Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
(Empyrean, Book 2)
Released: November 7, 2023 | Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance
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Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet’s wondering how she’ll get through it. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is—unless she betrays the man she loves.
Although Violet’s body is weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she has her wits—and a will of iron. Leadership forgets the most important lesson Basgiath taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules. But determination to survive won’t be enough this year, because Violet knows the secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
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Rebecca Yarros used Taylor Swift as a musical inspiration while writing Iron Flame. She specifically wrote much of the book to Swift’s song “I Know Places,” which fits the story’s themes of secrecy, danger, and trying to stay one step ahead of those who want to bring you down.
REVIEW
⭐ ⭐ ☆ ☆ ☆
A painfully long disappointment. 😩📉
By far, the most common criticism is that Iron Flame is way too long, and it’s true. Arguably about 30-40% of the book is filler that could’ve, and should’ve, been cut out. While it’s no longer than any other epic fantasy out there, it just feels longer because a lot of it is very drawn out, and it’s not even the good parts. It’s the mundane scenes where nothing is happening, the annoying arguments between Violet and Xaden where nothing gets resolved, the tangent conversations with forgettable side characters that have nothing to do with the plot. So much effort was put into these pointless scenes that it made the book an absolute chore to get through.
Amplifying that struggle is the writing. It’s not just bad, it’s straight up boring and cringe at times. Which doesn’t help the fact that the book is trying to do too much: fantasy action, romance, political intrigue, corruption, torture, the list goes on. But the lackluster writing fails to convey any of these effectively. It’s not too complex for its own good, but it’s definitely trying to be. Many are saying that it reads like a YA book, but that’s to be expected. The purists out there need to get off their high horse, this series is YA, deal with it.
Iron Flame has maybe one thing going for it: the action, but even that has its issues. While the action scenes themselves are exciting, they lack purpose. They remind me of the Escaping Casablanca scene from John Wick 3, being blow-for-blow repetitive with no reason to be happening and nothing changing on the other side of it. Iron Flame has several action scenes that have no effect on the status quo, and the characters only ended up in the exact same situation they would’ve been in anyway had the scene never happened at all. Which leads to a more “big picture” problem in that nothing really happened in this book, and it didn’t progress the story in any real way. It would not surprise me if, once the series is completed, Iron Flame is ultimately considered an unnecessary read.
All in all, Iron Flame’s biggest hindrance is extremely poor editing (if edited at all). Never has second book syndrome come down on a series so badly.
