Why is Fourth Wing so popular? What makes it stand out from other romantasy books? (No spoilers please)

I’m currently reading Onyx Storm the third book in the series, so I’ll go with why the Empyrean Series stands out for me.

While I do appreciate the characters dropping f-bombs and their punk attitude (Is Dragon Punk an Official term?), I do find their use of modern English, even though the book is supposed to be a translation, a little annoying. I think it’d be nice if the characters occasionally used an obsolete word such as ‘Overmorrow’ for ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, it would give the world a bit more flavour and distinctiveness and by having characters from different countries use different terms you’d get a feeling of a world with different cultures.

Do I think Yarros is a great writer? Not yet, she shows potential but as a relatively new writer, she has a long way to go and it’s unlikely she’ll ever be as good as Tolkien or Pratchett. Writers that good arise about once a generation. I’d even be reluctant to say she’s as good a writer as Martin, but I will say she’s a much better story teller and I’ll take a Good Enough Writer but great story teller over a Great Writer but mediocre story teller any day.

Here’s what Ozempic and Wegovy are really doing to your mouth - The Independent

What Rebecca Yarros has done is taken a middle path, epic stuff is happening but the focus is on a small group of characters who try to stick together. This stops the plotlines from multiplying and keeps things easy for the reader to follow. Any social commentary takes a back seat to telling the story (As it should) and while all the traditional fantasy trappings are there, Yarros has taken a leaf out of Pratchett’s books and made them radically different giving her work a distinctive feel. She’s combined George R R Martin’s grittiness with Pratchett’s economy and the later means the reader knows that things are going to move forward and also there will be a few surprises along the way. What other writer’s promise, Yarros actually delivers and I read these books as fantasy novels not romances. On the romance side, Yarros can actually write decent sex scenes something that no doubt appeals to a lot of her audience but she integrates them into the plot instead of dropping them in at random as some other writers appear to do, so it means that when a reader like me runs into them I don’t roll my eyes and go ‘Oh no not again!’ (A lot of writers think they can write good sex scenes, very few in my experience actually can). In short Yarros has succeeded in bringing something new to the genre and while maybe not a Great writer, she is at the very least ‘Good Enough’.

It starts with the death of Sir Terry Pratchett back in 2015. This left a huge hole in the fantasy genre that still hasn’t been filled. Currently fantasy writing seems to consist two sub genres; Epic series involving huge casts of characters and multiple plotlines that tend to end up becoming tangled up in themselves. So you get series like the Wheel of Time books or A Song of Ice and Fire where the author’s ambition outstrips their ability and the traditional fantasy audience is now wary of investing their time and money following a series that’s likely to fizzle out half way through. The other trend is ‘Cosy Fantasy’ focused around characters who’d otherwise play minor roles and with a focus on character interaction and development. Pratchett excelled at this sub genre, unfortunately most of the author’s writing Cosy Fantasy are nowhere near his level, so what we’re getting is a lot of very unsubtle social commentary and it’s become very predictable, very fast. If you know how the love triangle will resolve itself and who the bad guy is going to be less than halfway through the book, your enjoyment will be seriously curtailed.