I have two. The Ritual and Drowning.
The Ritual is pure smut. 61 chapters and every one contains a graphic, demeaning sex scene. I’m convinced the author was an adult film screenwriter and decided to try their hand at writing a novel. There isn’t a single likable character in this book.
Drowning isn’t a great work of literature. I felt that the characters were very two-dimensional. I hated how naive the author made the protagonist. It made me have a lack of sympathy for her. The ending was series finale of Dexter bad.
Fourth Wing. There could’ve been something interesting there about the way the military industrial complex chews up idealistic young people and spits them out, but the author seems afraid to really go there, and so the stakes never feel high and the reveals never feel shocking.
It also, to my mind, represents the worst of the “booktok-ification” of “representation”. Like, is there a queer character? Check. Is there a Black character? Check. Is there a disabled character? Check. etc. etc. And yet we get maybe one offhanded line that kiiiiiinda tells us these things, and then 99.999999999% of the focus remains on the white, straight, etc. main couple. I strongly believe that books and publishing as a whole need more diversity and inclusivity — however, I think this book exemplifies the wrong way to go about it, and the way that “rep” has just become a checklist in some authors’ and readers’ minds. This one just felt like paying lip service so that fans could add it to every flavor of “diverse books” rec list.
Also the writing was very clunky and the dialogue felt very girlboss-aren’t-I-edgy stilted. The dragons were cool, though, I guess.
I agree, no idea why you get downvoted. The book was hyped into oblivion and totally failed to deliver for me. Story didnt flow, MC felt like a self-insert, and there are sentences like:
The following is a part of a Goodreads review by Sarah Swanson, which I totally agree with:
Starting with the main event, we have frail young Violet who is SO relatable because she’s SO clumsy and SO bad at things! Simultaneously, she is SO smart (like smarter than everyone) and SO unique that she gets not one, but TWO dragons to bond with her! And of course, they’re both the rarest kind of dragons that exist!!! And naturally, everyone wants her dead for… reasons. But does her life being in danger give her any sense of self control? Absolutely not! She argues with everyone and throws her sass around to both peers and superior officers with little to no consequence. This woman has the survival skills of a fruit fly!! Additionally, her moods go back and forth quicker than an Olympic ping-pong match. First she hates Xaden because he’s a traitor. Then she loves Xaden because she decides to trust him. Then she hates Xaden because he’s a traitor. I’m expecting the cycle will continue in Book 2. Also, she starts off wanting to be a scribe and gets pissed when she’s thrown into the Rider’s Quadrant, then she decides she desperately wants to be a Rider because… because? The decision is given hardly any explanation or emotional weight.
I realise I’m probably reaching here but people with EDS tend to have unusually soft or velvety skin. Incredibly touchable! 🤓
“Flaming hot. Scorching hot. Gets-you-into-trouble-and-you-like-it level of hot.”
And this is about the point where I dropped it. This line just killed any interest I had in continuing.
Knowing she’s herself a military wife with chronic illness explains all you need to know
I was going to say Fourth Wing too. It’s not good.
A good version of Fourth Wing that is 10000x better is “To Shape a Dragons Breath” by Moniquil Blackgoose
Such an awful book and I wish the hype would die down…
Well I wanted to leave a Amazon review saying how horrid it was and I found 1000’s of positive reviews that I assume were created by bots that seemed cookie cutter/cut and paste. Each review was was almost the same with line like” the best book ever” and “my favorite fantasy book ever”. I just went back to find some disposable examples and now they are so buried by real people with bad taste that I cannot find any fake reviews.
R.I.P Dylan. My boy deserved better.
Is he the kid who fell off the tall shit
This is a book I would have normally never finished. I could tell it wasn’t for me early on. But, it was a book club pick and was determined to finish it (I had to miss the previous meeting and didn’t get to finish the book, so I wasn’t repeating that).
What a mistake. I hated Fourth Wing, for all the reasons you said and more. But I did finish it, and thought at least we could have some decent discussion about it. Nope. Book club was dominated by the few who loved it just fawning over it, without any real discussion. Worst meeting I have attended to date, as nobody really discussed anything. Either people hated it and didn’t want to speak up (people don’t often talk too negatively about what we read), or were just gushing and wouldn’t shut up to let others talk. I finally got a word in during a question about the MC ands got daggers shot my way and was angrily replied to.
It has honestly made me think less of my club (no fault of the organizers, they try really hard).
I wanted to love this book. I love fast read turn my brain off book candy, especially if it’s fantasy/romance, give me all the tropes. I love Sarah J Maas as an example. But it was soooo bad. The dialogue was so juvenile I told my husband it felt like they had to state their ages out loud multiple times so it didn’t read like child porn when it got to the spicy bits. Possibly some of the worst dialogue I’ve read in a long time. “Violence”??? Really that’s the best she’s got?? And so predictable in a very not creative fun way. I love a trope, give me all the tropes, but I still like to be surprised. Which I felt like it lacked any surprises. It felt like a bad “How to train your dragon” fanfiction. Like how 50 shades started as a Twilight fic.
I really don’t like the way that authors go out of their way to coolly-casually reveal that one single character is black. It’s kind of a bubble burster. Like oh… guess everyone else must be white.
The worst.
I enjoyed the first one in a guilty pleasure, objectively not good but dragons and sex and magic school trope! I read quickly too so it was a fun fluffy ready for me
The second one just came out and it is SO MuCH WORSE. Everything you noted is cranked up to ten, plus imo, an overly complicated military plot that the author did not give us the time or the background to understand. It’s truly unbearable I’m even more embarrassed that I liked the first one
Ok this makes me feel better. I’m on chapter 17 of iron flame and I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall. The whiplash I have between the break neck pacing of the first book and the second is insane. There is sooooo much unnecessary dialogue so far in iron flame I’m STRUGGLING. I get that it’s supposed to be a 5 book series but holy shit, let’s move it along peopleeeee
I’m currently in the same stage of embarrassment. It’s so so bad.
Okay thank you all my friends think I’m crazy for hating iron flame but I don’t think I will even finish it