I have to admit, I don’t have much to say about the fight scenes in this book. But that’s mostly because it’s magic people fighting other magic people with magic. When you get to make up every aspect of the rules and physics, who am I to naysay?

Except for throwing the daggers. THOSE FUCKING DAGGERS.

Xaden pulls the venin from the wyvern’s back and yanks him downward, right into the dagger he holds in his outstretched hand.

And this one. Goodness, talk about the least effective way to stab a person.

Violet and Xaden together manage to either lightning or stab all the remaining venin while the rest of the squad, idk, just fell of the page somewhere. They weren’t important enough to have a pivotal role in the final battle. That would take away from the glory of our main duo. However, in the process, Violet gets stabbed and falls off her dragon. Andarna manages to catch her, at great cost to herself, since the little dragon is so, well, little. There’s a squish factor going on.

No idea what happens to her, though, because that’s for book two, I guess. Presumably the book would tell us if she died or something. Actually, this book doesn’t have enough balls for that.

Violet makes it safely to the ground, but her stab wound is poisoned so she’s dying. The group debates about where to take her, with the college being too far away. Xaden insists on some mysterious location that we aren’t allowed to know.

For the final chapter, we switch over to Xaden’s POV. It sounds exactly like Violet’s narration. He’s watching her sleep, freaking out, and thinking about how he liked/loved her from the very start.

Yeah, figured that out. You weren’t subtle.

Violet wakes up and we get the standard wrapping up scene where all is explained. They’re in a city called Aretia, which was the home base (ish) of the rebellion and was leveled. It’s being rebuilt.

“That and we’re not big enough to warrant the attention of the scribes anymore. We’re not hidden. We’re just…not advertising our existence.”

???????????? Then how are you rebuilding? Where are your supplies coming from? Lumber? Food? Unless ‘not big’ is like ten people and you’re just sort of hiding in bombed out buildings, then someone is going to notice.

Kingdoms have villagers and villagers notice things and talk and people coming and going on the road to the abandoned city is kind of sus.

Violet says she’ll side with this nascent rebellion, but she still doesn’t trust Xaden over the whole “lying” thing. I still hate it. Guess it’s just to keep the drama going for another book, as if a couple can’t be together and still be interesting.

And the final reveal? Violet’s brother is still alive.

Sure. Whatever, I don’t care. He hasn’t been a real character throughout the book so this has no impact on me. And we can’t end a book without a cliffhanger, can we.

So that’s the end of Fourth Wing. Will I read Iron Flame? …that’s entirely up to y’all.