Books

Heavenbreaker: The New Fourth Wing?

So I had been hearing about this new book described as “the new Fourth Wing,” and I knew I had to check it out. I’m not saying that I hold Fourth Wing in such high esteem that I’ll read anything akin to it, but if people were comparing the two, I understood the hype around the latter enough to assume the book must be something special.

Now the synopsis begins with:

Bravery isn't what you do. 

It's what you endure. The duke of the powerful House Hauteclare is the first to die. With my dagger in his back.

He didn’t see it coming. Didn’t anticipate the bastard daughter who was supposed to die with her mother—on his order. He should have left us with the rest of the Station’s starving, commoner rubbish.

Now there’s nothing left. Just icy-white rage and a need to make House Hauteclare pay. Every damn one of them.

The first part details the main motivation behind our main character Synali’s actions. My impression was that this was going to be one of those stories where our FMC becomes an assassin built from nothing to avenge her mother. Not necessarily something new, but I do enjoy reading about MCs whose fire is fueled by rage, as it usually leads to morally grey actions.

Next up we have:

Even if it means riding Heavenbreaker—one of the few enormous machines left over from the War—and jousting against the fiercest nobles in the system.

Each win means another one of my enemies dies. And here, in the cold terror of space, the machine and I move as one, intent on destroying each adversary—even if it’s someone I care about. Even if it’s someone I’m falling for.

Ok yeah, then I hit that portion and was like “Woah, this is going to be crazy cool.” A bit of sci-fi mixed into the whole thing instead of the typical magical system popular in Fantasy reads. The last time I read something with the premise of people controlling giant automatons was Iron Widow, which is phenomenal btw. The last portion hints at a romance, which I always enjoy in a fantasy read, so that got me excited as well.

And for the last part:

Only I’m not alone. Not anymore.

Because there’s something in the machine with me. Something horrifying. Something…more.

And it won’t be stopped

I’ve recently been loving a good mystery intertwined with a plot, and this hooked me. I got a feeling that while the main plot was going on, a subplot would slowly come to the surface, setting the stage for the next books in the series.

My rating after reading:

Now let me tell you, the book was not marketed very well at all. I think if I hadn’t heard anything about it and just went in blind, I would have liked it more. However, since I went into it with certain tropes and themes in mind, it did disappoint. I want to be positive first and say that in the end, I gave it three stars. I really enjoyed the idea of these giant automatons and the inner monologue of our main character as she worked her way through the jousting tournament. The jousting scenes were my favorite part; they were vivid and full of intrigue. Even though we don’t know everything about riding these steeds, Sara uses the jousting to feed the reader information instead of info-dumping at the beginning. I will note that the automatons are not in the shapes of animals like the bird on the cover suggests but are humanoid, as the inner cover sprayed edges show. I’m not really sure what the bird on the cover refers to, but maybe I missed something.

The choice to use 1st person for Synali and 3rd for other characters was something I liked. It gave the side characters more spotlight without making them secondary main characters. It reads like a multi-POV movie where stories unfold simultaneously, jumping between scenes until they culminate near the end.

As for Synali’s chapters, Sara did a good job showing how helpless and lost Synali was after her mother’s loss. Her actions toward revenge made sense with her character background. As the TWs suggest, there is the theme of idealized suicide constantly plaguing our main character, but as the book progresses, the found family trope combats that in a manner befitting a book series.

For the other jousters we meet, Rax and Mirelle, both are of noble houses and exceedingly talented. I appreciated how Rax’s backstory was explored in his 3rd person POV chapters, revealing how he became who he is. I’m not sure how long this series is supposed to be, but I hope in the next book we learn more about him beyond the typical “male MC with a tragic past.” Similarly, Mirelle’s 3rd person POV chapters highlight how presently she is so lonely as the figurehead of House Hauteclare. I hope to see more of her in the next book as her character arc has so much capacity to be great. Sara’s use of the past and present when building these two, paired with the notion that Synali’s future will bring change, has loads of potential.

The last leading characters are Dravik and Rain. Dravik is Synali’s benefactor and mentor who aids in her revenge and has ulterior motives. Rain is a mysterious assassin part of a group of trained assassins for hire. Both still have a larger part to play in the overall storyline, and I am curious how they’ll come into play in the sequel.

Now for my critiques, which will have minor spoilers so tread carefully. Unfortunately, what didn’t work for me was the romance, or more specifically, the lack of it. It’s completely fine to have a book without romance, but if it’s marketed that way in the synopsis, I’m going to be upset when there isn’t any. Especially when it was compared to Fourth Wing, which definitely has romance.

*No books were actually harmed during reading* But seriously, don’t think that you’ll get any semblance of romance past the characters remarking that the other is very attractive and that they want to sleep with each other. This is also not a slow burn. It was “romance” added for the sake of it and it didn’t work.

Another issue is something that befalls a lot of YA fantasy books: when the main character has never done something in their entire life, yet they are beating people who have trained their whole lives for that purpose. Unless you reveal they have a divine ability or something similar (which I will still give a heavy side-eye for), I want to see them struggle a bit. And yes, Synali did struggle and won in “unconventional ways” but the people she was up against had been jousting since they were young at a very rigorous academy, giving them much more prowess through experience. I will play devil’s advocate and acknowledge that yes, she had Heavenbreaker, which was a very special steed, but I don’t think she would’ve made it past the first match if she wasn’t the main character.

Lastly, it didn’t feel very sci-fi, even though it’s set in space a thousand years from now with giant robots. World-building is difficult, but I think this book could’ve taken some time from touching on Synali’s grief, which got repetitive and focused on establishing the futuristic world more.

Despite the shortcomings, I had fun with the book, and I want to read about the future of our characters after the slight cliffhanger. Is it the new Fourth Wing? In my opinion no, so I understand the many low ratings, as the marketing was wayyy off.