When people ask what I’ve read last, I feel the pressure to tell them The Metamorphosis or Pride and Prejudice. I feel inclined to angle my Zoom camera to the 2800-page Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism on my desk to say, “Yeah, I read this.” Am I an elitist reader? Do I even like reading anymore?

I can tell you honestly, yes. Yes to both. I was an elitist reader, but thanks to Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series, I don’t think I am anymore.

I am a literature master’s student ensnared in both the beauty and seriousness of academia. I enjoy the torturous mind games of the literary canon, from the brooding moors of Charlotte Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to the horrifying depths of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Literature has made its case, and I have accepted its plea at every strike of the gavel. 

But nothing has brought me as much joy as growing up with Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, Veronica Roth’s Divergent, or Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments. And now, as I stand slightly taller and a little older, I must ask you to keep my secret from my academic colleagues: I have fallen in love with Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series.

To read Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, the first two books of a promised five in the Empyrean saga, is to be consumed by nostalgia. It is to devour a story and simultaneously be devoured by it. It is to be swallowed whole by the ink on the pages, whisked away to a world of dragons, wyverns, gryphons, signets, bonds, found family, and romance. It is to be ten years old, with a flashlight reading under the covers, hoping your mom doesn’t find you up late reading again. It reignites an excitement in reading, not serious and rigid, but light and airy. Reminding you of what you love and what it is like to be spellbound by a story.

This is not to say that works we deem “academic” can’t rival this same impulse. Frankenstein had me not only riveted but empathizing with the monster who only sought  companionship. Pride and Prejudice left me pining after a love like Mr. Darcy with butterflies stirring and a hope that someone would one day be “bewitched body and soul” by me. The Picture of Dorian Gray feeds off the decay of the soul, a book so visceral it forced a recognition of vanity and true ugliness. The “classics” or the “literary canon” contain stories that are so beautiful, moving, impactful, and sumptuous, that I cannot say my love for Fourth Wing usurps their place. These are stories that are the very fabric and foundation that taught me morals, passion, empathy, and love. 

It is, however, to say that I recognize a hierarchy of reading that feels isolating and reproachful. I have felt it necessary to downplay or hide the stories that I enjoy, out of fear of being “found out” as a “fraudulent academic.” But does being an academic necessitate being rigid and serious? I love literary theory, reading theorists like de Beauvoir, Butler, and Chomsky, or nonfiction authors like Dave Hickey and Joan Didion. I just so happen to also like fantastical stories. 

I came across Yarros’ incomplete series by chance, right when I needed it most. After four years of avoiding the symptoms of COVID-19, the virus finally stopped by for a New Year’s kiss. And I must admit, I gladly welcomed it. After a semester of reading theory and autobiography, it was calming to pick up a book without the need to annotate in the margins or reread a page three times until it made sense. Sick as a dog, I had no choice but to read Yarros’ Fourth Wing and Iron Flame in one continuous sitting. Perhaps it was the unrelenting fever, but I have never been more immersed in a series. I was a dragon rider. I was walking the parapet of orientation. I was fighting enemies and wielding lightning. And when I reached the end of Iron Flame, eyes rimmed red (no spoilers here), I sat at the edge of my bed, coughing, still struggling through a fever, wondering, “What do I do now?” 

It was a question that both excites and haunts me. First, the wait for the sequel seems an immeasurable and insurmountable amount of time. Second, I pride myself on my academic roots and serious reading habits, and so I feel myself an imposter: how can I love such “silly” stories and still be an “academic?”

And yet, let’s take another look at the canon. Shakespeare’s plays are full of comical, ridiculous, and dramatic elements like Antigonus from The Winter’s Tale being randomly eaten by a bear. So too is Kafka’s work The Metamorphosis, whose main character realizes it is difficult to sleep on his back due to his shell after becoming a bug overnight. These are unique elements to enhance a story, push forth a theme and do so in an utterly ridiculous way. In fantasy the same elements exist, for the same reason. The Kindred’s Curse saga by Penn Cole speaks to the disparity between mortals and the “descended” (the bourgeois demi-gods of this universe), which stands to represent class disparity, racism, sexism, and other potent lessons through fantastical elements. Yarros’ main character, Violet, worries that she will not survive the threshing (an important day to locate a dragon for bonding), which speaks to discussions of ableism, with Violet facing stigmatization and abuse from all those around her. Yarros wrote Violet’s character to speak of her own experience with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. She personifies her life experience through Violet’s character—the stigmatization, the resolve, the breaking of barriers—while adding in fantastical elements like dragons, gryphons, venin, and wyverns. All of the abovementioned stories hold the ability to tell a story, speak to difficult topics, motivate, and empower. 

While I love the fantasy genre and the classics, I refuse to pick a side. Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov sits happily on my bookshelf right next to Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, and I now recognize both as literature. I am a reader. It is my duty to love books, not discard and judge them because they aren’t a part of the canon.

I have placed so much pressure on myself to be an academic, to be serious and rigid, to tighten the white-collar noose that is stifling the love of a good story. Perhaps all I needed was a story about dragon bonds to loosen the chokehold of academia. Perhaps all you need is a book to remind you to enjoy what you want to read, not what you think you should read.

If there is anything the fantasy genre has taught me, it is that a story doesn’t have to be a part of the literary canon to be good and to change your perspective: it just has to be. Like Yarros’ dragon rider warning, “A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead,” I heed a similar warning. Without the fantastical, without dreams, our passion, creativity, and desires draw their last breath. After all, it is better to breathe dragon fire than to forget how to breathe at all.