‘Fourth Wing’s spice level, confirmed

How spicy Fourth Wing really is? Are we talking Tabasco that you put on eggs for breakfast? Or is this some Carolina Reaper read at your own risk kind of spice? Fourth Wing has a reputation for heat, but how much of that is the dragons and how much of that is the riders?

How spicy is Fourth Wing?

Reading Fourth Wing is kinda like eating a spicy meal. You don’t really notice it at first. There’s a lot of flavors going on at once. You’ve got a whole fantasy world to learn about, some Hunger Games trials for twenty-somethings to become dragon riders, who have backstories about who killed who’s loved ones during the civil war that plagued the nation the year before. However, despite most of protagonist Violet’s time being devoted to simply not dying, she’s not so concerned with mortality that she fails to notice just how hot her commanding officer Xaden is.

The majority of the book is a slow burn romance. There is a lot of yearning. Violet goes on a nearly two page inner monologue about how sexy she finds Xaden. The spice levels build. Over halfway through the book there’s a pretty steamy kiss scene. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. By the time we’re in the final section of the book we’ve ran past all the bases and we’re rounding our way to home. It’s total full on spice. Granted, it’s not gonna be anything that would make a hardcore smut/fanfiction reader clutch their pearls, but there is indeed some heat. All in all, it’s about three peppers of spice out of five.