I encountered the first warning sign that this book might not be for me when I turned it over and saw it described as being for fans of Fifty Shades and Hunger Games. I probably should have trusted that initial feeling - although I don't think that the description is particularly accurate. Fourth Wing was a bunch of events and relationships (which were sometimes enjoyable to be immersed in) stuck together with very poor reasoning and plot design. I know people don't read these kind of books for water-tight plots and characters full of psychological integrity, but really? I'm not going into my specific issues because I don't want to hide half of this review behind spoiler tags, but there were so many times that I was taken completely out of all of it because either a character did something that made no sense based on their long-term motivations or plot device got in the way of the internal politics of the world. The writing is poor, or I guess I should say that it. Was. Fucking. Not. Ideal. Who knew fucking was such a versatile adjective? Turns out you don't need to actually describe anything if you can just say it's fucking.

I've been very negative. Which is somewhat unfair because this is not even close to my least favourite book I've read this year. I can see why people like Fourth Wing and why it's become so popular, but for me, it's just too inconsistent, poorly-written and derivative to be more than a 2 out of 5. A better description might be Hunger Games with a few nods to Fifty Shades (but not the BDSM parts - don't get too excited), dragons almost entirely lifted from Pern, and a general vibe of grittiness from Game of Thrones.