"Iron Flame"

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

Book Club Pick

Pages: 623 Genre: romance fantasy

Rating: 2 Stars

This review will include spoilers for Fourth Wing.

Iron Flame is the second book in the Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros, following the events of Fourth Wing. Our main character, Violet, was expected to die in her first year at Basgiath War College, but despite all the odds stacked against her, she survived and even bonded to two dragons. Now, as the revolution is picking up again, everything Violet knows has changed. She has to fight to survive her second year and all the new challenges it brings, as well as live to fight another day in the rebellion. 

I'll be honest here: while I rated Fourth Wing very highly, I've never claimed it to be the best quality. It did things that I liked, but more than anything I thought it was fun. She was clearly trying to catch the attention of fans of the 2010s Dystopia craze, and it worked on me. I saw the beginnings of a decent story that was an easy read, so I was excited to see where Yarros was going to take it. 

Unfortunately, Yarros took everything interesting about the first book and threw it out the window. Iron Flame delivered on none of the storylines that were set up in Fourth Wing (at least not in a satisfying way) and seemed to prioritize a “sexy” love story over an at least decently-told bigger narrative.

So much of the "plot" was Violet and Xaden having the same fight over and over and over again. It was a ridiculous argument that never went anywhere because Xaden refused to accept any amount of accountability and Violet decided early on that she loved him regardless, so she never actually needed a change from him. This means that it was just contrived conflict for the sake of something happening in the book. We knew what the conclusion would be, so there was no reason for literally half of the book to follow this long, drawn-out conflict. 

Their entire relationship is built out of sex and Xaden finding cute and creative ways to lie to Violet and make it her fault. [This next bit may be considered a spoiler but not really] Yarros introduces the plot device of Xaden expecting Violet to just ask questions that she wants the answer to, which is a very transparent way of letting Xaden remain a dark and mysterious love interest while technically not repeatedly lying to his girlfriend, because Violet just has to magically know what to ask (as long as she asked Approved questions, of course). Oh, and don't forget the most important reason for this plot device: it gives an incredibly convenient way for Yarros to hold back on information so that she can decide when it's revealed to the audience. I get that it's necessary in books to have some reason why the main character is learning things along with the reader, but this felt lazy. Like she couldn't think of any other reason to not have her main character — who is currently a sophomore in college that joined the revolution about 2 seconds ago and therefore has every reason to not be told everything — be told every single detail.

I thought Fourth Wing did a good job of setting up interesting paths with the side characters moving forward: particularly Violet feeling betrayed by everyone and not knowing who to trust, Dain beginning to fill an antagonist role, and Brennan being back from the dead. Except none of these things really played out. Violet just whined a lot instead of showing any sense of trauma, and the whole "who can she trust" thing would either be drawn out to its absolute limit (thank you Xaden) or would be resolved immediately. Dain really didn't do anything in this book except apologize and back off when Violet asks, which made him seem significantly less problematic (in fact, I would argue he becomes a lot more tolerable than Xaden is). And Brennan — who is arguably the most interesting side character as of now — does nothing. He's basically the same as Violet remembers him being, there's no lingering hard feelings, and he's only really around for one big conversation at the very beginning. He could’ve been replaced by some other random adult man who isn’t Violet’s dead brother shockingly alive and the story wouldn’t have changed at all. It was obviously much more important to Yarros that Violet and Xaden have sex or argue about the same stupid thing for the fifteenth time than spending time building out relationships between any other characters.

Also, the misogyny was off the charts for this book. I’m trying to not spoil anything, so you won’t get the full idea here, but to write two women having petty fights over a man (who is very explicit about how he feels — and also sucks) took feminism in literature back at least 10 years. Furthermore, most of Xaden's outward expressions of love in this book felt creepy. Yarros was clearly trying to give him a "who did this to you" vibe, but he only ever came across as possessive and a little objectifying. You can have a sexy male love interest who also shows some level of respect for women.

Other than Xaden and Violet, the plot was nonsensical at best and nonexistent at worst. Not every book needs to follow the story arc that we learned in high school (you know, "exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, conclusion"), but I recommend that Yarros give it a second look before the next book. She was so comfortable falling back on this being a transition book that she apparently forgot that a book over 600 pages needs to have its own story arc too. Everything was either solved immediately, deemed a non-emergency (so that Violet and Xaden could have sex or have that same stupid fight again), or was just not actually that big of a deal. Things happened, sure, but it doesn’t feel like any of it really mattered until the very end — and, frankly, I won’t be surprised if all of that gets resolved instantly in Book 3 too.

I can think of exactly one thing that Violet is trying to accomplish in this book (spoilers, I guess, but I'm being vague), which was raising the protecting wards over the city housing the rebellion. Except this woman who was going to become a scribe and generally valued for her intelligence makes the dumbest decisions about how to accomplish this. I won't spoil it more, but there was never a reason for her being clueless other than Yarros needing to fill 600 pages with something. And when she wasn't actively working towards that goal, it was entirely irrelevant. 

My biggest issue with this book was that there was no direction, despite us now being almost to the halfway point. Who is the Big Bad Guy? It can be a nuanced answer, but there needs to be someone we're actually up against. What are we rebelling against? What is the cause that we are fighting for other than "venin bad" and "Xaden hot"? There should be a clear intention with the plot at this point in the series, and yet we're still stumbling through exposition. A drawn-out romance built purely on lust and popular romance tropes isn't enough to carry five books, nor is it enough to excuse bad writing.

I think other people were more bothered by the writing than I was, but I will say that the modern language felt over the top in Iron Flame. I recognized it in Fourth Wing, but I thought it was just a quirk of the book that was meant to be part of the joke. As if it was just not taking itself too seriously. In Iron Flame, however, the charm was lost. It seemed like Yarros was working too hard to stick to that style of writing, which just meant that characters were saying things that felt out of character. Xaden referring to him and Violet as "end game" wouldn't have happened if they were living in our reality, so it shouldn't happen in theirs. If Yarros wants to make this a quality of her writing, she needs to get a younger editor who can make it sound natural.

People make a lot of excuses for this book, saying that Yarros is primarily a romance writer, not a fantasy writer. But fans who give excuses for bad writing ("it's just for fun!") are doing themselves a disservice. Every book doesn't need to be a masterpiece, but you deserve to read something worthwhile. And romance books can be good. This one isn't, but that's not the genre's fault.