{"id":527869,"date":"2025-05-14T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=527869"},"modified":"2025-05-23T07:17:47","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T05:17:47","slug":"fourth-wing-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/literature\/fourth-wing-review\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00abFourth Wing\u00bb, when literature goes sour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every month, our literary critic puts a work through a kaleidoscope, collecting the images it projects and reconstructing their diffractions. Even if the flashes of genius turn out to be shards of glass.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As a tribute to Ma\u00eft\u00e9, who recently passed away, I'd like to pay tribute to a great big stew: Fourth Wing<\/em>. In this first volume of the The Empyrean<\/em> (coming out next month in paperback), we're locked up at Basgiath, the military academy where Navarre's elite are trained. Violet Sorrengail, the General's frail daughter, was supposed to become a scribe - but her mother decided otherwise: she's off to the dragon section, where the slightest weakness is worth a quick death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite her brittle bones and a host of enemies, Violet survives by dint of intelligence, sarcasm and suicidal decisions. But beneath the brutal training and power struggles, secrets are rumbling. The real enemy may not be who you think, and the war is just a facade. Violet will have to choose: obey the established order or blow things up. So much for the setting and the stakes, which, let's face it, sound quite seductive. But a nightclub seduction: as soon as the lights come up, all attraction fades away. All that's left is a vague memory of dignity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read also | Sang Young Park, the ideal emotion<\/a><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

I bought the book thinking I was going to really love it, that it would bring back fond memories of\u2019Eragon<\/em>, that it would look a bit like The Mirror-Pass<\/em>. But I had never read romantasy<\/em> (contraction of romance and fantasy<\/em>). And therein lies the problem: I quickly realized that a romantasy<\/em> is a novel written with a pen dipped in cyprine. Every time a male character arrives, his muscular torso, protruding jaw and big biceps are described: I didn't know if I was reading or not. Fourth Wing<\/em> or the script for an episode of Johnny Bravo<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n