Fourth Wing author says the TV show won't make the same mistake as Game of Thrones

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros has cemented itself as one of the hottest fantasy romance books on the market. Sizzling and action-packed, the Empyrean series currently consists of two books — Fourth Wing and Iron Flame — with more installments on the way. Plus, there's already a live-action TV series in development.

Fourth Wing tells the story of Violet Sorrengail and her journey to become a Dragon Rider, one of the most feared fighters in the world. But in order to reach that point, Violet must endure the numerous trials presented by Basgiath War Collage, each designed to weed out the weak. In the beginning of the series, Violet is unwilling to enroll in the college, preferring to live a quiet life as a scribe, but her ambitious mother forces her to continue the family legacy and become a Dragon Rider.

After the immense success of the first novel (especially on TikTok), Amazon quickly acquired the rights to the series, planning to create a live-action adaptation. Currently, we don't know too much about the show, but Yarros is down as a non-writing executive producer. For now, Yarros is working hard on completing the source material, which is expected to include at least three more main books.

Speaking about the current situation, Yarros promised that the series won't fall into the same trap as Game of Thrones. She's referring to how Game of Thrones produced new episodes faster than author George R.R. Martin could write new books in his Song of Ice and Fire series on which the show is based; the show eventually overtook the plot of the books around season 6. The show went on to end the story even though Martin hasn't written the ending on the page yet. She has a clear and defined path ahead. "I can promise, unless something happens to me, we’re not going to have that situation," she told Variety. "We do have a publication schedule, it is just not public yet."

With that said, Yarros is slowing down her output. Previously, she wrote at an incredible pace, publishing both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame within a year of each other. Retaining that pace for three more books is untenable, so readers can expect a slower output in the coming years:

"I’ve already said publicly that I’m slowing down slightly, enough that I can put out books and still be healthy. I think I wrote like 851,000 words in 15-18 months — I was just wiped out. I want to be able to deliver the best books possible, so I need to sleep a little. I’ll be writing, I just need to write and sleep, not just write. We’re slowing down a tiny bit, not every six months."

The TV adaptation doesn't have a release date yet. We're still in very early days of development. I'm happy for Yarros to take her time. That means she can make her books as good as they can be, without being burdened by having to push things out before the TV show catches up. Lessons have been learned from Game of Thrones, it seems.

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