So I finished my reread of The Hunger Games trilogy a couple weeks ago (5/5 as always, loved it), and chapter 18 in particular suddenly had me thinking of and making comparisons to Fourth Wing, which I read several months back and decidely did not enjoy as much, because of the stark contrast in the military training programs and overall competence of the people running of them. This is a snippet from when Katniss undergoes training in District 13 to prepare for the invasion on the Capitol:
"The instructor breaks us into squads of eight and we attempt to carry out missions — gaining a position, destroying a target, searching a home — as if we were really fighting our way through the Capitol. The thing's rigged so that everything that can go wrong will go wrong for you does. A false step triggers a land mine, a sniper appears on a rooftop, your gun jams, a crying child leads you into an ambush, your squadron leader… gets hit by a mortar and you have to figure out what to do without orders. Part of you knows it's fake and that they're not going to kill you. If you set off a land mine, you hear the explosion and have to pretend to fall over dead. But in other ways, it feels pretty real in there — the enemy soldiers dressed in Peacekeeper's uniforms, the confusion of a smoke bomb. They even gas us." – pg. 246 of Mockingjay
Later on, during Katniss' rogue mission, we learn that the Capitol actually has a lot more unknown and super fucked up weapons than they anticipated, but that's due to limited intelligence and the resistance trying to work with what they had. There's a couple other bits that are talked about, such as distance running, learning to shoot a gun, and swimming practice, but in any case, just from this one paragraph alone, you can clearly tell that while D13's training is harsh and fast-paced, it's still meant to prepare soldiers for what to expect in combat, how to think quickly when things go wrong, and, most importantly, doesn't kill off them off in the process.
Contrast that with the absolutely insane training program that Basgiath War College uses for the dragon Rider's quadrant, and the difference is night and day. Right off the bat, multiple would-be riders are lost to a 200 foot balance beam that plunges them into a roaring river should they make a single mistep on a parapet that's barely more than a foot in length. Those that are lucky enough to survive this deadly entrance exam aren't in the clear, either, because they still have to contend with literal death traps that continue to kill off dozens of their squadmates. And if the death traps don't kill them, their fellow surviving squadmates certainly will because the students are allowed to kill each other if they think one of them is a weak link (or as Basgiath puts it, personally deal with anyone that they view as "a liability to their wing"). And all of this is done in the name of weeding out weaker cadets because there aren't enough dragons to go around. Dragons that they don't even feel properly trained to interact with, mind you, as even MORE students are killed off when it's time to present themselves to them (probably because we barely see the students do any sort of meaningful training that would prevent them from being turned into a human torch if they so much as breathed the wrong way in front of the dragons).
I get that Basgiath is ultimately a military school and requires some level of grit and tenacity to get through, but the way the school is run is just so needlessly wasteful with the students' lives and makes the admin look hilariously incompetent. It doesn't really feel like an intentional critique on the military or military culture, either, just because of how cartoonishly bad the school is. Honestly, I feel like that's because Rebecca Yarros prioritized "rule of school" and the aesthetic of a battle royal-esque setting to make FW look edgier and more "mature" vs Suzanne Collins who actually had something meaningful to say with District 13's military training because Katniss quickly comes to realize that if she doesn't act like the perfect, obedient soldier President Coin wants her to be and give off the impression of falling in line, she not only won't get to go to the Capitol to fufill her personal mission of killing President Snow, but her conditions for being the Mockingjay won't be met, endangering the lives of those she's trying to get pardons for. Overall, Katniss is aware that soldiers are expected to blindly follow orders and not ask questions, and if she wants to follow through on any of her own plans, she has to be smart and play the game to avoid detection. If FW was trying to make similar critiques, it certainly didn't make them as well.
by wxndering_thoughts_