Iron Flame, Rebecca Yarros, 2023
(Spoilers)
So, our Fourth Wing’s lovely Violet Sorrengail is recovering from her Squad’s victorious battle with Wyvern and Venin in Xaden’s—her now ex—Tyrrendor bedroom. His home (Riorson House), which was inherited by his father, is where Brennan and the rest of the Revolution Leaders (as Violet will come to know) live while in this holding period of planning their fight with the Wyvern and Venin. Violet quickly discovers the dynamic of the assembly of the 7 Revolution leaders—it seems Brennan and Xaden are the leaders of the assembly, often going head to head themselves (in real wolf pack fashion). While eavesdropping on a quorum, she learns the Assembly is very against her, being General Sorrengail’s daughter. They consider her a traitor for her unintentional leak of information to Dain, her childhood best friend, who’d been reading her memories without her knowledge in the first novel.
The continued romance between Violet and Xaden is established early on. Xaden makes his position clear that he will work to win Violet’s trust again, though she’s pretty set in that he will not. This is a fun switch-up to Fourth Wing’s narrative, where the prevailing romantic trope was then enemies to lovers, and in Iron Flame has become a second chance romance. It’s a fluid way to carry the anticipatory tension and sexual chemistry from the first novel to the second.
I will say, their disagreements do feel a bit juvenile—Violet is mostly upset with Xaden’s tendency to lie by omitting information (valid), and he admits he’ll be completely honest with whatever she asks, but he’ll not disclose any of the information she doesn’t know to ask. Basically he’ll tell her everything but not everything? Like? Ok? So we are making no changes? Yet we tend to ignore this silly logic, and the reader roots for him anyhow.
When Xaden, Violet, and the Tyrrish from their Fourth Wing Squad return to Basgiath War College for graduation (remember, they were sent to Athebyne into battle by Dain’s father, Colonel Aetos, during War Games), the morning death scroll reading becomes incredibly awkward. Their names are read as part of the deceased, as Aetos had intended and assumed, but here they are in the flesh. They rightly start a scene, outing Colonel Aetos for intending their murder, though for the sake of not creating chaos or revealing what they know, they keep from mentioning the Wyvern and Venin. Instead they claim their almost fatal battle was with the Gryphons and Fliers (which is believable, since the students have been made to believe Fliers are the enemy). General Sorrengail—who looks uncharacteristically concerned—believes her daughter. Aetos then is reprimanded for bad judgements concerning the cadets, and privately threatens their lives, insinuating he did indeed know about the Wyvern and Venin.
As Xaden and Violet’s dragons Sgaeyl and Tairn are bonded, they can’t spend more than 2 weeks apart without becoming dragon-type irritable and depressed. This poses an issue since Xaden, who has just graduated, is assigned to the front lines of Navarre at an outpost called Samara, which is dangerous and, strategically placed, the furthest from the college. They are each given leave alternating weeks to visit the other in order to appease their dragons.
A new commandant is introduced—Major Varrish—known for his bloodthirsty manner. From what I take to be a result of his solidarity with Colonel Aetos, he has his mind set on Violet’s demise. During Freshman Orientation, Varrish’s dragon proves just as hostile as his Rider, and he lets out his dragon fire to kill a scared first year, the heat of which is very close to incinerating Violet. Violet”s dragon (Tairn, not Andarna, who is in her “adolescent” stage, and sleeps through a large part of this book) threatens Varrish’s dragon, divulging a bad history between the two dragons.
The sexual saga between Violet and Xaden—unanimously our favorite part—begins. Alternating weekends, the two visit each other’s home base. They’re quick to return to the physical aspect of their relationship, but, in a 360 switch up from Fourth Wing, this time around, Xaden makes clear he wants a full-fledged relationship while Violet makes clear she wants to keep things physical.
Also during their time spent together, they discuss how to build wards up around the territories outside of Navarre, which—to the Navarrian’s knowledge—aren’t protected from the Wyvern and Venin. The Tyrrendor assembly is making it their business to protect the rest of the civilians by duplicating Navarrian wards over the other territories. Violet’s friend from the archives Jesinia helps their plight, despite the danger of being caught (which could potentially have her executed). She smuggles loads of history books for Violet to research how Navarre’s wards were built.
There’s drama with Violet’s friends, who are becoming insulted by how secretive she’s being; the whole, “why don’t you trust me?” argument, you know. And Professor Nolon, the campus’s Mender, is exhausted beyond explanation, which later is explained by his revival of Jack Barlow—Fourth Wing’s first Violet hater. He doesn’t seem to hate Violet as much as he did in the last book though; he’s oddly calm and even saves her at one point from an Infantry assassin.
The team eventually finds out that there are two hidden journals written by figures from the first six creators of the wardstone. These journals are in a vault in the Archives which can only be opened by Navarrian royalty. Lucky for them, King Tauri’s third son Cam has changed his identity to Aaric and is a student as Basgiath, working with Violet to open the vault. An alarm is set off (silly kids) and Violet is taken to be tortured by Varrish (the brutal commandant who nonsensically wants Violet’s blood), and Nolon, the Mender whom she trusted her whole life. They bring in Dain, her ex-best friend, the memory reader, to read her memories and find that she’s been smuggling weapons to another territory.
Dain, in his redemption arc era (slay), kills Varrish to save Violet from the torture which is nearly killing her, and Xaden appears just in time to finish off the job, killing the guards and letting Dain live (on Violet’s request).
After escaping, they confront General Sorrengail, who cryptically says that Violet will some day understand why she’s had to rule in this manner (ignoring the Wyvern and Venin). Violet finds out that the reason Xaden was so set on saving her from every danger in her first year as a Cadet was because General Sorrengail made a deal with him that he and his Tyrrish crew can come to Basgiath as long as he keeps Violet alive.
The group takes it upon themselves—the revolt being imminent—to gather the rest of the students at Formation and expose the war. They give their classmates a choice to fight with them or against them. The majority join their cause, traveling with them to Riorson House. They quickly realize this may have been done prematurely, as they are not prepared to train such a large amount of Cadets. They continue their college classes the way they had been at Basgiath, led by the few professors who had traveled with them, as well as the leaders of the Tyrrendor Assembly.
Viscount Tecarus, leader of the Poromish province (the third on the continent: Navarre, Tyrrendor, and Poromiel, home of Gryphon Fliers) makes a deal with the assembly that if he can watch Violet wield lightning, he’ll give them the luminary, which I’m not sure is explained so well, but according to Empyrean Wiki online is a large crystal ring hot enough to forge weapons to kill venin. To the deal, Xaden’s like, hell no, and then Brennan and Violet are both like, hell yes, and so then they go meet with Tecarus at his palace in Cordyn (a town in Poromiel).
This is the funniest scene in the entire Empyrean series because Violet, as well as we are, is incredibly confused at how comfortable Xaden is in Tecarus’s palace. It’s like a “make yourself at home,” kinda vibe, although Tecarus doesn’t have to say it because Xaden has already made himself at home. We’re all like, what?, and then we’re like ohhhh, because as it turns out, the rude Gryphon Flier Cat who’s been making snide remarks and giving dirty looks to Violet this entire time is the Viscount’s niece and Xaden’s ex-girlfriend! And she’s a jealous BITCH! (I do feel for her though because Xaden’s perfect and Violet’s beautiful and that must freaking suck).
Violet is astonished by how jealous and angry she feels whenever she’s around Cat, but then Xaden explains that Cat’s signet is to heighten the emotions of those around her. (If you ask me, that’s like, the most powerful signet of them all).
To hold up their end of the luminary bargain, Violet goes out into a field where Tecarus sets up her stage for the lightning show, and then a FREAKING VENIN comes throttling out of a chest. As it turns out, Tecarus withheld a small proviso about how he wants to see Violet wield lightening at Venin. Both her siblings, Brennan and Mira, are at the scene fighting with her. (Oh, I forgot to mention when Mira sees Brennan’s alive she bitch slaps him across the face). When Mira is injured by the Venin, Brennan takes her away from the battle. Violet kills the Venin with Tairn’s help.
Part two of Tecarus’s deal for the luminary is that the Riders take the Fliers back to Aretia for training and education. This includes Cat. Although they don’t necessarily have the space nor the resources for the Cadets AND the Fliers, they can admit it is in their best interest to be allied together against the Venin and have the Gryphons trained as well as they are.
On their long journey to Aretia, the Fliers are each joined within a Rider squad in order to build allyship and camaraderie. Cat is joined with Violet’s squad. In one fighting scene between Cat and Violet (in which Cat says the most unhinged stuff about sleeping with Xaden), Violet realizes they have similar fighting skills because Xaden trained them both. Horrible. The tension between the girls subsides when Solas, Jack Barlowe’s dragon, finds them and Violet saves Cat, turning her somehow into a humble sweetheart (does this stuff happen in real life?).
This is about the point where Xaden’s “there are some things I can’t tell you” is revealed—Violet figures out that Xaden has two signets—his shadow wielding which he’s known for, and he’s also secretly an inntinnsic; a mind reader, the only signet that is put to death.
General Sorrengail requests the help of the Tyrrendor forces for an attack on Basgiath which is seen by General Melgren (through his signet of battle foresight), and though most everyone in Violet’s squad is vehemently against fighting for Basgiath, Violet decides it’s the right thing to do.
When they arrive, Jack Barlowe sacrifices himself and his dragon, the blood of which brings down the wards protecting Basgiath and leaves them vulnerable to the Wyvern and Venin. It’s also revealed that Jack had turned Venin ages ago—this is something I could use clarification for.
There’s a lot of chaos as the Battle begins. Cat and another Flier, Maren, retrieve hurt Riders back and forth from the war field to the healers, and Cat gives Violet her alloy dagger as Venin approach. The venin says yet another thing cryptic about keeping Violet alive to deliver her to “him.”
In the vault, there is a big struggle to realign the wardstone, which Violet opportunely figures out how. It is draining her—killing her—until her mother takes over and dies to save them while she and Brennan scream for their mother to stop. This is actually such a sad moment. I indeed did cry.
As the wardstones are up, the majority of the Wyvern and Venin die. Simultaneously, Violet feels Xaden dying through their bond. When she gets to him, he’s alive, though she can sense something about him is off. When he looks at her, he has red rings in his eyes. Our Xaden boy has turned Venin *drumroll for the as of yet unreleased book three: Onyx Storm.*
We lastly get Xaden’s perspective, and understand that the Venin told him to change to their side or else they will kill Violet. His switch to Venin is a sacrifice for her. But…I do not understand. If you’ve read to this point, thank you, and please leave in the comments your understanding:
I had up until this point thought that the Venin were these mindless, zombie-like killer creatures, but Xaden, who is now Venin, clearly has a conscience. He looks at Violet with an awareness about what he’s become. He looks apologetic, even.
And Jack having had been made Venin months ago also confuses the situation? He seemed less inclined to murder Violet, but as a Venin don’t they have a one-track mind looking for blood?
Rating: 4/5
Quotes:
…suddenly the years we’ve been apart feel…defining. Neither of us is the same person. “You look different.” He smiles, but it’s sad. “Not in a bad way. Just…different.”
Turns out, falling in love with someone only brings that blissful high all the poets talk about if they love you back…Love doesn’t have the decency to die.
I guess there’s enough guilt for two to carry.
I snuggle in deeper, his warmth lulling me into that sweet middle space between wakefulness and oblivion.
Gods, the chemistry between us is the only thing stronger than the anger.
But shit if that picture doesn’t play out in my mind as vividly as a nightmare.
Oh…gods. No. I refuse to accept the goodbye in his tone.
