Fourth Wing: The Empyrean (Book 1 of 3)

By Rebecca Yarros

Fourth Wing: The Empyrean (Book 1 of 3)

Content Meters

Sex, romance, and nudity:
100%
Violence and gore:
80%
Language:
100%
Substance use:
30%
Negative messages:
70%
Positive messages:
50%

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Recommended:
Ages 18+
Read time:
14 hours
Reviewed on:

Spoiler-Free Overview

When a girl with weak joints and no training walks into the Dragon Rider's quadrant… it sounds like the start of a joke. Alas, this is no joke. Violet has an illness that causes her joints, ligaments, and tendons to be incredibly fragile. Despite this, her mother forces her to test and enter the riders quadrant, because riders are the superior class in society. Violet must cull her weaknesses, create alliances, and survive the deadliest school in the world.

The worldbuilding was fascinating and the idea of a school for dragon riders drew me in and kept me wanting to see how Violet would overcome the trials awaiting her. By far, the dragons were the best part. I hated the romance choices. Violet and all of her classmates are walking red flags.

That being said, I did enjoy Violet’s skill progression and courage. No matter how dire the situation, she stuck to her guns, and that made every challenge all the more exciting to watch. If you don’t mind crass humor, red-flag sexual content, or obscene amounts of language, this could be your next page-turner.

Spoiler Alert

Venture beyond this point at your own risk!

Detailed Content Meters

100%
Sex, romance, and nudity:
rating: 100%

This deserves an X rating. I will be as vague as possible in the coming points, but it is incredibly graphic.

  • There is a comment about a character that can make things bigger or smaller.
  • Violet’s older sister advises her to “sleep often; you never know what day will be your last.”
  • Two females come out of a room and a comment is made that they had “much-needed orgasms.”
  • Discussion and jokes about sleeping around are commonplace.
  • Zayden’s presence sparks lustful thoughts all the time.
  • Violet is disappointed when she kisses her best friend and feels no lust.
  • Sex is used for celebration.
  • Violet can feel her dragon having sex with his partner and it causes the same feelings and desires in her. This leads to her making out with Zayden. He asks her to leave because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop himself if they go any further.
  • For some reason, Violet gets distracted from her sister’s dire peril when Zayden kisses her again and they make out.
  • Zayden and Violet have sex and it is INCREDIBLY graphic anatomically, auditorily, and in any other possible way.
  • When she’s struggling to get to an emotional state to use her power, she uses telepathy to contact Zayden and he replays the sex scene from his perspective.
  • Zaden and Violet use telepathy to do sexting.
  • Violet decides to “take care of” Zayden on the anniversary of his father’s death, which, obviously (o.O) means having graphic sex. Just when you think it’s over, the next scene starts with “We’re going for five.” Thankfully, Garrick interrupts to tell them there’s a mandatory formation.
  • There is one final make-out scene before the finale.
  • It switches to Zaden’s perspective and he’s lusting after Violet.
80%
Violence and gore:
rating: 80%
  • The first test is walking across the parapet, where 60 kids end up falling to their deaths. One falls in front of Violet and a kid behind her shoves another kid off. He comes for her, but she dives to safety, busting her knee and holding a knife to his genitalia. She decides to spare him.
  • Dragons stand in front of their formation, burning anyone to death who tries to run.
  • Violet starts poisoning her challenge opponents although she doesn’t kill any.
  • The antagonist kills the first kid he challenges and gets a mere warning.
  • Zayden threatens to kill her.
  • Violet gets many wounds while training.
  • Zayden reveals the scars on his back are from being whipped.
  • A character falls to their death while training the gauntlet.
  • The class is made to walk through a line of dragons as they choose which ones they will try to find and the dragons decide which ones they’re willing to bond. Several recruits are incinerated.
  • Three characters try to kill the smallest dragon. Violet steps in and they try to kill her too. She fights them off, sustaining a moderate injury.
  • A whole handful of characters try to kill Violet in her sleep. Zayden kills everyone who hasn’t fled by the time he gets there.
  • The one who set up the attempted murder is put on trial and executed.
  • A poor guard who’s just doing his job is knocked out with a wind blast while Violet’s team is stealing a map from the general’s office.
  • Violet’s sister goes to battle, and Violet is forced to abandon her there.
  • Violet kills the antagonist in a war game.
  • The generals give a wargame assignment that is meant to kill Zayden and his squad, including Violet.
  • Liam’s dragon dies, and so does he.
  • Violet nearly dies but they take her to a mysterious healer who brings her back to health.
100%
Language:
rating: 100%

As with sex, romance, and nudity, this really deserves an X rating.

  • F*** - Over 100
  • S*** - 27
  • D*** - 11
  • A** - 8
  • A**h*** - 6
  • Hell - 4
  • Di** - 3
  • Balls – 3
  • Co** - 3
  • Godd*** - 2
  • Bad*** - 2
  • B**** - 2
  • F***er – 1
  • Mother****** - 1
30%
Substance use:
rating: 30%
  • Zayden uses an illegal substance to dampen the feeling of his dragon having sex with another dragon and he offers Violet a hit.
70%
Negative messages:
rating: 70%
  • Promiscuity is not only encouraged but when an upperclassman doesn’t want to date Violet and create disunity in the hierarchy, he’s made to be the bad guy.
50%
Positive messages:
rating: 50%
  • Be yourself.
  • Don’t blindly put your faith in an organization.

Detailed Overview

If you have a friend who loves this book and wants to be able to hold a conversation about it, this review is dedicated to you.

Violet proves herself to be weak right out of the gates. She can’t even handle her rucksack, but her mother, the general, still demands she join the dragon quadrant. Violet’s sister tries and fails to talk their mother out of this. Her mother even warns that, if Violet tries to enter any other quadrant, she will personally drag her back to the parapet. Luckily, she saw this outcome and has a set of lightweight armor, gripped boots, and a properly sized rucksack packed for Violet.

Seeing a newfound friend fall to his death on the rain-soaked parapet and the child of a man Violet’s mother executed (Xaden), Violet freezes. She switches one of her boots with the other friend she made on the stairs, saving her life. They both make it to the other side, but not before Jack throws another kid off the parapet and chases Violet. She dives to safety and turns a knife on him. She has every right to kill him, and it’s legal since he hasn’t left the parapet, but she spares his life.

Before she goes into formation, Violet meets her best friend, a second-year named Dane. Dane treats her knee injury and tries to smuggle Violet into the scribe quadrant, but Violet explains her mother’s threat. For the rest of the book, Dane looks for ways to get around Violet’s mother and get Violet to the safety of the scribe quadrant, for which she trained her whole life. This makes him a bad person (?).

In formation, Xaden orchestrates Violet being transferred into his wing (like a company in the army). After a quick scare that he’s going to kill her, Violet flees and sets her plans into motion.

First things first, she has to gather poisons after dark. Ironically, Xaden and the other children of the executed have similar thoughts. Violet hides in a tree while they illegally meet, but she quickly realizes there’s nothing insidious about their gathering. The older riders are just there to help the younger ones survive.

Of course, Xaden is a shadow manipulator (because he has to be the coolest red-flag boyfriend), meaning he knows she’s there. After everyone leaves, he forces a conversation. Although he could easily kill her and move on, he decides to let her live so long as she keeps their meeting a secret. When she asks why, he says it’s to make himself feel like he’s still a good person. Maximum edge lord.

Classes continue, fights continue, and Jack continues to kill and maim people while threatening Violet. To everyone’s amazement, Violet gets stronger and conquers both her challengers and the gauntlet, earning her a place in threshing (where dragons and riders pair themselves. Dane, knowing the dragons kill weak riders, begs her not to go, as a reasonable friend might, but she does anyway.

Violet and her classmates walk the line of dragons before threshing and several people are incinerated. Finally, threshing begins. The dragons take to the woods and the recruits begin searching for the colors and types they hope to match.

Violet takes so long that she stumbles across Jack and two others plotting to kill the littlest dragon. Violet finds her first and tries to tell the little dragon to run away, but it refuses. When the other three arrive, Violet stands her ground and fights to protect the dragon. She wounds two and, at the very last moment, the gigantic black dragon saves her and matches her. Not just him. The little dragon matches her too.

Lo and behold, the big dragon, Tairn, is mated to Xaden’s dragon meaning if she or Tairn dies, Xaden and his dragon will too. Thus begins the love arch.

Xaden is now sworn to protect Violet at all costs. He assigns Liam to protect her and another girl to train Violet in hand-to-hand combat. It pays off when seven people break in at night to kill Violet and she fends for herself until Xaden arrives and kills six.

When Violet tells Xaden who the seventh is, he immediately believes her and calls the squad leader to justice. Dane doesn’t believe Violet and this is the breaking point in their relationship. Despite the kiss they shared after threshing, Violet feels no chemistry for him and now he’s broken her trust by trying to steal her memory to prove she’s not lying.

The perpetrator is executed and Dane distances himself from Violet.

She and her squad win the first wargame, earning an outing that happens to be with her sister’s regiment. Griffons and their riders attack while Violet is there and she’s forced to flee. She and Xaden kiss and it distracts her from the situation.

During the second wargame, Violet manifests incredible lightning power and kills Jack before he can kill Liam and then has a breakdown over it. Dane tries to comfort her but Xaden steps in and tells her to get it together which is apparently the right response (?).

Xaden and Violet have graphic sex and she puts a ton of things on fire and finds out the scars up Xaden’s back are from being whipped once for each of the executed “criminal’s” kids, allowing them a chance to live. She’s sequestered off to a mountain with the power professor who teaches her to channel the lightning, but not without the reader having to relive the sex scene through Xaden’s eyes via telepathy. Xaden and Violet do sexting via telepathy on more than just this occasion.

After all of that nonsense, Xaden has a bad day on the anniversary of his father’s execution and Violet takes him to bed again. It is graphic and unnecessary, but another character saves the day with the message that there’s a mandatory formation in the middle of the night.

The final wargame. Except, it’s not a game.

After Xaden chooses his command team and sends the rest of the wing to their locations, he finds out his command center is a death trap. Dane stole the memory from Violet that Xaden had been sneaking out to help another country’s civilians (the same thing his father was executed for) and reported it to authorities. They give him the option of losing some of his comrades to save Griffin Flyers and civilians and proving his disloyalty or letting them all die and rendezvous with the rest of his wing.

They choose to save lives.

Liam’s dragon is crushed, but not before he tells Violet to go for the leaders of the undead dragons. With the death of his dragon, Liam dies too.

Violet channels so much power that she ignores a poisonous wound and finishes the big baddies off before she goes comatose with a dangerous fever.

This might surprise you, but Violet survives. And it’s all thanks to her brother (who we all knew wasn’t actually dead, right?) who uses his healing power to undo the undead poison coursing through her veins.

It was a ride. I’ll give it that.

Subscribe to receive
news and updates

C.K. Slorra LLC © 2025