If Jack wants to kill me, he needs to get in line. Besides, I have a feeling Xaden Riorson is going to beat him to it.

Might I remind you, Xaden has literally stood there, looked kinda upset, and then made a snide remark. Literally the entire extent of their interaction so far. Meanwhile Jack has literally tried to kill her already.

The rain stops again literally right after she’s done crossing, which seems weird to me because it’s a book. It doesn’t cost you more to keep it raining. Why make it so obvious that it was just for the sake of Violet’s drama?

Violet had a minor trip on the parapet and hit the stone with her knee, something that would give others a bruise but because of her EDS she needs to wrap up her joint to keep it stable. She’s looking for a private place to do this when she runs into Dain, her best childhood friend who is Suddenly Hot. (Don’t worry, he was mentioned before now.) He’s a year older than her and thus entered training last year. He is quite distraught to find Violet there, for the obvious reason that he knows she’s disabled and will fare poorly.

Dain is a squad leader, so he immediately puts Violet and Rhiannon in his squad. Then he sneaks Violet up to his room so that she can repair herself in private. There’s a recap of why she’s here, which we don’t need because it was literally one chapter ago. I get Dain needs it, but we don’t need the whole thing in dialogue. There is also some flirting, because of course there is. Violet been pining for Hot Best Friend forever, can’t miss a chance to flirt.

Dain insists that there has to be a way to get her out of here and into the scribe school, and Violet insists that her mother won’t allow it. There’s much talk of how the general will ‘drag her back kicking and screaming’ to the dragon school, but like? What is her mom’s job? Is everyone else at the college going to just accept that? Would she really? Are you even going to try? (She is not going to try.)

They go back outside and wait around until all the recruits are done either crossing the Death Bridge or falling off it. Then we get a speech from the head of the dragon school, Commandant Panchek.

“I heard this position is just a stepping stone for him,” Tara whispers. “He wants Sorrengail’s job, then General Melgren’s.”

The commanding general of all Navarre’s forces. Melgren’s beady eyes have always made me shrivel every time we’ve met during my mother’s career.

Subtle.

There’s a standard commencement speech. Rah rah, we’re the best ever, do you have what it takes to be awesome, rah rah. Except for the little nugget where, unlike logical militaries, if you fail at any point you just die. Only one quarter of the 300 recruits entering will live to graduation. That’s some atrocious numbers. I mean, it’s fine as an attrition rate, but as a death rate what are you doing?

Everyone gets split into their squads. Xaden gives her a vaguely bad look, then has a little meeting with the other platoon (wing) leaders and gets them to switch Dain’s entire squad (and thus Violet) into his wing. So now they’re all in Fourth Wing and we get our title drop.

Now it’s Xaden’s turn to give a little speech and while the previous guy was all optimistic, Xaden is all “you think you’re shit? You’re not shit.” A bunch of dragons land on the courtyard walls and tons of the cadets freak out about being this close to a dragon for the first time.

One of them tries to run away and gets incinerated by a dragon on the spot.

For all the talk about death and all the stupid things they go through like the Death Bridge, this is one part I really don’t mind. Dragons not having human sensibilities about human death is fine and it’s honestly done pretty well through the book. If this was the reason so many kids die, then it sucks but hey they’re dragons and we need them so what can you do. It’s the humans adding onto the top of the dragon death that will not stop pissing me off.

And then we skip to the next day. Which is fine, the first day of basic training is always just paperwork and standing in line at Central Issue Facility. Who needs that in a book. Every day starts out with a formation in which an official reads off the names of all the students who died the day before. After that they get assignments and split up, the first years going to class and the other years going to do…whatever they do. Dain tells a guy named Sawyer to show everyone around, and Violet’s narration helpfully informs us that he’s a repeat. Students that live but don’t get picked by a dragon just keep repeating the first year until they either die or get picked.

And then LESS THAN A FULL PAGE LATER—

“I overheard a third-year say when a first-year survives Threshing unbonded, the quadrant lets them repeat the year and try again if they want,”

First of all, kjasdfkjadgfjhdfg

Second of all, ‘if they want’ makes it sound like there’s an option to just leave, which is never brought up again. But also never directly contradicted. Which, if this isn’t just another error that got through, would make that the only way to leave dragon school alive. Violet, despite being scared of dragons every time they come up, doesn’t mention this as an option. There’s no “I just have to lay low for two months and then refuse all the dragons and then I can go be a scribe.”

The first-years all head to class, but Dain wants to get Violet alone so they make a detour to a relatively empty, but still public, hallway. Dain just wants to mother-hen her, asking if she wrapped her knee, if she ate breakfast, if she gets along with the other cadets. Then she asks him about his magic and we get a little intro to that.

All dragon riders get access to magic through their dragons. They get some ‘lesser’ magics that are common to all, like making little lights or locking doors or some other random stuff. But then they get a stronger ‘signet’ power that is specific to each rider and based partially on that rider’s personality. They aren’t completely unique but some are more rare than others. Dain’s power is to read someone’s recent memory through touch.

“This place can warp almost everything about a person, Vi. It cuts away the bullshit and the niceties, revealing whoever you are at your core. They want it that way. They want it to sever your previous bonds so your loyalty is to your wing.

Oh really? The same wing that they let you murder you for shits and giggles and it’s not against the rules except for whenever the author writes herself into a corner? Yeah, real loyalty-making, that.

Also this line comes up a lot and I hate it.

They head back to a more populated area and Xaden is hanging out there, chillin, and notices them. He publicly calls them out them for being loverbirds and super obvious. But again, that’s it. Just some light mockery.

“Run, Violet,” Dain orders me. “Now.”

I bolt.

…and then….? Nope, just end of the chapter. Just a dude standing around being snarky and they react like he’s got a gun pulled on them. For fuck’s sake, Xaden, do something.

Next we are in Battle Brief, a daily class that all three years attend together. They get briefed on the going’s on of the military at large and then get quizzed with ‘what would you do next’ or ‘why do you think this happened’ type questions. A good practice. Big thumbs up. We also get plenty of random worldbuilding and history, partly in dialogue and partly in narration. Finally, an appropriate time and place and method.

Some relevant bits. The other country they are at constant war with is called Poromiel. They have gryphons and riders in the same way Navarre has dragons and riders. Dragons maintain a ward around Navarre that makes all types of magic except for dragon magic impossible, which does a fair job at keeping gryphons out. Also makes sense as to why they’d partner with dragons who kill their students willy-nilly. Wards at the edges of their country keep failing, resulting in gryphon attacks.

[…] until they learn to content with our trade agreements, we have no chance of ending conscription in Navarre.

I bet not killing 200 people a year in your dragon school via stupid shit like Death Bridges would help with that little conscription problem.

After Battle Brief, they move into sparring, which we are informed will happen twice a week. And by sparring I mean knock-down-drag-out fights.

Professor Emetterio […] the subject he teaches

There is no teaching. They partner up, they beat the shit out of each. Not once in this entire book do they learn or practice. Not a single, solitary time is there instruction. It’s the very first day and they are injuring each other. In later chapters, they use knives in these fights. Live blades, not dummy knives.

I struggle to put to words how fucking wild this is. Like, my brain just cannot comprehend it at all.

Presumably this is okay because these cadets have been ‘training all their lives’ to get here but so?

What if their training was bad?

What if they have incompatible styles?

What if you get dumbasses like Violet who aren’t trained?

What if about the fact that everyone’s training, inevitably, is going to be at different levels?

And furthermore, I cannot stress this enough, the sum total of all of their ‘training’ is one-on-one fights with each other.

Excuse me, but you are supposed to be an army, why are you not trained to fight as a group???? In pairs at least?

When I was in the army, our first class of combatives told us “if you are ever by yourself, something has gone fucked up. The main objective of what you learn here is to get away from an adversary so you can get back to your group and have superiority in numbers.”

Possibly in this case it would ‘get back to your dragon so they can squish your enemy for you’ but same concept.

And why are you hurting each other???? You can’t get better if you can’t practice because of an injury. And fighting while injured anyway will just make your body weaker, which is the opposite of the objective, so none of this makes any kind of sense at all!

But what bugs me the most about this, other than just the personal affront at seeing basic training done wrong, is that it actually loses some drama. The whole thing feels like it’s trying to be drama because “oh no, Violet has EDS, how is she going to fight” and because one-on-one fights are the kind of high drama moments you see in action movies. But when the strength of a group as a whole depends on everyone being uniform, then Violet not being able to keep up is even more of a risk. One on one, Violet is the only person in danger. In a group? Violet falls behind and now it’s Rhinannon’s flank that is exposed.

But pffth, cooperation? Team building? Not in this book! In this book Jack casually snaps some kid’s neck and everyone is told to move on with ‘training.’

Violet gets paired up with another girl, this one a traitor’s kid like Xaden is. Her name is Imogen and she is pissed at Violet because Violet’s mom killed Imogen’s whole family. Yeah, fair, especially since all she does about it is fight real good at her.

Unfortunately, Violet is a stubborn little ass who doesn’t yield despite being stuck in an armlock, so she gets her arm broke.

Yeah, and what did that prove? Dumbass.