The Empyrean - Book 4 Marketing (Part 2)
Hello, all. Welcome back to the grim darkness of Rebecca Yarros’s self-insert power fantasy.
At last, we have something resembling an meaningful update for Book 4 of The Empyrean, coming from the author herself.
THE ANNOUNCEMENT(S)
The Start of Writing
On March 19th/20th, Yarros posted an Instagram reel about Book 4. You can watch the reel here. The video itself isn’t important - it’s just Yarros writing “#4” on a smart board before winking at the viewer. The caption, however, is very relevant.
And now that my latest contemporary novel is off to my editor, I’m back to writing in the Empyrean world for the foreseeable future. Let’s ride. ❤️
The Start of Plotting (?)
On February 8th/9th, Yarros also posted a teaser to Instagram (which you can see here). It shows the three titles of The Empyrean in a stack, along with two Sharpies and a notepad. The caption reads:
Feels like a great day to start a stack of index cards. 😉
Ooh, and have to catch that Bad Bunny and Green Day Concert, too!
#plotting #book4 #Empyrean #fourthwing
I was aware of this previous post, as well as the speculation that this meant she was started on plotting Boom 4. The reason I didn’t comment upon it at the time was because it doesn’t really tell us anything concrete. Yarros wasn’t giving specifics, just fueling hype. In hindsight, though, this may indicate some preliminary planning did take place before the officially announced start of the writing process.
REACTION
So … you have nothing?
Yarros has previously made it clear that she would not start work on Book 4 until her latest Contemporary Romance project is done. She also has made is clear that some form of story treatment exists and has been given to the showrunners of the still-in-development Amazon TV show. And, lest we forget:
The books are fully potted for five books. The whole series is plotted out and arced and all of that.
That was from the Today.com interview posted back in June 22nd, 2023. That was almost exactly 33 months ago. Look how Onyx Storm turned out after being “fully plotted”. Yarros claiming to have done more “#plotting” before now means nothing.
Taken all together, this means that, if we take Yarros at her word about all the other preparations she has supposedly done, she did no meaningful work on Book 4 prior to Spring 2026. At the very least, she was no closer to starting Book 4 on March 18th, 2026 than she was at any point in 2025.
Benefit of the Doubt
Yarros no longer deserves this benefit. Still, the fact remains that waiting 14 months after the publication of the previous book in a series to start the next one does not inherently meant anything. Authors wait longer than that all the time. As we’ll cover when we get to the Bequin Trilogy, Pariah and Penitent were published nearly a decade apart, and Pandæmonium has already been on a contractual hold for three times as long as Yarros waited here.
The real problem is going to be the release date. That’s going to dictate the constraints put on Yarros (if the date is imposed upon her by the publisher) or the amount of effort and care she chooses to invest in making Book 4 any good (if the date is entirely within her control).
Yarros needs to take more time to write - and, more importantly, redraft - these books. If, by some miracle, she dedicates two or three uninterrupted years to writing, revising, and overall making Book 4 the best the series has to offer, then it really won’t matter that she waited this long to start.
I’m Not Holding My Breath
I couldn’t find the Instagram post where Yarros announced she started the Contemporary Romance project. This Business Insider article traces it back to June 2025 (around the same time she provided the sneak peak of her office).
That’s a nine-month window. Nine months to write a Contemporary Romance … while also going on vacation at least once (and working on “part two of the Fourth Wing Graphic Novel). This is her pace after her various statements about slowing down for the sake of her health.
Nine months sets a baseline for what Yarros considers a healthy pace. It’s not an unreasonable timeframe. Indie authors (and, before them, mass market fiction authors) work in far more compressed schedules. Lindsay Buroker has pumped out the entire Fire and Fang Quartet in a comparable amount of time.
The issue is that, quite frankly, we've seen what Yarros puts out on this kind of schedule. Remember how Onyx Storm released just 14 months after Iron Flame? And how she was also juggling Variations during that time? This is not a writer who works well under tight deadlines and with multiple projects on her plate, at least not when she’s writing Fantasy, which has all the added complexities of worldbuilding to consider. She’s going to need a LOT more than nine months if we’re going to see any improvement.
Could I be overthinking this? Maybe, but the same could be said about my effort to calculate her productivity prior to Onyx Storm, and look at what a mess that book turned out to be. And considering how Yarros teases and baits her audience to keep the hype alive, she seems well aware that she is on borrowed time, so I also don’t think we can count on her actually taking things slow enough to do quality work. More likely, she’ll spit out a first draft as fast as possible (once more completely giving up on the ending) and do aftshadowing and other minimal edits to get the book released quickly.
All this is to say that I would not be shocked if the speculation that Book 4 is coming in late 2027 turns out to be correct. I will likewise not be shocked if we get another meandering, poorly edited mess out of it.
I’LL TAKE HER AT HER WORD
This last is a small detail, but it falls into the category of an artist exposing things about herself that lend context to the art, so I’m going to call it out.
Above her Smart board, Yarros has framed the following slogan.
In my fantasies I rise above it. And way up there, I actually love it.
Fantasies to “rise above it” … like demonizing and humiliating those who represent people you resent for offering you the support you feel entitled to, just with timing you find inconvenient.
Like screeching at military officers for not bowing and scraping before you.
Like humiliating the obvious stand-ins for the military force your husband gave half his face for.
Like getting everyone to validate you for being the most intelligent, charismatic, and morally righteous person ever.
Like getting to put a birth mother of a person you feel responsible for in her place.
Look, I’d be happy to admit that I read way too much into the suspicion analogs between The Empyrean and Yarros’s own life. However, when she chooses to enshrine this slogan in her remodeled “dream office”, I don’t feel like I’m reaching anymore. Divorced from context (and no source is included inside that picture frame, so I think it’s safe to say Yarros is happy to divorce these words from whatever their original context was), this slogan is a statement of pride about how fantasy can be used to reframe every situation into one more pleasing to whomever’s fantasy it is.
IS THERE ANY HOPE?
I don’t want Book 4 to fail. The Empyrean has genuine potential as a Fantasy series to explore deeper ideas and meaningful relationships. Yarros teases some stories that could be genuinely interesting. It would just requires an author who cares for the product being produced. Three books in, and Yarros has very definitely demonstrated that she is not such an author.
Could Yarros have changed in the past 14 months? Maybe. That would be nice. However, nothing in these announcements suggests that she has. They just confirm that she is dedicated to keeping the hype alive. That’s dedication to the fame the series brings her, not to the series itself.
Perhaps the coming months - or, hopefully, years - will reveal that Yarros has developed the dedication required to redeem this series. The clock has started. Now let’s see how much time she’s willing to devote to writing the best book that she can.
Thanks for stopping by today. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoyed what you read here. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
