The moment I knew this book would fall completely flat for me was when I read this sentence: "Riders party as hard as we fight. And we fight pretty damned hard."

First, I must admit that I only gave Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing, the first in this series, a 3-star review. I did this because (1) there was such a lack of character depth and development, (2) I absolutely hate when most of a romance is about gawking at the main male character for how hot he is, and (3) the plot had some holes. Regardless, I was incredibly intrigued about the Empyrean - the world of the dragons. I thoroughly enjoyed the dragon plot piece in the first book, and it was the only piece I was looking forward to in the second book.

My biggest complaint: instead of getting the intricate and vital plot development and world-building I was itching for, we got more info-dumping and action scenes that didn't help any questions I had. I wanted way more information about the Empyrean, Basgiath War College, and I don't know, the venin/wyvern? But no, we barely scratched the surface. I get that this will be a longer series, but to keep me interested in the world, I needed much more than that. Additionally, the characters still fell entirely flat for me, and Violet seemed to regress in her development. Ugh! What a disappointment!

In my opinion, the first 40-50% of this book was an absolute dumpster fire. Until I got to about 50%, I planned to rate this a 1 star. The plot holes seemed to get bigger, the romance was garbage, and it felt like each character was 18 years old. It read even more YA, and even the dragons were so personified (e.g., a teenage phase, really? Also, Tairn's personality seemed to disappear?); I was ready to DNF. It made the last 50% incredibly hard to read, even if it became more action-packed, and I must admit I started skimming in places. While the action scenes were decently done, the writing was just so cringe at times that I wanted to skip entire sections, particularly Violet's inner monologue (for example, the fact that words were italicized for emphasis in too many places OR when she said she was going to DIE if Xaden wasn't inside of her right now....yikes).

Yes, the ending was better (I also felt this way about the first one). No, it does not warrant a higher review. I found this book to be so formulaic as if it was solely being used to check boxes off for social media. Another thing that didn't cut it for me? Toxic perseverance. I usually can tolerate some of this in fantasy novels - fantasy usually undergoes a war, violence, etc., and requires the main and side characters to be stronger than, I don't know, the reader. Something about perseverance makes us readers sometimes smile - "Ah, I could never do that, but why not have that mentality!" Here, it was an absolute overload - Violet would get over EVERYTHING quickly and loudly. Someone died and Violet was truly like "oh well!." Plus, the book in general was WAY too long - I got to another action scene and was like I don't even care. And, don't even get me started on the whole ex drama nonsense...

As an avid reader of fantasy, this just does not cut it for me - there are SO many other series out there that work beautifully. I'll see if I continue reading this series, but chances are slim at this point.

I tried with all my might to see the hype. I also read Rebecca Yarros's The Things We Leave Unfinished a year-ish ago, which was much more polished, mature, and interesting than this series. I guess it was published before BookTok went viral. Regardless, I am disappointed overall, but content that this series isn't for me.