Antonia Bernardin

My 70th read of the year was Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, the second in the Empyrean Series.

You can read my review for Fourth Wing here

Or listen to the episode on my podcast, The Lazy Book Lovers where we do a deep dive into the book here

Definitely spoilers for book one below.

An attempt at summarising

Book 2 picks up immediately after the events of book 1, with Violent in Aretia, after discovering that not only is Xaden helping to lead the rebel army but her brother, whose not dead as it turns out, is helping him.

After Dain betrayed her, they have no idea what they will be facing if they return to Basgiath, their war college. Regardless, Violent and the other cadets who were with them when they were sold out and she discovered the truth, decide it would be better to go back with a clever lie, than risking the other marked ones paying for their absence. When they return, it’s to find a new commander in charge of Rider’s Quadrant, a cruel, viscous man, with a penchant for torture and dragon Tairn has already maimed once in the past. Unable to prove that Violent, Xaden and the others did anything wrong, they are allowed to return but it’s clear they are no longer trusted. Violent and Xaden are searched each time they fly out to visit each other at their stations, so their mated dragons can be together, plus, there are frequently delays or orders that prevent the two of them from spending time together when they do get to visit. Slowly, the people that were with them are either killed or disappearing. So while Violet navigates her second year, she must also contend with assassinations, Xaden trying to regain her trust, learning to shield out Dain, all while she tries to research a way to help the rebel cause without Xaden knowing she’s trying because he completely shuts her out of their plans.

Eventually, all these secrets catch up with Violet and shit completely hits the fan. This war might happen sooner rather than later but a war with who? The rulers of Navarre? Or the Venin, which threaten the whole continent? Or both?

(sorry, it’s a big book, a lot happens and I’m bad at summarising!)

My thoughts

I enjoyed this book, maybe not as much as the first but I still liked it. It’s really fucking long though, I think a lot of the minutia of the training could have been cut down. I know we’re trying to replicate dragon school Harry Potter vibes but it was too much. Every time the book picked up pace, there was an interlude of slowness with largely irrelevant details, a lot of the foreshadowing for the big ending could have been drip fed in other ways. There’s more spice in this one, lots of good scenes and another big cliff hanger to end on, so it still keeps a lot of the ingredients that made the first one fun. I will say, because we spend so much time with the characters, it’s really nice how much depth we get and how many cute/ fun moments we get with them, as well as the heartbreaking moments.

Why are the people on booktok turning on the series?

So I did a little research, their main complaints:

• the writing is a little rough, it doesn’t feel well edited
• the pace is slow
• the miscommunication between Xaden and Violet in order to draw out their slow burn relationship more
• they are mad about the cliff hanger ending
• the world building is still a little tricky, we touch on too many characters and places too quickly
• The author chose to Gaelic words, a minority language with a rich and difficult history, but didn’t know how to pronounce them in an interviews. This has caused her to get a ‘problematic’ label.
• The author spoke on the Israel-Palestine conflict but chose to be politically a little too neutral/ leaning to a certain side and used some poor language choices.

I’m not going to comment on the last two points, please do your own research and make an informed opinion about if they will affect how you engage with the author. All I have done here is very rough summary of the issues, in regards to how they are affecting the reception of this book.

As for the points about the book itself, I do agree with most of them, except their issues with the ending. Yes, it’s incredibly frustrating but it really does make for a big dramatic ending, something the first book became infamous for, so I get why the author is replicating that. Plus, with the first major conflict point somewhat resolved, their needed to be a new plight driving the plot, as there are three more books in the series.

At the moment, I think I will still be picking up the next book in the series, the world and the magic system is so interesting and it has so much potential. Hopefully with some harsher editing, this can become such a good series!

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