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

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’.

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.

Hello,hope y'all doin good, i came to Quora to share my strange story , a very weird one , a story when luck smiled at me ,maybe u will enjoy it , let's begin,have fun... A year ago ,I was a real porn addicted(btw I was 18) ,but never had sex before, I don't have a gf I didn't try to find one even ,always thinking to go to find a sex worker but then I just don't , everyday watching different bodies getting fucked and everyday enjoying. One day, I was watching porn, a big ass lady with big boobs ,just after seeing her the image of my female cousin poped in my mind, (let's introduce her : she's 35 years old , very big ass , nice boobs ,not very big but nice,always wearing tight clothes , she's divorced ) and I thought of me fucking her ,I never had sexual desires for her but now I do days went by and when I met her I was so horny ,I couldn't stay with the family cz my penis was clearly erected , I realized this is my first time I get horny for one of my family ,it not illegal in my country.well to make a long story short( if u want details just text me I will tell u 😊),I decided to give her signs that I want to fuck her,finally I decided to have sex and with my cousin , I thought it is the best beggining for me, i started touching her when I came across her in a narrow place , make her feel my hard cock when we hug , I thought it will hard and I will be ashamed but no , I felt nothing and she said nothing , probably she thought it was by mistake,anyways, I decided then to talk with her about sex, waited for her to be alone in a room and talk with her, I confessed everything about me watching porn and addicted..etc,she said it's normal and u are growing up and u must have sex,well at that time I was like whaaat????? Well I didn't control myself and asked her for sex ( horny like I Ve never been before) she said that she will think Abt it ,2 weeka went by then she called me ,telling that she reserved a room in a hotel and we meet tonight ,we met,and bruuhh, sex is great , I mean, I had to find a pirstitue ,what I was waiting for to have such a feeling ????, I will never forget that night, I started kissing her she was kissing hard ,she misses sex so bad , she sucked my dick and swallowed my semen ,I felt I'm in a dream , then when fucked ,her ass was very big and the anus was open ,didn't struggle to get my hard cock inside it , she was obviously missing sex , she was shouting ,fuck me yh fuck me , I go fast after every word until I cum , we did that 3 times , then we went to her pussy , using condoms I fucked her so hard the moans were higher , everything was perfect ,in the end I asked her to lick her body , licked pussy ,ass, boobs,then she sucked my cock until we sleeped ,all I know that she was dirty ,well before even having sex with her I knew she is an open minded woman , and a woman that looks that she donesnt know anything , but she knows everything, but never expected having sex with her ,well she was horny and that helped...but no one of us regretted that sex ever.. We still have sex from time to time ,and I started having sex with sex workers , joining threesomes..etc If u want pics of her text me.

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.

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.