Threshing Day is finally here, and fans of The Empyrean book series by Rebecca Yarros — aka Fourth Wing and its sequels — couldn’t be more excited. The Empyrean series follows Violet Sorrengail, a young woman who is sent to Basgiath War College to become a dragon rider, despite having trained her whole life to become a scribe. There, she meets Xaden Riorson, and the two begin a complicated relationship as Violet comes into herself as a rider and a young woman, all while war begins to unfold across the kingdom.
Fourth Wing, the first book of the fantasy series, came out in 2023 and took BookTok by storm, leading the charge of the big romantasy surge we’ve seen take over young readers’ bookshelves in the past few years. Following Fourth Wing, Iron Flame was released six months later, and in 2025, readers were left with a major cliffhanger at the end of the third book, Onyx Storm. If you love the series, you’ll definitely want to pick up Threshing Day at your local bookstore, but let’s be clear – Threshing Day is not the official fourth book in The Empyrean series.
Instead, Threshing Day is a collection of 13 stories that follow the series’ characters, all connected to an important day in the kingdom of Navarre: the crucial event when riders are challenged to bond with their dragons. The book is described on its website as “a companion collection, not the continuation of Violet and Xaden’s story after Onyx Storm.”
So, Can You Read Threshing Day Before Fourth Wing?
If all of this sounds interesting and you want to dive into The Empyrean series, then you should definitely pick up Fourth Wing, but fans of the series would advise against jumping in with Threshing Day right away. Despite not being an official continuation of the series, it is still a part of the Empyrean world, and follows the same set of characters, meaning you’ll need the context of the first three books in order to fully understand what’s going on in Threshing Day. The new book would spoil parts of the first three books for you. Fourth Wing is imperative to read first because that’s where all of the world-building and character introductions take place for you to even understand why bonding with the dragons is so important.
So while you may not be able to hit the ground running with Threshing Day, you’ll still be ahead of the game if you start on Fourth Wing now, seeing as the series is in pre-production at Amazon as a TV show produced by none other than Michael B. Jordan and author of the book series, Rebecca Yarros.
As for the fourth book in the series, Yarros is still working on the final two books, and has confirmed that there will be five in the main series. So for newcomers, start on Fourth Wing now, and for those who have already read and loved the series, grab Threshing Day. Whether you’re a new fan or an old one, all of us will be here waiting for the TV series and the final two books.