like when i think of Melgren's signet, i think of it as like he can see the outcome, loss or victory, but it is very murky for how that loss or victory shakes out. so it gives him a sense of where to put troops, whether or not he should call a retreat but also not knowing the cost of those wins and losses. how many riders/soldiers will die. if they are victorious but lose like... 20 riders, is that still considered a true victory?
and even with your suggestion, yeah. what does a battle constitute? what does it mean? because that's the only way i can see Melgren's signet actually working
I think Aaric's signet would be acceptable if one of the themes of this series was defying fate and going against the status quo but it's not so we just have a walking spoiler in our hands
we need more limitations to the signets!! we also need a better structure that designs signets!!
with how over powered signets can be and giving EVERYONE the wildest signet of all time (despite the fact that wielding the elements like fire and water are supposed to be the most common. we just threw that information out the window), it is difficult to understand what the limitations of these powers are
from Violet all we get is physical exhaustion and a burning pain from when she's learning how to master it in IF, but beyond that signets are still ill defined.
which makes it all the worse when you have riders doing straight up wizard shit. Rhiannon pulling shit out of thin air from another location. Quinn making straight up projections of herself to confuse an enemy. like this is X-men level shit. Dain is a watered down version of Charles Xavier.
and then there's fucking Aaric's signet along with Melgren's because they both have a foresight/precognition problem. we do not know the limits of their signets. would Aaric be haled as some sort of oracle? what happens if he spouts off a future that goes against the wishes of Navarre? would they kill him for that just as they kill inntinsics?
Melgren's only ONLY makes sense if you put severe guardrails around it. if he can see the future outcome of a battle, does that help with directing troops? does he know when it's a lost cause? how far in advance can he see the future? how does this help him become the greatest general this military has ever seen?
i can go on. i SHOULD go on about this because im still damn peeved that we know barely anything about these signets
i had a feeling RY would eventually put out some sort of collection/novella for the series. the teaser photo she showed was like... that book looks WAY too short to be the next main entry lol
i will say i am very curious to see what characters will show up in that book. is it all going to be threshing stories? i mean one of the biggest draws of this world is seeing how dragons and riders sort of choose each other.
if i had my way, i'd like to get perspectives from Lilith Sorrengail, Mira, Tairn's previous rider Naolin to name a few.
i also feel like we're bound to get a Xaden chapter lmao
but yeah. time to add that to my reading list from the library
Ok so lowkey, on the whole "why do Poromish cities suck" thing, I hate the way the war is portrayed in this series, and I say this with love because there is so much good. Poromish cities should be stone and they should be underground where possible. Why was Cliffsbane so close to the Barrens, why wasn't it moved? And the capital? Move away from the enemy! Hell, if we've kept Aretia hidden for so long, offer it to the Poromish royalty as their stronghold to improve relationships. And 600 years is ridiculous. If you've been at war for that long and losing that many people, there's no way your country looks like Navarre does, or Poromiel does. Basgiath gets something of a pass because it's an officers college but its still ridiculous and none of the flimsy excuses actually make up for how incompetent the entire Navarrian command is, not even that some higher ups are venin. And if you're losing so many people in the war, why doesn't conscription reflect that? And is the age of majority 18 or 20? Why is 18 the cut off for rebellion kids but conscription is 20? If the war is that bad, it'd make sense for the age of conscription to be lower not higher. And the age of marriage being so late also makes no sense, if you're doing imperialism and war, you want married women and babies as soon as possible to feed your war machine. Now, it would make more sense if this was a shorter war, that would make sense of why the information is so locked down, why only noble/military families realise how dire the situation actually is, and could be a cool idea where we see them and border towns actually afraid of the imminent attack vs the complacent masses in the cities far from the border. But yeah, I feel like RY wanted this war to feel super badass and deadly, but didn't want to think about the actual impact that would have on the world. Also, I still don't know if conscription is mandatory or not, the word means mandatory, and Basgiath is an officers college so they're selective, but does that mean every 20 year old in the country has to sign up and most will end up on the front lines dying as infantry grunts? Everyone has to know that the war is going badly when they say goodbye to their kids and most of them never come back. There is no way that Navarre actually works.
oh man where do i even start with this lol
first, i do agree the worldbuilding is a bit of a mess. if RY wanted to hammer home the damaging effects of controlling and erasing history, that unfortunately goes hand in hand with oppression along the lines of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, age, and physical capabilities. but Navarre is almost too equitable on that front. there is no severe punishment for questioning the status quo, which you think there would be in a state as control and power obsessed as Navarre but they honestly feel so absent in this story.
there's no real tension when Violet says she's going to be executed as a traitor for the things she does. we know she's going to be fine because Navarre has never really shown its teeth other than keeping immigrants and refugees out of their borders. it almost feels like RY is being a bit too hesitant in showing the really ugly side of militarism and imperial expansionism.
like we hear about how Navarre has destroyed or oppressed forms of culture. Tyrrish runes are one of them, but there are other remarks of how oral history for some stories is also under threat of Navarre's control. but we don't really get anything more of that. we don't see how a culture suffers when it can no longer practice what is customary to it. we don't see the forms of resistance against this oppression. we don't see the ugliness of it. the mistreatment. the bigotry. and not saying RY needs to get too gritty with it, but it does these themes a disservice by not even exploring their ugly sides because it's almost like RY is afraid to make the things Violet does ugly or morally questionable.
and as you said, maybe RY just does want to make something aesthetically appealing and focus more on the dragons, but the battles feel too polished to properly explain the weight of this war and how devastating it is. because it honestly feels like Poromiel doesn't exist anymore with how many times they discuss where the venin are amassing so it's like... are the venin actually a threat? how many Poromish people have died lol
also what happened with that one isle's army that came to fight? what happened with that?
Something about the way Queen Maraya was unceremoniously killed offscreen just so Tecarus could take over pisses me off so much. I was so excited to see her character only for her to do absolutely fuck all :/
it's so unfortunate that we get so much detail at all times but have so little time to truly sit with it before something new is thrown our way.
like we've seen King Tauri in like what... one scene so far? and Queen Maraya we barely know as well. as the monarchs of the two biggest nations, you think we'd see more of them or at least see more of their impact in the world, but we don't get a lot
especially since Queen Maraya had access to so much information to give Violet. also... why does she trust Violet so much? i feel like a lot more Poromish officials would give Violet a heavy side eye considering who her mother is and Violet has barely done anything to establish trust with them. like yeah we have her somewhat helping out to evacuate people, but because we get stuck in the military college setting, it really hampers our ability to see Violet put in the work to establish diplomatic ties. we don't even get to learn what Queen Maraya saw in Violet, a fucking student who's been flying for barely a year lol.
killing her off so quickly in the series only makes sense if Cat is to be queened by the end of the series with Tecarus maybe dying. and i thought Tecarus would be a lot more duplicitous for how he was built up in Iron Flame, but we've barely had any time with him either.
and one more thing that kinda pisses me off about the differences between Poromiel and Navarre. despite the fact that Poromiel is the more war torn nation, why are their cities constantly described as indefensible? it should really be swapped. Navarre has lived in relative peace for 600 years. their cities couldn't have walls or garrisons. they are the ones to be privileged with peace and that should be reflected in their architecture. meanwhile Poromiel should have massive fortified cities so we feel something when one of them finally falls
The problem with Dain's character is really simply RY creating a persona she probably deeply empathises with and is defensive about and making him the 2nd love interest â the only writer in popular romantasy to do the 2nd love interest justice has been so far Cassandra Clare. Dain technically I would argue has qualities that make him a better leader than Xaden but because he's not brooding and throwing out lines for the sake of the FMC he's not good enough. Xaden could and is quite a selfish mmc but its forgiven because yk he said a really corny dialouge
yeaahhhh i loved reading the Mortal Instruments (only the first three really before it was expanded out to a series of 6 and then a whole ass franchise) because Clary worked well with her best friend Simon and Jace never showed a lot if any jealousy towards him throughout the books
Dain was basically never given a chance. he was always portrayed to be overbearing despite the fact that his concerns are very valid and i think his fear of seeing Violet severely injured/killed was impacting him a lot. and it's not like Violet needs to make choices that appease a man in her life, but she certainly does make a lot of decisions that concern Xaden and Xaden only
and i kinda hate the direction Xaden is taking as a character. he was so much more tragic and sympathetic in FW but by OS he's become a lot more selfish and it's been really frustrating to see this turn in his character
Saddle anon again. Tbh Dain is lowkey fascinating in the inconsistency between what we're told and how he acts. Like, I never hated Dain because honestly, maybe I'm just more into military fiction than some romantasy readers, but Dain's first appearance screamed PTSD to me, like the focus on saving Violet and please let me save someone in this godforesaken place vibe, read like someone who'd made friends and tried to save people here before and had to watch them die. But yeah, the character and the narrative always push this idea that Dain is a rule follower and codex lover, and this isn't just something Xaden pushes because he wants him away from Violet, he thinks it in his pov chapters too. But, yeah he's constantly willing to risk breaking the rules. And everyone likes to talk about the whole not believing Violet about Amber thing, but it's not Violet saying it, it's Xaden, and he has presented no proof at that point, even Violet hadn't confirmed it yet. I think it's much more obvious Dain does what he thinks is right, it's just what he thinks it right is the story he's grown up with, not what's actually right, and I think that's obvious in how quickly he turns when he discovers the truth.
I think if RY wanted to make Dain a rules guy, she should have let him rules lawyer it, use loop holes to get what he wants and work on technicalities, or make him more earnest and less overbaring. There are lots of examples of well done beloved rules guys, after all. Or, if he should have been a good but overbaring guy, that should have been more obvious.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it kind feels like Violet doesn't entirely know Dain that wel at all, just a version of him she wants to see or imagined, and when he didn't live up to that romantic vision of him she had in her head, she turned him into a villain. Doouble this given the implications that Asher might have been influencing the both of them from OS.
saddle anon. love it.
yeah this is all good stuff on how to improve Dain's function within the story because he's villainized worse than the fucking absolute monarchy in this series.
the part about how Dain's concern for Violet could be more self driven by PTSD and showing the damaging effects of The Death School does a much better job at expressing the impacts of this sort of environment rather than killing off characters i barely remember the names of. it would also do a better job at showing Violet how much Dain has changed from childhood to now. which the books barely do.
and Xaden is such an ass sometimes lmao. i wish people recognized this about him. he can come off like a jock. he's huge. he's strong. he's the bestest fighter ever, capable of taking down people who have 10+ years experience and training on him. and Dain, lbr, was raised as a nerd.
and the way Violet and Dain were raised should also come up more often because they are the nepo babies here. their family members are WELL established within the military and they were raised on military grounds. they are the most indoctrinated out of all of them. so if Violet gets the ultimate pass that doesn't have her really critically examine her biases towards Riders, then why does Dain have to be dragged through the mud?
also, as a side note, can we FINALLY get a copy of the Codex? people keep flouting this thing as the only thing that can control riders, but i highly doubt that.
I have whole essays in my head about how Dain's character is misjudged through Violet's perspective and how his actions tell a completely different story.
One telling thing I will never shut up about is that Dain IS a good wingleader but Violet calls it nepotism when all the professors praise him. Free my boy lol
yeah i kinda want to add to this that Dain has a lot of admirable traits that i think are really overlooked simply because he's not Xaden and also he can't be seen as a love interest for Violet. so we have to downplay his skills and traits and hopefully pair him off with the first woman he sees (Sloane, sorry im kinda salty on Dain/Sloane lol).
like Dain is level headed. he's fair. he tries to treat everyone equally and according to the system even though we know the system is corrupt. we see him struggle with adhering to a system that demands to use his signet as a weapon while also recognizing that something is inherently rotten here.
What pisses me off the most about Xaden at the end of OS is that he SOMEHOW managed to knock out Berwyn of all people with one move. I wanted to tear his head off at that moment. Berwyn should've folded his ass right then and there. None of that evil monologue to stall time shit.
I wish this series had a villain that was just straight to the point: no yapping session, no glazing the protags, just straight up murking without batting an eye. Someone who can beat Xadenâs ass without a sweat and call him a pathetic excuse of a rider.
I'm so tired of these bitches winning every fight. Let them lose and let them sit with that loss.
you have no idea how much i need Xaden to lost a fight lol. like EVERYONE says he's the MOST POWERFUL RIDER of all time. and im like yeah.... because he's OP as shit. and it's a larger critique i have about how the Riders can effortlessly beat any opponent they are set up against, including fighting against the people from the Isles despite not knowing one thing about their different fighting styles.
and it's like.. Rebecca looooves giving her antagonists long winded villain speeches that just don't work well with a fight scene. like there are so many opportunities to kill Berwyn because he's just monologing his ass off.
like having characters lose is for character growth. and we don't really get to see Xaden or Violet lose and learn and grow from that. so much of Xaden's development has happened off screen and by OS he's so obsessed with Violet it verges on annoying/boring. like he barely cares about Tyrrendor by that point
i hope we go into a more exciting direction after this but i think the assassinated riders/the stolen eggs is gonna be a red herring to get us thinking that Xaden did something really really bad, but actually he didn't or he had a really good reason to do it because the characters can never do anything wrong or morally questionable
Saddle anon again. Tbh Dain is lowkey fascinating in the inconsistency between what we're told and how he acts. Like, I never hated Dain because honestly, maybe I'm just more into military fiction than some romantasy readers, but Dain's first appearance screamed PTSD to me, like the focus on saving Violet and please let me save someone in this godforesaken place vibe, read like someone who'd made friends and tried to save people here before and had to watch them die. But yeah, the character and the narrative always push this idea that Dain is a rule follower and codex lover, and this isn't just something Xaden pushes because he wants him away from Violet, he thinks it in his pov chapters too. But, yeah he's constantly willing to risk breaking the rules. And everyone likes to talk about the whole not believing Violet about Amber thing, but it's not Violet saying it, it's Xaden, and he has presented no proof at that point, even Violet hadn't confirmed it yet. I think it's much more obvious Dain does what he thinks is right, it's just what he thinks it right is the story he's grown up with, not what's actually right, and I think that's obvious in how quickly he turns when he discovers the truth.
I think if RY wanted to make Dain a rules guy, she should have let him rules lawyer it, use loop holes to get what he wants and work on technicalities, or make him more earnest and less overbaring. There are lots of examples of well done beloved rules guys, after all. Or, if he should have been a good but overbaring guy, that should have been more obvious.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it kind feels like Violet doesn't entirely know Dain that wel at all, just a version of him she wants to see or imagined, and when he didn't live up to that romantic vision of him she had in her head, she turned him into a villain. Doouble this given the implications that Asher might have been influencing the both of them from OS.
saddle anon. love it.
yeah this is all good stuff on how to improve Dain's function within the story because he's villainized worse than the fucking absolute monarchy in this series.
the part about how Dain's concern for Violet could be more self driven by PTSD and showing the damaging effects of The Death School does a much better job at expressing the impacts of this sort of environment rather than killing off characters i barely remember the names of. it would also do a better job at showing Violet how much Dain has changed from childhood to now. which the books barely do.
and Xaden is such an ass sometimes lmao. i wish people recognized this about him. he can come off like a jock. he's huge. he's strong. he's the bestest fighter ever, capable of taking down people who have 10+ years experience and training on him. and Dain, lbr, was raised as a nerd.
and the way Violet and Dain were raised should also come up more often because they are the nepo babies here. their family members are WELL established within the military and they were raised on military grounds. they are the most indoctrinated out of all of them. so if Violet gets the ultimate pass that doesn't have her really critically examine her biases towards Riders, then why does Dain have to be dragged through the mud?
also, as a side note, can we FINALLY get a copy of the Codex? people keep flouting this thing as the only thing that can control riders, but i highly doubt that.
Hey, so I know I'm late to the whole Violet's saddle thing, but omg Xaden just making and giving Violet a saddle didn't sit right with me. So like, there's a couple of moments where I thought if RY wanted to either make the supposedly triangle stronger, or Dain's "betrayal" hit harder, or just show Violet and Dain actually being friends, Dain doing the thing would have been better than Xaden and this is one (the other obvious one being Violet's "um actually" on the Gauntlet. Dain is supposed to be the rules guy, let him back Violet up when she's being a rules lawyer, not Xaden) but this is the other. Like, it's totally within Dain's over protective character to say "so I can't stop your riding, but here's a saddle I made you without to help you stay on so you don't die".
That said, I think it would have been a lot more interesting if Dain and Violet had made the saddle together. You could get a whole plot of strengthening Violet and Dain's friendship, characterising dragons and their bonds better, and even do something like getting accessiblity adaptions made more standard. Like imagine: Dain wants ways to keep Violet safe, so brings it up, Violet doesn't want to because she doesn't want to seem weak and singled out, Dain gets Cath to agree to wear one too because if a great powerful dragon like Tairn will wear one, Cath feels not shame, and Dain can make the perfectly rational arguement that saddles are good actually for carrying supplies in battle, and even an extra layer of armour. They get to be research nerds in the archives designing and looking at maybe historical saddles. We get to see them as friends on a project together, being friends and even having romantic chemistry. And even Liam can get in on it when he joins the squad. More and more powerful dragons and competent riders using them without shame normalising the practice. Imagine making your dragon a saddle slowly becoming an accepted way of bonding with your new dragon.
honestly Dain is such wasted potential as a symbol of what Violet was against Xaden's symbolic presence in her life as what she could be.
and yes! even having Dain make the saddle for her would be more fitting to who Dain and Violet are at this point in the story than Xaden, when it's mostly clear he's doing it for romantic reasons as they are portrayed in the book.
and the way you have it sketched out here is much more fitting to who Rebecca was trying to write Dain as in OS but it feels a little too late at this point. like we barely get to see how Dain and Violet are childhood best friends in FW before Violet rebukes Dain and Dain betrays her. like imagine how much weightier that conversations would be if they hung out more in FW. plus having Dain make the saddle would remove the convenience of Dain being unable to communicate to Tairn except through Cath
i have larger issues of why only Violet gets to have a saddle plus the dragon scale armour (she's not beating the Mary Sue allegations any time soon lolololol). there being a precedence of saddles from hundreds of years ago is vastly more interesting than just Xaden coming up in FW being like 'here's a saddle.' we don't even get to SEE him make it.
plus the constant insistence that Dain is such a rule follower when he was sooo ready to cross Violet's mom, General Sorrengail, in order to smuggle Violet to the Scribe's quadrant. like come on.
thinking back on it now, why didn't Rebecca have Violet make her own saddle lol
having Violet make her own saddle would not only a) help us see how book smart Violet can be and how she can actually apply her knowledge in a practical manner but also b) help Violet begin to overcome her own internalized ableism
up until she bonds with Tairn, we are REPEATEDLY shown how Violet works to overcome her short comings, namely her height, her size, and her lack of physical prowess (no matter how poorly these books do it, she cannot do everything). why should this one instance be anything different up until now?
of course we all know why Xaden gets to make the saddle. it's so we as the audience can see how in looooovvvveee they are and i call bullshit quite frankly lol
the saddle moment should've been for Violet. for her to continue to work her body and her capabilities. plus it would also give us more time to deepen the relationship between Tairn and Violet. for Violet to measure Tairn. to ensure his comfort is maintained because it is a big thing for a dragon to stoop to this level (even though we all know riders should ALL have saddles lmao)
i like the saddle part. i don't mind it. but i just wish Violet was the one to build it
so this thing is nearly 3,000 words long lol. i basically went through each book, key word searching 'venin' and noting important information. i also did briefly look at the other words we got for venin. here's my breakdown of it all
Venin â FW 98, IF 105, OS 101
Dark wielder â FW 2, IF 67, OS 85
Initiate â FW 0, IF 2, OS 9
Asim â FW 0, IF 3, OS 6
Sage â FW 2, IF 47, OS 35
Maven â FW 0, IF 1, OS 12
the most interesting things we learn about the venin are all in Fourth Wing. i still think the venin are well introduced in the book and are properly terrifying. Iron Flame and Onyx Storm drag things to a halt and we haven't learned anything interesting about them. we don't even know their end goals yet.
but i'm getting ahead of myself. so let's dive into the venin
Fourth Wing
What we get from the start is Violet and Mira talking about venin as a fairytale character from a book Violetâs dad gave her as a child. Fables of the Barren. They are first posed as some sort of demonic entity. A red-eyed monster under the bed waiting to snatch children who channel power without being bonded to a dragon (ch 1). Okay. So weâve got some sort of folkloric take on what venin are in the cultural consciousness but itâs mostly brushed aside. Itâs a story only. We get the same sort of story confirmation from Rhiannon later on (ch 12). We get further confirmations that venin are people who channel directly from the source.
Iâve always had some frustrations with this notion of channeling directly from the source. I think itâs a bit muddled.
One interesting detail that popped up is when a side character says that venin is âborder-village nonsenseâ (ch 12) which poses some very interesting ideas of how more remote villages are likely seen as backwards and superstitious. This is often how itâs treated in real life. And I can definitely see how there would be prejudice for folks who grew up on the border versus those who grew up in the interior of Navarre. And I wish it were brought up more often to show how the foundations of Navarre itself is rotten to the core.
In another conversation with Mira later on, what is further established is that dragons and gryphons are gatekeepers to power/magic and that to gain the power of a venin means sacrificing oneâs soul (ch 26). All interesting stuff, but Iâm curious to know how this belief became common. If the people believe they have souls, then this denotes some sort of religious/spiritual belief. So that that point⊠what deity is this related to?
My suspicion is that venin are in defiance of Amari, queen of the gods. Hereâs my theory lol. Amariâs domain, as far as I can tell, is of the sky. This is briefly mentioned, but as of yet, we donât know much about Amari as a goddess, what her role is, how sheâs worshiped, all that jazz. All we know that is that Amari is linked to the sky.
In ch 31, we learn that venin wield power from the ground instead of the skies. And that drawing magic from the earth will drive people mad. Itâs why you can only draw magic from gryphons and dragons because they are effectively âof the skyâ. They fly lol. So drawing magic from the ground is in defiance of this natural order.
The rest of the book is spent educating us on how to fight/kill venin and thatâs with an alloy dagger. Alloy is made from different types of ore including Talladium and dragon egg shells and imbued with magic. It requires specialty items to make which is further explored in Iron Flame with the mcgufffin of the luminary.
The next piece of information we get is the wearing of the purple robes (ch 36). Throughout ch 36, we get the battle with the venin. Violet witnesses one venin with her palms lowered to the ground as the grass turns brown, flowers and nature wilting and losing their colour. This is the first glimpse we get as to how venin channel. And what the venin channels that energy into is described as a wave of death that desiccates (or mummifies) anything it comes into contact with. This includes dragons.
We also get to see that the venin can use staffs (of some sort) to potentially help them cast or channel that energy. At this point theyâre just spamming FIRE BALL at Violet and co. Beyond this they also have poison tipped daggers which is what gets Violet in the end and nearly kills her.
We also do get mention of some ranks within the venin structure which is a Sage. Whatâs a Sage? We will hopefully explore that further. Also when venin die, so do the things they created, namely wyvern, because the energy thatâs being channeled into them is cut off. Itâs a very convenient kill switch.
Beyond all of this, we get a fairly solid idea of what venin are as the central villains to the entire series. Iâm not that frustrated with what we got in Fourth Wing, because it does a fairly good job at introducing an enemy that was assumed to be a fairytale monster.
Iron Flame
Much of the discussion of venin in this book is the advancing war, with the venin âsucking the land dry of magic, moving city to cityâ (ch 2), but also exploring why the existence of venin was erased in Navarrian history. From what we know of this history, âsomething killed off the venin six hundred years ago during the Great Warâ (ch 2). So Iâm being lead to believe that venin were wiped out of existence and that they came back somehow. The other point of tension is that the dragons have known about the venin the entire time, and that the Empyrean remains conflicted on if they should help in the war or not (ch 7).
We get another view of the venin in a dream (ch 22) where a venin with a thick maroon hood, wielding a staff is hunting down Violet. He is able to telekinetically lift her off the ground and hold her in place. Beyond this what we get of venin is how fast they are taking down Poromish towns and cities. Itâs like beyond apocalyptic, but we donât ever get to see this damage, so itâs hard to understand the scale of this war beyond being directly told âitâs super badâ by the characters.
Also considering how fast these venin move, I donât think itâs even fair to say that they are âcontrollingâ these regions. We donât know how theyâre controlling these regions beyond the fliers and the riders just abandoning these areas due to the danger venin pose. So. What do the venin get out of this? Beyond just access to magic? Thereâs no real end goal yet.
From here we go see Viscount Tecarus and he has a venin suspended in a super special box (ch 41, 42). Having them suspended in this way makes it impossible for them to have a physical connection to the ground so they canât channel. The venin that Violet and Mira are facing off with at this point seems excited to know that itâs Violet here, and that heâll be rewarded if he returns with Violet in tow (ch 42). What we also learn about this is that Tecarus had a specific pit built from rock quarried out of the Dunness River that borders the Barrens. Because the rock has had its magic drained already, it makes the perfect spot to drop a venin into it to study it.
We finally get to understand the venin hierarchy at the beginning of chapter 47: âDefeating a dark wielder begins with knowing where they rank in age and experience. Initiates have reddish rings to their eyes that come and go depending on how often they drain. Asimsâ eyes fluctuate in degrees of red, and their veins distend when riled. Sagesââthose responsible for initiatesâeyes are permanently red, their veins perpetually distended toward their temples, expanding with age. Mavensâtheir generalsâhave never been captured for examination.â So we get initiates, asims, sages, and mavens. We get who they respond to, what they look like and not much else.
Oh but this is an interesting part. Mira and Violet go out to investigate the body of a wyvern on advice from their mother (ch 57). So they go out to this massive body and cut it open, and Mira pulls out a polished chunk of possibly onyx with a complex rune imprinted on it. It also happens to be humming. And whatâs even better is that the once dead wyvern then opens its eyes. Good shit all around.
This does pose an interesting complication for what we know of runes and how venin came to learn about runes to use them in this way, but I think it makes quite a bit of sense as to how venin are able to create so many wyvern. Genuinely, I like this part and it had Violet actually do something in the text rather than receiving information from dialogue again.
THEN. Then we get to the part where I lose my mind again. So my hatred for Jack Barlowe is well established on this blog. He was a basic one dimensional character who served his purpose when he fucking died in Fourth Wing. There was no NEED to bring him back. But for SOME REASON, RY decided it was best to turn Jack into a venin. Why? So he can be an exposition machine and give Violet all the answers to her questions about venin. Despite the fact that she has BOOKS for this.
Whatever. We discover (ch 60) that Jack turned venin within the wards of Navarre which should be impossible since the wards ensure that venin canât channel. Itâs the failsafe for the entire country. When Jack is able to basically destroy Basgiathâs wardstone, he does so because he is able to control Baide (his bonded dragon). Which is.. interesting.
But again. Let me complain lol.
First, Jack should be dead. I donât care about this shit. Second, I feel like itâs in a dragonâs interest to kill their rider the moment they turn venin. Sgaeyl is an outlier in this and it still pisses me off that she lets Xaden get away with so much shit, but we are dealing with Jack and Baide here. How does Jack control her? He says that he replaced the energy she bonded them with. How? What does that actually mean? What energy was replaced here? What is that process?
And again. We donât know how Jack turned venin within the wards until he says the most CONVENIENT thing of all time. That they can channel juuuussst enough with the wards to survive. I find this so convenient. That they can channel just enough and yet Jack is this powerful. Then whatâs stopping the greatest of all venin from marching into Navarre and taking what they want.
Beyond this, we get another image of the damaging effects of venin draining when Jack touches Dain and leaves a set of gray handprints burned into his skin. Dain says it âhurts like a fucking ice burn.â The only thing that stops Jack is the signet blocking serum conveniently developed for this book for this purpose. Which I still find as stupid.
The last bit of knowledge we get of venin in this book is during Xadenâs pov chapter at the end. A venin has gotten him. Heâs nearing burnout. The venin taunts him in saying, âIt hurts, doesnât it? Nearing burnout?â (ch 60) and ââMagic does like everything in balance. Take too much and sheâll consume you for overstepping.â
Which.. is interesting. The venin potentially viewing magic not as just energy but possibly taking on a physical manifestation of a woman. But we donât get more than that.
The final thing we get is of Xaden channeling from the ground even though Sgaeyl is screaming at him not to. Again. This process is very general. And it does make me wonder. Do potential venin have to be bonded to a dragon or gryphon to first understand channeling before channeling from the source? Because itâs really unknown now how they even learn this process. Because then that makes anyone in the country liable of turning into a venin. Plus then why wouldnât other people turn venin to fight against venin? Why wouldnât there be more Xadenâs in the world?
It will be interesting to see if RY brings in another character like this who turned venin but isnât evil. Because right now, the venin are still pretty flat as villains.
Onyx Storm
So now. What do we get in Onyx Storm?
It starts out with the riders and fliers having to âclean houseâ. Venin are still popping up around Basgiath even though the wards are up. There is one interesting tidbit we get from the prologue is that the dragons (meaning Tairn) also believe that venin lose their soul when they channel from the ground. So there is this one common belief even if dragons donât believe in human gods.
Eventually we meet Theophanie (ch 10) as one of the central venin villains of the series. From the start, she is depicted to be very powerful, wields lightning (which turns out to be storms later on in OS), even though venin arenât supposed to be able to wield signets. Another tidbit we get is that venin are functionally immortal, with Violet learning that Theophanie is centuries old.
The next thing we are introduced to are all these books written about venin from the Poromiel side of things (ch 13), but what I hate is that we get very little insight into these books. Like maybe we get a quote or two at the intros to the chapters, but beyond that we donât really learn anything and this could be one of the most useful things within the books for us to explore through Violetâs eyes. I do get frustrated that for how much Violet reads we donât get an insight into what she actually reads beyond like⊠2 books. Like!! For example. Chapter 28. Violet is reading a book on venin and their âmedicinal usesâ⊠WHAT MEDICAL USES!! WHAT HAVE THE POROMISH PEOPLE LEARNED. TELL US, REBECCA. GIVE US SOMETHING.
Beyond this, thereâs nothing more that I can say about venin that we donât already know. We learn they have signets. They are immune from dragon fire. They have some sort of hierarchy but thatâs about it.
General Discussion
So what are the venin truly? Theyâre an interesting mythical antagonist from eons past, but as villains of the series and the ultimate big bads, they are rather bad at their job. We have virtually no insight into their goals and we are three books into the series. At this point Iâm expecting a lot more in terms of intention and goals. What do the venin actually want? Beyond power. We donât know!!
Beyond Jack, we donât know why anyone would turn venin. Even Theophanie has muddled intentions, especially since she turned her back on the goddess Dunne. The venin like this act more like a mindless hoard, consuming everything in sight. And every time we are told about them, in battle tactics, we are told that even just a handful of venin. Like three. Should be more than terrifying, but it is hard to grasp the level of destruction theyâve wrought because this doesnât actually affect our characters at all. The last battle in Fourth Wing was the best case at showing the terrifying might of venin but itâs all been downhill from there.
Which is why I donât really buy Violetâs âtheyâll drain youâ speech in Hedotis. As it is established, the island of Hedotis has no magic. Many of these islands have no magic, but Hedotis specifically. We know the land is drained, devoid of colour and what we know of as life. But because the worldbuilding in this series is often pretty poor, we donât understand why these islands have such little magic in comparison to the Continent.
So because Hedotis has no fucking magic, they would LITERALLY be the LAST ONES the venin would EVER consider attacking if they were to EVER get to the islands because their goal would likely be to find where the irids are and DRAIN THEM FIRST AND FOREMOST. Like. The logic here isnât logic-ing at all. And thatâs whatâs so damn frustrating about the venin.
It also SUCKS that we get all these mentions of books, yet NO information on them. What they say. What Violet learns from them. We just get title drops and thatâs it.
Anyway⊠we have 2 books left. If we donât exploring the fucking Barrens, where the venin spawned or whatever, then Iâm gonna start chewing concrete lmao.
You know, Xaden Riorson starts out as a character that has some semblance of an inner world before that feature gets beaten out of him with every book. He just becomes less and less of a character as the story progresses. Suddenly, Xaden doesnât have any meaningful motivations beyond his relationship with Violet and it becomes clear that the only thing Yarros considers worthy of exploration is how Xaden would literally abandon everything for her.
Like, weâre talking about a love interest who is not only a leader, but carries significant status and responsibility as a duke. Heâs got things to doâŠbut all of those âthingsâ a.k.a his relationships, duties and other motivations are perfunctory. Yarros doesnât care about how those things shape his character. They really only function as a way to enhance his devotion to Violet by showing us how much he would sacrifice to be with her. The fact that he wouldnât hesitate to give it all up for Violet makes him look like heâs got nothing else going on in his life. This makes him an uninteresting character and love interest because it erases what little characterization he had for the sake of the main love story.
one of the most stand out Xaden scenes in Fourth Wing, in my opinion, was when he was out standing on the parapet while all of Basgiath was celebrating Reunification Day, aka the celebration of Xaden's father's death. and that was so poignant because Xaden was such an outsider at that time. and the amount of looks he's probably given for being Fen Riorson's son. the constant thoughts that he might turn out exactly like his dad (he does lol)
but we lose so much of what made Xaden a compelling character, his care for the Marked Ones, his leadership qualities, the entirety of his family legacy. we lose all of this within Iron Flame and Onyx Storm because his entire life is so wrapped up in Violet that he isn't anything else other than her boyfriend and it's soooo frustrating for that to happen.
like it doesn't even seem like he's interested in leading Tyrrendor as Duke. he just throws his weight around whenever Violet needs something and that's it. it's very disappointing
but in retrospect it's not as bad as i thought it was going to be. like there are good building blocks there. and again we have 2 books left to the series to learn more about them. but we get to a point where they're still so... flat as villains??
like at this point all they want is total destruction of the planet for power and... that's it. i wish we had a bit more insight into their goals beyond this because that's all we got
