Iron Flame (Chapter 14 through Chapter 17)
STATS
Title: Iron Flame
Series: The Empyrean (Book 2)
Author(s): Rebecca Yarros
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
First Printing: November 2023
Publisher: Red Tower Books
Rating: 1/10
SPOILER WARNING
Heavy spoilers will be provided for the entire story up through the end of the content covered in this part. Mild spoilers for elements later in the story may be provided, but I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers from later in the book will be confined to clearly labelled sections.
STORY
Violet awakes from being drugged to discover that she and her squad have been abducted for their first RSC exercise: a joint land nav excursion with elements of the infantry, scribes, and healers. The riders make this unnecessarily difficult, actively antagonizing the infantry despite being wholly out of their depth. However, after a dragon kills one of the riders in an incident that the riders blame on the infantry despite it being the riders’ fault, the two sides decide they are friends now. This comes too late to salvage the exercise, which they all fail.
After the exercise, Violet visits Jesinia. Jesinia shares concerns with her that the Archives are incomplete and being censored, basing this on her failure to find a book of folklore for Violet in Fourth Wing, and admits that she hasn’t been logging Violet’s requests for information about the wards. Violet confides in her that the ward research is very important and very secret.
Sloane’s sparring test arrives. Violet poisons Sloane’s opponents to ensure that Sloane wins. Immediately after this, she reveals her interference to Sloane, then extorts Sloane into training with the other rebel children in exchange of Liam’s unsent letters (these being the letters that Violet salvaged and passed to Rhiannon in Chapter 3). Imogen validates Violet for being clever.
Varrish comes to Violet’s room to search her pack as she’s on her way to see Xaden again. Nothing of value happens here except some weak banter. Violet arrives in Samara to discover that Xaden was assigned to duties in a classified after of the fort, thereby keeping them separated.
Violet and Imogen talk about Violet’s relationship with Xaden. It is here that Violet tries to argue that she is not being wholly irrational. In the course of this discussion, Imogen absolves Violet of any flaw or wrongdoing in the botched RSC exercise.
During the next Battle Brief, Violet has an emotional meltdown and loses control of her Signet. She flees after class and unleashes a blast of lightning in the Quadrant’s courtyard. She then barges into the Archives while Jesinia is in class. Here she tells Jesinia that the wards are a life-or-death matter.
THE DISAPPOINTMENTS
The two horrifically botched opportunities for Yarros to explore Violet’s flaws and redeem her character eclipse nearly everything else in these four chapters. While I am still going to do separate analyses of Plot and Character to address odds and ends, the bulk of my analysis for both of these aspects will be folded into discussing the twin failures.
The two opportunities that we will be dissecting here are:
The failed RSC exercise - and, most specifically, the characterization of Violet and the other riders both during the after this exercise.
Violet interfering in Sloane’s sparring test.
The RSC Exercise
It is clear that Yarros at least wants the audience to think there is a character arc here. The riders and the infantry start as enemies, bond through shared trials, and come out the other side with respect for one another. Executed correctly, this sort of story arc would show us moments of humility and learning to see from one another’s perspective.
That is not what we get here.
Chapter 14 has the riders and infantry as enemies. The riders fail to prepare the infantry for an encounter with a dragon, despite that explicitly being identified as their responsibility. As a result, when they do encounter a dragon, a member of the infantry panics and tries to run, and a rider dies saving her … which Rhiannon immediately throws in the faces of the infantry. Then we cut to the next day. The riders admit that the infantry aren’t useless, and the infantry show awe and respect for the riders.
That’s right. There is no growth. No reflection. No humility or understanding. We cut straight from the start of an arc to the end, conveniently avoiding anything that might force Violet to reflect upon her own behavior or learn something. The closest we get is Violet moaning to herself how she didn’t want to learn the names of the infantry members, as they will surely die when they are deployed. That’s purely about her own feelings.
Imbalance of Presentation
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if the riders comported themselves respectfully. It would be bland and pointless, sure, but that would be better than what we got. Instead, Yarros chooses to make Violet and the other riders nearly as spiteful towards the infantry as Violet and her squad are towards Dain. Between dialogue and Violet’s inner monologue, we get:
Violet judging the infantry for wearing uniforms instead of special self-insert OC outfits.
Violet referring to the the leader of the infantry, Calvin, as Cadet Asshole, when the worst we see Calvin do is see him pull rank in a bid to establish some manner of order. (He does, in fact, outrank most or all of the riders, as they would otherwise just pull rank themselves instead of what they choose to do.)
When a pair of maps are handed out to the joint unit, Rhiannon slights the infantry by taking both maps and handing the one she isn’t using to another rider. Later, when Calvin does get to hold one of the maps, Rhiannon threatens to cut off his hands if he doesn’t hand it back upon request.
The riders, most notably Ridoc, spit on the military chain of command by asserting that they are better than the infantry and thus don’t need to acknowledge rank.
Rather than provide meaningful advice for how to survive an encounter with a dragon, the riders choose to heckle all the non-riders about how the dragons will eat them, including Violet issuing a thinly veiled threat about how she’ll let the dragons eat the infantry members.
How does the infantry respond to this?
When Rhiannon first swipes the maps, one lurches forward a step, only to immediately stop without throwing in so much as an aggressive word. No further action is taken.
Calvin pulls rank. From all available evidence, he does this in response to the ongoing barrage of abuse thrown at his people.
On a first read, I was convinced that Yarros was setting up a arc here. Surely, Violet would be forced to pause a reflect upon her behavior. Surely, the riders would learn something. Why else make the villainy of Violet and the riders so comically over-the-top if the goal is not to roll them right back to heroism? At least the spite hurled at Dain fits a pattern and involves a character who is an ongoing part of the story. This is a side quest involving characters who will not have relevance after Chapter 15. Nothing good comes of making the protagonists this overly mean-spirited unless the goal is to manufacture character development.
But, no. There’s no arc. We skip right to an ending that comes across like the riders are saying, “Well, I suppose these mortals aren’t totally without their uses,” while the infantry submits and shows the subservience that the riders crave. At best, it reads like there was an entire deleted chapter between Chapters 14 and 15 where the riders actually got some comeuppance and had to reflect upon how the entire mess with the dragon was their fault, rather than that of the infantry.
Absolution
In Chapter 17, Imogen delivers this “actual, meaningful advice” to Violet.
“Everyone fails land nav the first time. We’re egotistical assholes who can’t handle being wrong. The instructor just wants you to feel bad about it, which is clearly working.”
Ms. Yarros, this is not an acceptable substitute for an arc.
First, what Imogen said here amounts to someone claiming flaws as an inalterable character trait. She does not encourage Violet to change. Coupled with how Violet’s POV presented the events of the land nav exercise, this is effectively the same as if Imogen had told Violet, “If infantry can’t take us at our worst, they don’t deserve us at our best.”
Second, Violet never feels bad about being an “egotistical asshole”. She is one, but her remorse is purely focused on the personal impact to her: the failure of the exercise and the negative emotion she experiences when someone near her dies. There has been no reflection. There also will be no future reflection about this Quadrant-wide character flaw. She is being told that she has completed an arc that she didn’t complete.
Third … someone died because of the riders. It was entirely their fault. They did not do their jobs until a dragon appeared, and even then, they provided advice that made no sense (which we will get to in Worldbuilding). We are past a character simply acknowledging a flaw exists and hand-waving the idea of addressing that flaw.
Ultimately, this “advice” boils down to Yarros attempting to absolve Violet of wrongdoing. She is acknowledging a flaw and then dropping the matter, without Violet ever actually accepting that flaw, reflecting upon that flaw, or trying to grow from that acceptance and reflection. At the absolute best, Yarros is assuring the audience that she is aware that a problem exists in Violet’s characterization without making the slightest bit of actual effort to correct that problem.
The Sparring Test
Hypocrisy
Violet is worse than Dain ever was.
Dain may have been overbearing in Fourth Wing, but the worst he ever did was offer help and arrange opportunities for Violet to avoid the consequences of her actions. He never acted without her permission. He certainly never tried to steal her achievements from her by telling her that he’d actually made those achievements happen. In fact, each time that he was told to back down, he did so. He didn’t resort to extortion.
By the logic of Fourth Wing (and, by virtue of being the POV, the logic of Violet herself), Violet is a villain. She would have been morally reprehensible if she merely offered to poison Sloane’s opponent. She should cut herself out of Sloane’s life for even bringing up the fact that Sloane needs training. Violet is now a villain by the very standards that Yarros herself established. She is certainly more of a villain than Dain - but then again, perhaps I missed a chapter in Fourth Wing where Dain drugged Violet, dragged her down the scribes’ dormitories, told her upon waking that he was the one who convinced Andarana to bond with her, and then threatened to burn her book of folklore if she didn’t desert from the riders and become a scribe.
Zero Self-Awareness
In this scene, Yarros inadvertently justifies all of Dain’s overbearing behavior by acknowledging that Violet cannot succeed in the Quadrant without others shielding her and dragging her along.
“If it’s Malek’s will that I join my brother, then so be it. Liam didn’t need help,” [Sloane] retorts, but there’s a touch of fear in her eyes that lets me know most of this is bluster. “He made it on his own”
“No, he didn’t,” Imogen argues. “Violet saved his life during War Games. He fell off Deigh’s back, and it was Violet and Tairn who flew after him and caught him.”
Remember Chapter 18 of Fourth Wing, where Violet screamed at Dain for not believing in her because he thought that falling off Tairn’s back enough times to kill her entire class, only surviving because Tairn caught her each time, meant that she would benefit from some help in flight training?
Yarros clearly doesn’t, or at least, she desperately hopes her readers don’t.
Validation
I just called Violet a villain, but there is still hope for her.
Maybe now she can reflect on the fact that she is in the same shoes that Dain was last year. Maybe she can reflect on the fact that she reacted far worse than Sloane did in response to far less. Maybe this can lead her to see Dain in a new light, and open -
Yes, I’m doing the bit. This obviously doesn’t happen. That would require Yarros to admit that Violet has flaws. Instead, Yarros validates Violet for this, using Imogen as her mouthpiece.
First, Imogen interrupts when Sloan tries to protect what Violet did.
“I don’t need -”
“Wrong tactic,” Imogen lectures. “‘Thank you’ is appropriate.”
In other words, we are supposed to see what Violet did as an act worthy of gratitude. Never mind the fact that the entirety of Fourth Wing demanded that we react in the opposite way.
The real validation comes at the end of the scene, after Violet has finished extorting Sloane and walked away.
“You. Are …” Imogen shakes her head as she cathes up to me. “I see it now.”
“What?” I ask.
“Why Xaden fell for you.”
I scoff.
“Truthfully.” She puts her hands up. “You’re fucking clever. Way more clever than I gave you credit for. I bet you keep him constantly annoyed.” A smile beams across her face. “How glorious.”
I roll my eyes at her.
“And you got Sloane to agree to show up tomorrow morning after chores,” she tells me. “It was a risky move, but it worked.”
Now I’m the one smiling.
The Mary Sue
In the retrospective at the conclusion of the Fourth Wing review, I said that Violet being a Mary Sue damages her characterization but does not harm the overall narrative. The power fantasy of Fourth Wing is moral and emotional. The plot focuses on physical threats. It was therefore possible for the story to function even with a Mary Sue in the driver’s seat.
Now, a line has been crossed.
I would not consider the RSC exercise or Sloane’s sparring test to be plot beats. You could cut both out of the story with zero consequence to the overall narrative (something we will get back to when we review Chapter 29). However, they do function as slower-paced moments for character work. Yarros deliberately chose to slow down an already-bloated book to shine a spotlight of Violet’s character in a moment that is not directly relevant to the plot. The story hinges, however briefly, on the handling of a Mary Sue’s character.
There was so much potential here. Violet could have grown so much as a person in these moments. Properly executed, these could have repaired the worst of the damage done to Violet’s characterization by the unrelenting power fantasy. At the very least, they could have pushed Violet back into a state of being sympathetic for anyone who isn’t high on that power fantasy.
Except … we can’t have that.
That would cut off the supply of validation. That would mean that Violet would have to own up to not being a moral paragon. That would mean emotional consequences that run deeper than, “I don’t want to feel bad anymore.”
The audience - and Yarros herself - would need to abstain from this sweet, sweet drug for a handful of pages. So Yarros did what Yarros always does: she doubled down and made things worse.
From this point onward, the power fantasy is no longer tolerable. It eats away at this story like virus warhead. We now have two examples, back to back, of Yarros devaluing the stakes of the story to preserve the power fantasy. They may be moral and emotional stakes rather than physical ones, but because they were expected to support the narrative’s weight for even a moment, all stakes in this narrative have now been called into question.
The book is dead. Long live the Sue.
PLOT
Rebellion
Separation Anxiety
A development introduced in these chapters is that Draconis Umbridge, working in coordination with the rest of the rider leadership, is scheduling things such that Violet and Xaden cannot meet up during their weekly leave. The RSC exercise kept Violet from seeing Xaden when he visited, and then Xaden was on assignment in a classified operations center when Violet visited Samara.
This doesn’t really add anything to the overall plot. If anything, it’s nonsense. This is Violet’s conclusion about the development:
I think leadership is keeping us apart as a punishment for not producing Andarna.
Not Draconis - “leadership”. Are we really supposed to believe that the rider leadership as a whole shares Draconis’s suicidally foolish perspective that riders have greater agency than dragons? Why has this not been noticed by their dragons, leading to all of these riders being culled? This is yet another development that is impossible to take seriously because Yarros has told us that the dragons should be able to sweep this threat away.
That being said, I think that the development itself works as a means to create emotional stakes (at least, if we also ignore Violet’s unhinged behavior over not getting a security clearance). Separation is something that is easily related to.
Archives, Part 1 - The Fourth Wing Plot Hole
Violet trusting Jesinia is monumentally foolish. It compounds the problem of her demanding a security clearance from Xaden, as it is the sort of reckless decision that shows she cannot be trusted. That said, it does make sense as a development for the story. Given Violet’s characterization and the fact that we’re supposed to care about her putting distance between her and her friends, her jumping at a chance to tell someone what she’s up to is a natural progression of events.
Unfortunately, Yarros uses this as an opportunity to call attention to a plot hole, one that could otherwise have been ignored, and then does not fill said plot hole.
Chapter 16 marks the point where Jesinia admits that she never logged Violet’s request from the last book to find that book of folklore. This is her explanation for why she did it.
“At first, because I didn’t want to be embarrassed that I couldn’t find it.” Her nose scrunches. “Then because … I couldn’t find it.” She looks over her shoulder at the empty Archives. “We should have a copy of almost every tome in Navarre here, yet you told me you’d read one that we don’t have."
This goes on for half a page as Jesinia outlines the process by which she came to this conclusion:
“That our Archives are incomplete, either by ignorance …” She breathes deeply. “Or intention.”
The explanation and conclusion make so little sense that it collapses under its own weight, without even needing to consider the wider context.
Jesinia made sure to say that the Archives have a copy of “ALMOST every tome in Navarre”. By her own admission, there are books they don’t have. Are we really supposed to believe that a request for some obscure book of folklore from Violet (a person Jesinia knows to be well-read, whom has lived at places other than Basgiath, and thus could have accessed books from places other than the Archives) would cause her to have a crisis of faith?
Things only get worse when one gets into the weeds of Jesinia’s explanation.
The first card Yarros tries playing to justify this by saying that Jesinia’s suspicions were specifically triggered when she tried to look up wyvern and couldn’t find anything, and that she trusted the intelligence of the self-insert Mary Sue above all other sources of knowledge … except this shouldn’t matter. The Archives has “almost” all the information. Obscure subjects, like forgotten folklore, are not guaranteed to be in there.
The next card that Yarros tries to play is that Jesinia reached out to other libraries and became suspicious when her those requests for information came up empty. She admits to lying about her reason for doing this, claiming it was personal interest rather than Violet making the request. There is no reason to lie about this unless she already thought something shady was going on.
The third card that Yarros tries to play is that Jesinia sensed Violet was up to something shady herself … except Violet WASN’T up to anything shady back in Fourth Wing. Her request for the folklore was innocent personal interest. Jesinia might have reason to be suspicious about Violet's behavior and mannerisms regarding the wardstone research, but not the folklore book. Why would she not be honest with other libraries about looking for the book for a friend?
The long and short of it is that this is circular logic. The only way that Jesinia could have arrived at the conclusion that she did is if she had first arrived at the conclusion that she did. This is utter nonsense that replaces a potential opportunity for plot development with the payoff of said development simply being the status quo now.
Oh, right. And that’s just what we get when we look at the explanation in isolation.
Why did Jesinia not log Violet’s request for the lore book before she went to get the book off the shelf? Would nobody have any questions about why she is scouring the shelves? I could understand this if she was already covering for Violet, but remember, she apparently entered her circular journey after she couldn’t find the book. Saying that she didn’t want to embarrass herself doesn’t answer this question. She had no problem embarrassing herself earlier when she couldn’t access a classified action report (after her journey of suspicion started spinning), and the rider who requested that report died because of her lack of pride. This is now a character inconsistency that directly facilitates Violet’s survival.
Why has Jesinia not been hauled off and either interrogated or killed because of her research into wyverns? The standard Yarros has set is that merely requesting classified information gets you killed. What’s more, even if no one in the Archives knows that she and Violet are friends, Violet was working Archives duty in the last book, during the same time that the request was made. The connection between the person the rider leadership is monitoring and a scribe researching taboo topics is blatantly obvious.
Yarros is truly incredible. I can’t recall the last time that I read an author who was so dedicated to exposing readers to her own plot holes. Not acknowledging the problem at all would have been better than this.
What’s funny about this is that it would be so easy to fix. The rider leadership has other reasons to believe that Violet knows about the wyverns. Jesinia could have logged Violet’s request, and Violet (with her supposedly superior intellect) could have realized that the leadership is monitoring her Archives traffic to see what she might be researching on behalf of the rebel children. Jesinia could have only stopped logging requests after she noticed Violet acting strangely. The danger would be preserved, and the characters would display some actual intelligence.
The Power of Friendship
During the RSC exercise, while Violet is moping about she doesn’t like that other people dying makes her feel bad, Rhiannon confronts her about the distance that Violet has been putting between them. This ends with Rhiannon delivering the following line.
“Don’t,” she interrupts softly, her unyielding gaze holding mine. “I’ll be here when you’re ready because your friendship is precious to me. But please, for the sake of that friendship, don’t insult me by lying.”
This should be a critical, emotional plot beat.
I could not care less.
This friendship is a non-entity. It has not been developed. Thus far, Violet had had more meaningful scenes with each Liam, Imogen, Sloane, and Bodhi than she has had with Rhiannon. (I’m fairly certain that she’s also had more lines of dialogue with each of them than with Rhiannon, but I haven’t actually counted.) There is no emotional gravitas to threatening a relationship that has not been developed. I had to repeatedly remind myself to even mention this interaction in the review, as it is so wafer-thin that I kept forgetting it had happened.
Archives, Part 2 - Is Anyone Paying Attention?
Violet’s meltdown in Battle Brief at the end of Chapter 17 should have gotten her hauled off to be interrogated. To recap:
During the class itself, she loses control of her Signet, causing her pen to smoke. This is noticed by other students.
After class, she runs out of the room and unleashes a blast of lightning in the central courtyard, an act witnessed by many people.
She then storms to the Archives to see Jesinia, interrupting Jesinia while she is in the middle of a class. A guard is explicitly mentioned as being posted outside of the doors of the Archives, and therefore could give testimony that Violet entered the Archives after her meltdown.
This is ridiculous. Thanks to Violet’s meltdown, the rider leadership should now have no doubt that Violet knows information that she should not be allowed to know. What’s more, they should now know that she has an accomplice in the Archives, as that is where she rushed to while caught up in her emotions.
Yarros is aware of this. Tairn chides Violet for losing control of her emotions. The problem is that, much like with the “egotistical assholes” assessment, saying that a flaw exists means nothing if nothing comes of that flaw. Consequences should have happened, but they did not.
Also … at this point, Violet is calling attention to herself. People are going to start asking questions. If the rider leadership is willing to execute a rider merely for requesting a document that no one else knows about, surely they would want to take Violet out of the picture before her meltdowns prompt her fellow cadets to dig deeper and learn the secrets that are causing her such evident distress.
RSC Exercise
Yarros wastes the audience’s times in the RSC exercise by trying to create stakes that never manifest.
At the start of the exercise, Violet and her joint land nav team are given the following information from the RSC professor.
“Oh, and did I mention that there are two groups of you out here? The other is on the far side of the forest, and while your dragons will be hunting them, their dragons are hunting you. A few unbondeds joined, too.”
The group does encounter two dragons. However, neither of these are hunting them. The first dragon encountered is Baide, Jack Barlowe’s dragon. Jack Barlowe cannot be on the opposing team, on account of Violet hitting him with a god blast of lightning and dropping a mountain on him in the last book. Remove the professor’s claim about the competing team, and nothing changes - Baide could just be some dragon who happened to be taking a nap in an inconvenient location. As for the second dragon, it is described in a throwaway line, and given that it is described as ignoring the group to attack a cow, it clearly was not hunting the group.
It is unclear as to whether “unbondeds” refers to dragons or cadets. Since Yarros left this ambiguous, and since unbonded cadets are a bigger threat than unbonded dragons (given that the unbonded cadets want to kill bonded cadets to take their dragons, while an unbonded dragon would only really be motivated to observe), I think it safe to assume that Yarros wanted to imply that these would be unbonded cadets. I must therefore also point out that no unbonded cadets show up - and, come to think of it, how and why would unbonded cadets be here in the first place? Unbonded cadets are recycled each year. Threshing has not happened yet. That means that every unbonded cadet is a 1st-year. They’re not going to be snatching a dragon away from a newly bonded rider if that rider is actually a 2nd-year. Baide recognizes Violet, and we are told she wants to kill her, which seems like strong evidence that killing a rider several months after bonding is a good way to get killed by that rider’s dragon (though we don’t hear anything about Baide being attacked by the dragon of the rider she does end of killing). Frankly, the unbonded cadets would be safer waiting for Threshing. Plus, if unbonded riders are brought out of RSC exercises, why did we not hear about the RSC in the last book?
I’ll leave it here for now. Suffice it to say that Yarros wasted out time with a threat that she never bothered to write.
CHARACTER
Draconis Umbridge
In Chapter 16, Draconis Umbridge and Violet banter. It’s very bland. I get the feeling that Yarros really wanted to have tense battles of words between two opponents speaking in riddles and veiled threats, but she clearly lacked either the idea of how to do it properly or anything of substance to make such banter worthwhile.
Dain
I don’t plan to bring up every time Yarros abuses Dain. Suffice it to say that this book was printed on paper towels and then saturated in the dog vomit that is her spite. However, there is a specific chunk of half-digested gristle that is noteworthy for being objectively bad character writing.
While the riders are being “egotistical assholes”, Ridoc makes the following comment about Calvin
“Their squad leader is the infantry equivalent of Aetos,” Ridoc mutters from my right side.
I nod but keep from chuckling.
In what way does Calvin reflect Dain? Not only are we brought back to the issue that Dain is never actually shown to be incompetent (outside of his inability to discipline the thugs under his command), but we are explicitly shown Calvin doing something that Dain did not. Calvin pulls rank. Not only does Dain not pull rank, but he backs down without protest when his insecure squad leader decides to abuse him merely for outranking her.
Ms. Yarros, stop trying to gaslight us. There are ways to write Dain as a villain. Telling us that he possesses flaws that you either never show or blatantly contradict is not one of those ways.
Eya
Ever since she helped me after my near burnout, we’ve developed a weird sort of relationship. We’re friendly, if not friends, at least.
Turns out Xaden has known Eya since they were ten, according to the letter [that he wrote to Violet about his personal history].
We are never SHOWN Eya and Violet being friendly. We are simply told we should care about Eya. It’s almost as though Yarros needs us to care about Eya in Chapter 30, but she didn’t care enough herself to actually write Eya as a character, and so simply went back and threw in a random line earlier in the text to tell us that we should totally care about this random mob character.
WORLDBUILDING
RSC Land Nav
The land nav exercise is phenomenally stupid.
Why would the the riders’ first land nav exercise necessitate drugging and abducting them? I could understand this for a test, but this is just an exercise that they face no penalties for failing. All that abducting them accomplishes is depriving them of survival gear … except the infantry are allowed to bring their gear (in Chapter 15, they cook a rabbit, and that rabbit is explicitly served up on a plate, so they were at least allowed to pack mess kits), so abducting the riders only deprives them of a couple of favored swords. Literally nothing happens here that couldn’t be accomplished by taking the riders out into the woods while they are conscious and fully equipped, pointing in a direction away from Basgiath, and saying, “There’s a flag over there. Go find it.”
Why are the riders and infantry not given any prior instruction on unit coordination and chain of command? The fact that Calvin tries to pull rank implies that infantry can indeed order around riders if they outrank those riders. Otherwise, surely Violet or another character would have spouted some legalese to tell him not to do that, rather than being egotistical assholes. So why were the riders not told to obey and respect infantry of higher rank, and why was Calvin not briefed on the fact that riders don’t respond well to an assertive approach?
Is the infantry not briefed on what to do when a dragon was encountered? That seems like a fairly important consideration for mixed-arms operations, especially if the heavy equipment one has to share a battlefield with has a mind of its own and will murder its teammates on a whim. Why were the riders not under standing orders to give that instruction upon integrating with a non-rider unit? Why did this joint unit not do any sort of classroom exercise to at least coordinate for a dragon encounter?
Why unleash dragons on the land nav exercise? There’s a throwaway line of dialogue that implies that this may be to discretely prepare them for encountering a wyvern, but the only thing that actually protects them from the dragons is the fact that any dragon that harms a rider will face the vengeance of that rider’s dragon (which contradicts what happens in Chapter 8 with Solas and here with Baide, but fine, we’ll roll with it for now). That fear of reprisal won’t stop a wyvern.
Someone dies, pointlessly and unnecessarily, because of this accumulated stupidity. Unlike the deaths of the riders in the Quadrant, there is no practical function to this. It is pure incompetence.
Elixir
As part of the RSC exercise, the riders are drugged with an elixir that blocks their connection to their dragons, thereby disabling both telepathic communication and their Signets.
This elixir was apparently developed very recently. This works as an explanation for why this tool was not used in Fourth Wing (as it sure would be a useful alternative to executing inntinsics). However, by Chapter 60, we will get an explanation for why this elixir was developed. I’m going to come back to the elixir at that point. All I’ll add for now is that, given what this elixir was actually designed to do, it probably should kill any rider who drinks it, and it almost certainly shouldn’t work as a means to disable dragon magic.
Sign Language
The professor of Jesinia’s class speaks sign language. However, I am not going to add the professor to the tally of non-deaf speakers. This is because Yarros has stumbled upon (and will ultimately careen past) something that could have resolved the question of why this society that should hate the disabled has a sign language.
The subculture of the scribes sees being quiet and unassuming as virtues. We got a line in Fourth Wing about how they are literally supposed to blend in with the books in the Archives. What’s more, while a quick Google search informs me that talking does not use up significantly more oxygen that breathing silently, I imagine the scribes would not enjoy having prolonged conversations in a room affected by an Oxygen Reduction System (which Fourth Wing established as being something that somehow exists in the Archives), as they’d need to breathe more deeply to try to offset the hypoxic conditions.
In other words … sign language makes sense as a tool the scribes would develop to facilitate their work. They could use it to communicate quietly, more easily, and without calling excess attention to themselves. It gives Jesinia a place in this brutal society where she can contribute effectively. It explains how Violet knows the language.
Granted, this does not explain how Liam and Imogen speak it. We will later learn from Xaden that the rebel children want to stay well away from the scribes. This theory would therefore actively clash with what we are shown in the story. Still, if Yarros had used the scribes as a pattern to explain who can and can’t speak sign language, it would have made the integration of this element feel much more natural within the world she created.
I Didn’t Vote for You
Yarros choses to make the question of how nobility holds power in Navarre even worse in Chapter 16.
In fact, most of the aristocracy chooses to serve in the infantry, just like Xaden’s father, because riders are discouraged from holding their family’s seats. Not only are our commissions lifelong instead of the few years an infantry officer can agree to, but too much power in one person terrifies any king.
In the interest of not rehashing my arguments from the Chapter 8 analysis, suffice it to say that this actively confirms that aristocracy, up to and including the king himself, have no means to resist if the dragon riders opted to seize power. This system actively creates a military class with unstoppable living weapons and expects said military class to be eternally content with not having any official political power.
Closed Borders
The battle brief scene opens on Tara handing Violet a propaganda flier that is circulating in border villages, warning that anyone who Poromiel that crosses the border must be assumed to be an enemy agent and treated as a threat. Violet assumes that these are refugees fleeing from the venin.
This begs the question: how are they getting across the border?
In the United States - a comparison I feel is very appropriate, given a potential theme we will discuss below - refugees and illegal immigrants enter the southern US by land or sea (in the case of Cuban refugees). The reason this is allowed is because the US is a democratic society which, for various reasons, is not united behind the idea of sealing off the borders and deporting every non-citizen without a visa. What’s more, the majority of people opposed to illegal immigration don’t mind legal immigration, and very few people on that side of the aisle consider illegal immigrants to be enemy combatants that can be slaughtered without consequence.
Navarre is a military dictatorship with a monarchy that is either absolute or a figurehead for the dictatorship. How have they not built any sort of defenses to keep the refugees out in the centuries since they closed the borders? How are the people not already indoctrinated to hate and fear the outsiders? If the borders are open and the people are not indoctrinated, then why isn’t anyone taking stories the refugees tell about the venin and wyverns seriously? Fourth Wing established that Navarre has maintained trade with Poromiel despite the tensions between them, and we are supposed to believe that Poromiel only strikes military targets to steal the alloy, so are we really supposed to believe that no one would find their refugees’ testimony to be credible?
Also, this appears to be an effort to confirm that the situation outside Navarre is dire, but that only works if we understand how Poromiel has lasted as long as it has, which has not been properly explained to us.
Dragons and Wyverns
The information that makes Violet melt down during Battle Brief is that Markham tries to dismiss tales from the refugees. Markham claims that the refugees are falsely reporting that their cities were attacked by dragons. Violet’s reaction:
Fucking. Liar.
Followed by this from Rhiannon:
“As if dragons would ruin cities,” Rhiannon mutters, shaking her head.
They wouldn’t, but wyvern would … and do.
Aretia was burned to the ground SIX YEARS ago. That was a Navarrish city. Dragons did the deed. Everyone knows this. How, then, is it so hard to believe that dragons would attack an ENEMY city?
It doesn’t matter whether one comes at this with the perspective that Markham is lying or that the Poromish refugees are. Of course a dragon would destroy a city. This is not a good reason to doubt the information being presented.
THEME
In these chapters, we get the potential start of two themes. One of them is rather overt. The other is more of a trend that I’m only commenting upon because I keep seeing other reviewers comment upon it.
Immigration
The situation with Poromiel’s civilians trying to get through Navarre’s closed borders reflects at least the most basic stereotypes about the treatment of illegal immigrants and refugees in our modern world. I’d go so far as to say that Yarros is trying to inject commentary about immigration across the southern border of the U.S., though this is based less upon what’s in the text itself and more upon Yarros residing in Colorado and the precedent set through her virtual signaling about identity politics.
Regardless of whether or not it is intended as commentary or even outright allegory, the presentation of this idea is very shallow. Iron Flame has nothing to say about it and offers nothing by way of exploration. You are good if you support welcoming the refugees and Fucking. Evil if you don’t. This shallow and simplistic presentation will damage immersion for some people, if not outright alienating those who don’t share Violet’s (and likely Yarros’s) position.
And yet … I don’t think this unworkable in the manner that it is written.
I feel like this theme is in the same position that the power fantasy formerly held. Yarros isn’t putting weight on it. The story does not need this idea to have any depth in order for it to function. This isn’t like the handling of classism in Notorious Sorcerer. Iron Flame would work just as well without this theme, and yet at the same time, the issues that exist in this book would not actually be resolved by deleting it. I also don’t feel like enough attention is put upon this shallow idea to categorize it as a virtue signal. It melds into the established worldbuilding as well as it can (or, at the very least, doesn’t make things actively worse with its inclusion).
At this stage, all the theme really does is translate the existential threat of the venin into a moral binary that the audience can more easily emphasize with. Wrapping our heads around the end of the world at the hands of life-draining aberrations is a tall order. Worrying about the welfare of people fleeing that threat is much easier to grasp. It’s a risky move that’s going to irritate at least a few people, yet at such a mild intensity, I think its a calculated risk that could pay off.
It really depends on how Yarros handles this theme going forward. If she continues to limit it to, “Good person help refugee, Fucking. Evil person not help refugee,” then I think it is functional as a dividing line to define morality within the story.
(Anti-) Militarism
Yarros apparently gets flack for being pro-military.
Part of this has to do with the simple fact that The Empyrean features a main character who joins a military. At least one review that I watched also flagged a recent book of Yarros’s that touched upon the 2022 US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Going off the book descriptions and publication dates on Yarros’s website, I’m going to assume that this second point is in reference to In The Likely Event.
I’m going to be honest: going just off the books of The Empyrean, I would have drawn the opposite conclusion. Yarros appears to have deep-seated resentment towards the military that she is channeling through her self-insert Mary Sue. By this, I’m not referring to the fact that the military leadership within these books are the antagonists. I’m instead looking at the sheer contempt shown towards anything that reflects the effective conduct of a real-world military.
This first surfaced when Violet associated sex with a security clearance. The handling of this conflict in the Romance subplot is just so bizarre. Violet’s intelligence and background should allow her to understand how irrational she’s being. She even admits to operating purely on emotion when someone she can’t scream down calls her out. Yet, the moment Xaden reiterates that he will spill every secret except those that compromise the rebellion, Violet digs in her heels and insists that she will never accept him unless he provides her with the military secrets, too. The issues with this conflict are so obvious that I feel like Yarros can only be missing them because she has an axe to grind. My impression as a reader (I must reiterate that I don’t know her personally and can’t make any declarative statements about her actual character or beliefs) is that she resents her husband or some other military man in her life for not divulging every detail of what happened to him on deployment, and this subplot is her way of venting.
The RSC exercise brings another aspect of this resentment into focus: uniforms, rank, discipline, and anything else reflecting the existence of a soldier as a part of a greater whole.
Prior to reading Chapter 14, I was of the impression that the video game avatar customization of the Quadrant cadets was purely Yarros trying to make her characters seem cool. Then Chapter 14 gave us two massive paragraphs, together filling half a page (more than a full screen of my iPad’s e-book version) describing how bland and devoid of identity the infantry are for having uniforms while the rider characters are so unique and cool. This later gets repeated when Violet laments the sameness of the infantry’s weapons, which lack any specialization or accommodation for physical difference. Reading through this, I got a palpable sense that Yarros feels disgusted by the mere concept of a uniform.
And, of course, there is the fact that the “egotistical assholes” nearly get a member of the infantry killed, blame the infantry when a rider dies to undo that mistake, and then do not reflect upon their behavior or grow as people. The message is clear: real soldiers are inferior to Yarros’s badass OCs.
To anyone who criticizes Yarros for being pro-military, I have an question (which I am, sincerely, asking in good faith, not in mockery or hostility): what, exactly, are the standards that you use to judge a story as “pro-military”? Is it purely the fact that it has characters who are not portrayed as bad people simply for joining the military? Because I’m going to be honest, I really don’t see another way that someone could read The Empyrean and still conclude that Yarros doesn’t hate real-world militaries.
A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
Next week, we’ll cover Chapters 18 through 20. These offer a nice change of pace: Yarros manages to do two things that I’d argue are well-done. They’re not great, but they are at least functional, and they serve as a good point of comparison for how other elements of the story could have been improved. They serve a glimmer of potential, a promise that Yarros can indeed write well when she is not writing Epic Fantasy or sequels in general. I’m honestly looking forward to sharing them with you.
It’s coming your way next Friday. I hope to see you all then. Have a good week.
