Iron Flame (Chapter 30 to Chapter 34)
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 tells her accessories about the venin and the rebel children's smuggling operation, omitting only the information about the Aretia rebels. Her friends respond with wholehearted support, chastise her for not trusting in the power of friendship, and agree to aid her research into the wardstones. Ridoc even reveals that there is a secret Archives sublevel vault where journals from the first riders are kept.
Threshing arrives. None of the characters whom Violet cares about die. Jesinia sends a runner to the flight field with a message, telling Violet that she has located the sublevel vault. Since Violet needs to be on watch at the burn pit (for the possessions of people killed in the Threshing), Ridoc goes to meet Jesinia.
At the burn pit, Violet and Eya are attacked by four infantrymen who were hired by Colonel Aetos. Eya is killed in the ensuing fight. Violet only avoids being killed by the last infantryman because Jack Barlowe shows up and finishes the man off, saving Violet.
The next time Xaden visits, Violet tells him about what she and her accessories have been up to and that they are planning to raid the Archives that night. Xaden puts up a token protest before agreeing to help them. The heist that follows goes off without issue, and the two journals that Violet needs are recovered.
After the heist, Violet bumps into Nolon. He tricks her into drinking a sedative. It is revealed that the heist was detected, and Draconis now has her dead to rights. Violet then passes out from the sedative.
PLOT
Pacing
Finally, something is happening.
Setting aside the utter contrivance that triggered these events, ignoring the vast amount of filler before these events that should have been cut, and handwaving the fact that what’s happening is not well-written, we at least have a story here. Progress is being made. Lessons are being learned (on a thematic level, and least - the power fantasy doesn't allow Violet to learn and grow, as that would imply she was imperfect to begin with). It’s a return to the way things were prior to Threshing in Fourth Wing.
If the momentum built up across these chapters had been maintained for the entire book this far, I feel like many of the flaws we’ve covered thus far would be easier to ignore. Slow-burn narratives that develop characters and worldbuilding are wonderful things, but only if the development is good and the worldbuilding doesn’t implode. A fast-paced story of shallow characters and utter nonsense can at least be entertaining on a first read.
Accessories to Rebellion
I am torn about the reactions of Violet’s accessories to her big reveal.
Theme
We might as well get the positive out of the way first.
Thematically speaking, what we are presented with here is functional. Violet has struggled and not succeeded while keeping her friends out of the action. When she brings them into the fold, they not only agree to support her but also contribute information that allows her to solve a problem. The immediate payoff produces a clear message: friends can help you to succeed where you would otherwise fail.
No Foundation
While the scene is functional thematically, it is dead emotionally.
Did anyone really think that Violet’s friends would not valdiate and support her? Formulaic storytelling is all well and good, but with the amount of angst that we’ve slapped around the face with, the predictable payoff is rather annoying. It would actually have been more entertaining if they all rejected Violet and betrayed her, as at least that could have been an interesting subversion.
Also, here is where the lack of actual development for their relationship dynamic rears its head. Take, for example, this passage during the reveal scene, as Violet is realizes that her accessories will indeed support her.
“But you should be pissed.” My eyes burn and a boulder forms in my throat as I lookat them all in turn. “You should all be pissed.”
Rhiannon lifts her brows at me. “So, I only get to feel however I want as long as I rip you apart for not telling me? Not sure that’s fair.”
This rings hollow. I don’t have any reason to value this friendship. It has not been developed. It has not been explored. Violet has barely spent any time with these people. Them rallying behind her during and after the second RSC exercise simply isn't enough to lend any emotional weight here. Why should we care whether or not some accessories are “pissed” at Violet? What does it matter that one of them is turning her self-loathing back on her?
The Plot Coupon
This is how Ridoc explains his knowledge of the sublevel vault to Violet.
“Lyra’s and Warrick’s journals are here. At least according to a classified ledger in your mom’s office, they are.”
“My mom’s office?” My jaw hangs.
“The ledger, not the journals.” He shrugs. “I thumbed through it when we were looking for something to steal during the Squad Battle, but it listed them in a sublevel vault, and you’d already said the Archives were closed, and then you suggested the map—”
Credit to Yarros where it is due, it does make sense that Ridoc could have gotten the information this way … but …
This opens two plot holes, one here in Iron Flame and a retroactive one in Fourth Wing.
Let’s do the retroactive one first. Why did Ridoc not counter Violet's suggestion that they take the map by suggesting that they take the ledger instead? Their challenge was to get strategic information that would be disastrous if it fell into enemy hands. The map was on the wall of General Sorrengail’s office, in plain view of anyone who enters. Violet herself was in that office back in Chapter 1 of Fourth Wing, before she was even officially in the military. It is information that is relatively easy for a spy to access, that General Sorrengail would know is relatively easy to access, and thus, it would not have the most highly classified information. By contrast, the ledger would be far more secure, if for no other reason that someone would need to take the extra effort to find it within the office, open it, and rifle through it. It is the more logical choice when the purpose of the competition was to get the more valuable information possible. On top of that, the ledger would be far more portable than the map, which is another massive point in its favor. It took “minutes” for them to extricate the map from the wall, whereas they could have simply picked up the ledger and walked out immediately. Given Ridoc’s lack of a filter, I do not believe for an instant that he would have neglected to mention the ledger in the moment. This thing clearly did not exist in the series until Yarros needed it to exist to support this particular scene in the sequel.
Now for the current book's plot hole. Why was Violet’s squad not executed for breaking into General Sorrengail's office? If the rider leadership is paranoid enough to execute a rider for using official channels to request a report that he had no reason to believe was classified, then they would absolutely sweep the group of cadets who were riffling through the records of an officer who is in the known about the venin, especially if said officer has an unsecured ledger detailing the location of classified documents that are tangentially linked to the venin.
Overreach
Violet’s accessories agree to help her with the wardstone research. That's fine at face value, but before we can even get out of this scene, Yarros exposes a flaw (which, naturally, is never addressed).
We’ll be able to read four times as fast, cover four times as many books.
Jesinia will either need to smuggle books to them four times as often, take four times as many books off the shelves at once (without logging them, mind), or some middle ground that produces the same density of information as either extreme.
How are they able to get away with this? How is this not noticed? Earlier in the book, when Jesinia revealed that she was in the know, she warned Violet about the importance of being careful with when and where they make contact. That implies that people in the Archives are indeed paying attention for suspicious activity. What’s more, when Xaden is making his token protest, he points out that the Archives will notice if a book is missing. Does Yarros just want us to forget that she is establishing these things?
What Violet’s accessories should have offered to do is run interference, handling the handoff of books so as to divert suspicion away from Violet. (This wouldn’t be foolproof, either, but it would be a safer call than moving a greater number of books.) Yarros seems somewhat aware of this option - Jesinia sends the message about finding the vault to Rhiannon, rather than directly to Violet, and Ridoc meets Jesinia on Violet’s behalf - so I can only conclude that she didn't restrict them to that because she either didn't recognize the risk of increasing the number of books or didn't care.
And speaking of Jesinia …
Jesinia is a Dumbass Now
This isn't specific to the accessories, but since it leads to Ridoc meeting with Jesinia on Violet's behalf, now is as good a point as any to cover it.
Jesinia informs Violet that she found the sublevel vault by … sending a runner … all the way to the flight field … during a massive public event with many important people present … with a message so sloppily coded that the code itself could get them all killed.
“Squad Leader Matthias?” A rider from Third Wing wearing a black sash with a gray messenger insignia approaches.
“Here.” Rhi beckons him forward, then takes the folded parchment from his hand. “Thank you.” He leaves, and she breaks the wax seal to open the missive. Her gaze darts to mine, and she lowers her voice as Ridoc leans in. “Jesinia requests we meet her by the Archives door in fifteen minutes. She has a tome we’ve requested.” She reads our code phrase slowly, excitement growing in her eyes.
What happened to only meeting at predetermined times and locations?
Why would Jesinia announce the she found an unspecified tome, when the nature of her treasonous activity thus far has been finding tomes?
Did Yarros just decide the Jesinia is a dumbass now?
Rooftop Assassination
The entire assassination scene is an utterly meaningless exercise in Yarros’s self-indulgence. It is a nonsensical scene that offers nothing of substance to the narrative. Judging by how Violet quips during the fight, this was merely Yarros shoving in an action scene to show off how strong and cool her self-insert Mary Sue OC is.
Action
This fight has both the same strengths and the same flaws as the fight in Chapter 10.
In terms of choreography, I don’t have a problem with Violet winning in this fight. Yes, Violet slaughtering two opponents with throwing knives is Rule of Cool in a supposedly realistic environment, yet between the infantrymen announcing themselves, Violet having some amount of space from them, and the burn pit providing her some cover, I can buy that she could at least hit both her targets. Killing her targets in this situation doesn't utterly breaks the scene. Yes, the infantrymen are incompetent assassins (more on that shortly), yet that’s a separate issue from Violet being able to win.
The issue here is the obvious artificiality of the scene. This time, the artificiality doesn’t come from the scenario itself. The issue is the presence of an obvious Red Shirt to die in Violet’s place.
“Violet?” Eye smiles and hopes off the edge of the thick stone wall on the other side of the barrel. “I didn’t realize you were relieving me.”
“I didn’t realize you had watch before me. How have you been?”
On a first read, this exchange clued me in to the fact that Eya would die within moments and that, by extension, Violet wouldn’t. Yarros has played this card too many times now. The moment she implied that Violet had an emotional connection to this mob character (one so forgettable that you could be forgiven for thinking that Eya’s first introduction was this scene), the only stakes in this fight were how long we would have to wait for Eya to die.
Supreme Incompetence
Why would Colonel Aetos hire members of the infantry to assassinate Violet?
Yarros chooses, in this very same chapter’s epigraph, to explain why this is a terrible idea.
Barring invasion, only riders and designated scribes are permitted in the Riders Quadrant. To enter uninvited as infantry or even a healer is to welcome swift death.
- Article Two, Section Three, The Basgiath War Collect Code of Conduct
These assassins are people who cannot legally be here, and yet they make no effort to conceal that fact. Violet knows they are infantry because they are wearing “infantry blue” and each one is “brandishing a shortsword” (the established sidearm of the infantry, as established back in Chapter 14). Their allegiance is being loudly broadcast to any human being with eyes. This would be like a terrorist trying to hijack an airplane by first walking up to airport security while openly wearing a bomb vest. These assassins are begging to be noticed and intercepted. The fact that most of the school is at Threshing changes nothing, as there are riders within the Quadrant performing various duties (which is why Violet, Eya, and Jack were even here).
Why did Colonel Aetos not send assassins who were equipped to take Violet out? It should be fairly common knowledge at this point that Violet uses throwing knives (which seems to be a standard skill for riders). Body armor and shields would render her powerless. What’s more, crossbows would have more range and fire projectiles at a far higher speed than a thrown knife, meaning that she could have been shot dead before she had a chance to even draw a weapon.
Why do these idiots squander the element of surprise by announcing themselves and why they are there? Did Aetos seriously tell them that they had to deliver his message again? Does Aetos worry that Violet had forgotten after the last time?
Further compounding the ridiculousness of this scene is that the assassins repeatedly say, “We are doing this for the money.” Here, just look at this:
“We’re here with express permission,” the one on the right snarls.
“And paid well for the specific message we’re to deliver.”
And this:
“It’s just money,” he whispers from his knees and reaches for my hands.
And THIS:
“Just money,” he repeats, lifting my hands from the stone.
This is just so absurd. People who are bought out to perform illicit actions do not typically announce that they got paid, especially not multiple times. The whole, “Nothing personal, it’s just business,” trope might apply when the assassins do indeed care that the target might take it personal or when an assassin is hoping to avoid being executed by their intended victim, but neither of those apply here. Was Yarros afraid that the audience would forget this detail?
Another False Cliffhanger
His eyes bulge and he gurgles, grabbing for his throat and the dagger whose tip protrudes a few inches below his chin.
Someone has shoved their knife through his spine.
I slip another precious inch as the soldier is yanked backward, then thrown forward, over my head, disappearing into the darkness.
It’s Eya. It has to be. Maybe the wound isn’t -
Blond hair and icy-blue eyes appear above me and my heart plummets with the assassin’s body. Jack Barlowe.
“Sorrengail?” He lunges forward, grabbing my wrists with an unbreakable grip.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell Tairn and prepare myself for the weightless moment that will be my last.
“I’ve got you!” Jack shouts, holding my wrists tight as he throws himself backward and hauls me up and over the edge.
My ribs hit stone and he lets one hand go, then grabs my leathers and pulls, heaving me the rest of the way onto the tower wall.
I don’t waste time, scrambling forward to safety.
Can you guess where the chapter break is within the original text?
What makes this arbitrary break all the most absurd is just how short the following chapter is. It’s just the back half of the same scene. It’s maybe three pages long. There is zero merit to making it a separate chapter. Yarros rammed in this break in for no other purpose except to synthesize a cliffhanger, and it really shows.
The Heist & Its Consequences
The heist to steal the journals from the sublevel vault is abhorrently bad. It involves so many layers of contrivance and broken worldbuilding that, on my first read, I was constantly stopping to add notes about details that break the entire operation or blast new craters into the integrity of the world.
The security that they need to bypass to breach the sublevel vault and retrieve the journals is so illogically designed that it only makes sense as a list of obstacles for our heroes to overcome. Said obstacles are only overcome through layers of contrivance. Even with that contrivance, they botch things so badly that the only reason they don’t get caught is because Yarros said that they don't.
Now, if one only went by the summary I put in Story up above, one might think that Violet did indeed get caught. However, she is not actually caught because of any of her team’s glaring mistakes. Chapter 35 will reveal that the heist triggered a silent alarm that her team had no way of knowing about. This implies that Yarros actually thought that is this heist was airtight. She thought that she’d contrived a plan so brilliant that only another contrivance could possibly get Violet caught.
If Yarros was not up to the task of writing a heist, then she should have had Jesinia extract the journals from the vault off-screen and have Violet be caught with one of them after the fact.
(I’m saving the full breakdown of the heist for tomorrow. Today, we’re focusing on the narrative side of things.)
Yet Another False Cliffhanger
Yarros slams another pointless cliffhanger in between Chapter 33 and Chapter 34.
They’re not going to make it.
Xaden yanks Aaric through just as the door slams shut, shadows scattering along the floor like fallen leaves.
I sag, leaning over and bracing my hands above my knees as I gasp for air.
“You made it!” Rhiannon ducks her head to mine, smiling wide.
This false cliffhanger is not as bad as Yarros’s other ones. It makes some amount of sense to leave the audience hanging as to whether everyone makes through the Archives doors. Chapter 34 also has a distinct identity from Chapter 33, describing the events between the heist and Violet being drugged (whereas Chapter 33 was the portion of the heist that occurred in the sublevel).
The issue here is that a cliffhanger should not cut from a problem existing to that problem already being solved. We should have some time in the next section of narrative to revel in the tension. The only times you can get away with this sort of cutaway trick are when:
There is a timeskip and/or setting change.
The events following the cutaway do not lean upon the problem being solved.
Let’s take a practical example to show how Yarros failed here: the Sword Art Online anime. (Yes, Iron Flame really is bad enough for me to elevate SAO.)
Episode 13 of the SAO anime ends with the reveal of the Skull Reaper, the Floor Boss of the 75th Floor. Episode 14 begins with the Skull Reaper’s de-rezzing as the raid party finishes it off. This is superficially identical to what Yarros did here. The key difference is that the cliffhanger in SAO successfully ticks both of the boxes I listed above.
There is a time skip in the opening seconds of Episode 14. We see a montage of the raid party hacking away at the Skull Reaper. We didn’t cut straight from a problem to a solution. A problem was represented; a montage was used to skip us past a long, grueling battle that would otherwise be tedious to watch.
Whether or not the Skull Reaper would be defeated was never in doubt. Kirito and the raid party would either slay it or all die violent deaths, and we all knew that they weren’t going to die. Instead, the stakes focus on the human drama. The exhausted raid party reels from the death toll the Skull Reaper inflicted and fall into despair as the realize the next 25 floors will be worst. Then Kirito snaps and exposes Kaiyaba.
Conversely, this cliffhanger in Iron Flame was resolved mere seconds after the chapter ended. The stakes were whether Xaden would lose an arm and whether Aaric would make it through the door. Once those resolved, we the audience are left to stare at Yarros awkwardly and say, “What? That’s it? Why lead us on over nothing?”
Romance Subplot
When Xaden ends his token protest to the heist, we get this line from Violet.
I’m choosing him, choosing us. There will be no calling this a lapse in judgment, or the result of too much adrenaline, or even lust.
I love him. No matter what he’s done or why he did it, I still love him, and I know he cares about me.
Maybe it isn’t love.
Maybe after all he’s been through, he isn’t capable of that emotion.
But I mean something to him.
This is now the third time Yarros has tried to gaslight the audience about the nature of Violet's feud with Xaden. A pattern is forming.
I won’t reiterate all the reasons that this is nonsense, and I want to save my analysis of this strange twisting of the conflict until we get to Chapter 36. Just keep this in mind. There is a pattern on display here, one that I don’t think can really be explained by an editing mistake.
Which brings us nicely to …
EDITING
There is not much within this series to convince me that Yarros does any meaningful level of editing. So much of her “foreshadowing” reads like she came up with plot elements as she went along through the first draft and then only used the second draft to slap in awkward lines of establishment. Jack’s allergy to oranges in Fourth Wing is a very good example of this. It seemingly comes out of nowhere, but when one looks back, there is an absurd moment where he loudly announces his allergy to an entire gym, whilst he is in the middle of threatening Violet.
These chapters gave me the opposite impression. The contradictions and inconsistencies are so intense that the only way to rationalize them all is that Yarros did multiple drafts that went in dramatically different directions, chopped out the pieces she liked from each draft, and welded them together without any consideration as to if they actually fit. (The other possiblity is that she has become so brazen in her gaslighting that she is willing to gaslight is about earlier events in the same chapter, and sometimes, the same scene.) There are setups that build upon things that weren’t previously established. There are statements that directly clash. There is a conflict that goes nowhere. There is even a ticking clock that retcons lore from the previous book. All together, there are at least two versions of the story, if not three or four, all smashed together here.
Navarre and the Venin Lures
I misspoke back in Chapter 2. It turns out that the mystery box prize of Navarre using venin lures DOES manifest exactly one other time in this book, when Violet is revealing the true to her accessories.
So, I tell them almost everything that happened after Resson. Andarna, the assassination attempts, the daggers, supplying friendly drifts, Jesinia sneaking me classified books about the wards, even the theory that Navarre knows how to lure the venin—the rest spills out of my mouthin a deluge of words as they stare at me, their expressions varying from shocked to disbelief.
It is strange that Violet would bring this up when it was only mentioned once previously and then ignored for 40% of this book’s length. Why did she not reflect on this at any time while seething with rage at Markham? Poromish cities are being destroyed - why does she not assume Navarre is planting the lures and sacrificing those cities to buy time for Navarre?
This also never comes up again. Lures will feature in the climax, but not in a way that is linked to Navarre, and even this inclusion of them amounts to little more than pointless background noise.
It reads as if venin lures, and Navarre’s use of them, were a pivotal element in a past draft, building on the mystery box from Fourth Wing, but that Yarros scrubbed them from the text. The three remaining instances - Chapter 2, here, and the climax - were probably supposed to be deleted as well. This doesn’t open up any plot holes or feel overly disjointed. It just speaks of lack of effort in the proofreading process.
The Sawyer x Jesinia Relationship
Sawyer and Jesinia are going to be lumped together for an off-screen romance as this story progresses. This is the pairing that I am going to compare with Rhiannon and Tara in a few months’ time.
On a first read, I thought that this romance was lazily delivered background noise, but given that I only noticed it in Part Two, I thought it at least made some sense. Sawyer and Jesinia, through their association with Violet, had accrued a series of shared experiences by the time I noticed their romance. I could connect the dots and fill in blanks.
As of the first half of Chapter 30, things are very different. Sawyer and Jesinia have not shared any previous scenes (and thus, as far as the audience is concerned, have never met), and they certainly haven't interacted. It’s not even clear if each knows the other exists, outside of what Violet might have mentioned to Sawyer about Jesinia while revealing the truth about the venin and her wardstone research.
THIS passage in Chapter 30, which happens as the accessories are agreeing to help Violet, is therefore extremely confusing.
“Are you guys really volunteering to spend your time reading dozens of classifiedbooks on wards?” I look between them with raised brows.
“If it means we get to spend time in the Archives, I’m in.” Sawyer nods enthusiastically.
“And we all know why, my friend.” Ridoc grins and claps him on the back.
It is not impossible to apply head canon here. Perhaps Sawyer has taken over that library cart that Violet worked in Fourth Wing, thereby exposing him to Jesinia. However, one should not need to apply head canon to explain something that characters in the world are treating as an established fact. In fact, the moment that an element in a story relies on head canon to avoid a plot hole, that element is broken.
(Also, this head canon doesn't work, as if Sawyer worked Archives duty, he could take over the task of meeting Jesinia and smuggling books, something that a writer as unsubtle as Yarros would surely mention.)
What makes this worse is that Sawyer is one of the only characters who doesn’t speak sign language. This was clearly done to set up that big virtue signal coming down the pipeline, yet it backfires into this supposed romance. What is the relationship between Sawyer and Jesinia even built upon (assuming that they did meet off-screen at some point)? Do they each only love the other's beauty and nothing else? Does Sawyer prefer his women to be seen but not heard?
Do you know who Jesinia DID have an established attraction to? Liam. Fourth Wing took time to call attention to the fact that Liam was interested in Jesinia and that she was happy with his attention. Violet even counseled Liam about Jesinia’s typical expectations for a relationship.
This side action reads an awful lot as though Yarros originally intended either for Liam to be alive in this book or for Sawyer to be a rebel child and die in the last book. I think that the latter is more likely. As mentioned much earlier in this review, Liam more or less usurped Sawyer’s one character trait (being the top student in the year) between Threshing and his death in the climax of Fourth Wing. Given Yarros’s stubborn refusal to kill her darlings, it’s possible that she realized she’d actually have to kill one of said darlings for the climax of Fourth Wing to have any weight and resorted to manufacturing a sacrificial lamb (ironically, making Liam the only Red Shirt with anything close to the characterization to make his death impactful). However, she also didn't want to give up this background romance for Jesinia, so she is now resorting to gaslighting the audience to get herself back on schedule.
It’s a disappointment on more levels than one. Imagine if Sawyer and Liam had been the same character (let’s call him Lawyer) It would given Violet’s dynamic with her accessories so much more weight. All the work spent preparing Lawyer for the slaughter could also serve as credit towards Violet caring about her relationship with her accessories. He would be a bridge, a common association, someone both she and the accessories are close to. As a result, when Violet is angsting about neglecting a friendship that was never developed, we could at least use Lawyer as a yardstick for what she is shutting out. This would also give more meaning to both her remaining accessories’ decision to support her and a vow they’ve made a few times now to survive until graduation. Lawyer’s loss would be hanging over them all. True, this would also mean that Jesinia would not have a boy toy, but as mentioned earlier, Yarros could reasonably shift her into a relationship with any other male character in Violet’s orbit by mere virtue of them having sharing experiences.
Shadow Touched
Yarros is inconsistent on exactly how Xaden’s shadow powers work in regards to stealth, both in comparison to Fourth Wing and within these few chapters.
An important limitation set for Xaden’s shadow powers is that he can’t turn invisible. The shadows he generates are like the Darkness spell in D&D: solid blackness that people will see if there are any light sources that shine upon and fail to pierce it. He has to rely on existing sources of shadows if he wants to conceal himself without said concealment being detected. This is spelled out in Chapter 19 of Fourth Wing, when he smuggles Violet to the flight field.
“Can’t you just hide us in shadows or something?”
“Sure, because a giant black cloud moving down the hallway isn’t going to look more suspicious than a couple sneaking around.”
This is contradicted twice and then upheld once, all within Chapter 32.
First, as Violet is describing the disguises most of them are wearing, we get this.
“He’ll keep his distance,” I promise, glancing over my shoulder, past the others at where Xaden follows close behind, the only one who refused to wear a disguise. Then again, if I was a shadow wielder I’m not sure I’d walk around in anything but black, either.
With how Xaden's powers work, the color of his clothes should not matter. Fluorescent yellow clothing is just as hard to see as black clothing when there is absolutely no light reflecting off of it. This seems to imply that Xaden turns invisible in shadows, and dark clothing helps him to do it.
This interpretation is confirmed as correct when they enter the Archives.
“Just show us the way. We’ll do the rest,” Xaden says. He disappears the moment we cross the threshold, sticking to the shadows along the dimly lit walls. I can just see the vague outline of his shape if I look closely, but it’s almost shocking how well he blends into the darkness.
Or maybe it’s that the rest of the space is so bright, mage lights illuminating the rows and rows of bookshelves and empty study tables that stretch to the back of the cavernous dome.
Setting aside that the light sources in this brightly lit room seem to be playing by D&D rules, with set ranges that leave dim patches along the walls, what is clearly being described here is Xaden turning nearly invisible in a dimly lit spot. This means that he should absolutely have been able to hide himself and Violet back in Fourth Wing.
Then, as the group moves into the back hallways of the Archives, Xaden rejoins the group, and we get a line that reverts us to the original rules for his powers.
“Someone is going to notice all that black,” I lecture quietly as Jesinia turns to the right. This place is a fucking maze, and it all looks exactly the same.
“There’s no one here.” Xaden’s hands are loose at his sides, and he’s exchanged the swords he prefers at his back in favor of a short one, which tells me he’s prepared for close-quarters fighting. “At least not in this section.”
So he CAN’T just turn invisible. Why, then, did he refuse to wear a disguise?
I feel like Yarros wrote some version of the heist while she was still working out the limits of Xaden’s powers for Fourth Wing. Perhaps, at some point, Xaden could turn invisible, or perhaps she was leaving it open-ended until someone pointed out plot holes that this created. A good writer would have combed through later drafts of the heist to ensure that the contradictory moments were removed.
Prince Plot Coupon
One of the obstacles that the heist must bypass is that the sublevel vault has a special ward. Only the king of Navarre - or members of his bloodline, or individuals that he or said relatives are in physical contact with - can bypass this ward.
This is the utilitarian function for Aaric’s character that I mentioned back in Chapter 8. Despite the immense emphasis put upon him at his introduction, he has amounted to nothing more than a mob character. His only prior contribution to the story was in Chapter 16, when he revealed the circular logic that put him on Violet’s team. After the heist, he will fade into the background and become just another mob character.
On a first read, it was painfully obvious to me that Yarros invented a obstacle to make the heist seem dangerous and challenging and then invented Aaric so that said obstacle could be invalidated with minimal effort. On a reread … well. It’s possibly much worse than that.
False Revelation
“I saw Jesinia,” he says quietly. “The good news is she knows where the vault is. There are wards, but she knows how to get through them, too. But the bad news is we need someone in King Tauri’s bloodline to do it. They’re not just in some sublevel vault. They’re in the royal one.” His shoulders dip in defeat. “I’m sorry, Violet.”
I look over at Eya’s boots. There’s nothing I can do to protect her now, but I can protect what she fought for. “Then it’s a good thing we have access to a prince who happens to hate his father.”
At this point, it should be blatantly obvious that Yarros means Aaric, right? After all, she expects us to remember and care about all the Red Shirts whom she introduces, forgets about, and then kills off. The fact she didn’t spell out who Aaric is must mean that she knows we know whom Violet is talking about.
Except, no. That is not the case. Yarros plays the pronoun game to make Aaric's introduction to the heist seem like a big reveal. (The all-caps words are italicized for emphasis on the original text.)
“It’s soundproof when the door is closed, assholes,” Xaden growls. “And what the fuck is HE already doing here?”
“HE doesn’t know why he’s here,” Bodhi is saying. “I just ordered him out of flight lessons.”
I hop off the desk and hurry to the door as Ridoc and Sawyer pick themselves up and split, revealing Bodhi, Rhiannon, Imogen, and Quinn across the hall.
Aaric stands between them all, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest.
What is the point of burying the lead? We all knew they needed Aaric by this point. Why act as though this is a surprise to anyone?
This reads as though there was a draft of the story where Aaric’s parentage was a mystery for Violet to solve (or, at least, a mystery for Yarros to lie to the audience about with pronouns and other lazy tricks), which would only now have its answer revealed.
The Quarrel
Aaric and Xaden hate each other on sight.
“You know what’s happening out there, and you came here for a reason, right?” I say to Aaric, putting myself in front of Xaden. “Help us do something about it.”
“You have no idea what he did to Alic!” he seethes.
“Your brother was a craven, murderous prick.” Xaden hooks his fingers into my waistband and tugs me backward, setting me slightly behind him before he shoves Aaric through the wards and into the hallway. “And I’m not sorry I killed him.”
Oh shit. I did not see that coming.
…
Three hours later, we’ve gone over the plan until we know not only our parts
Yes. Out of nowhere, we have this bombshell reveal that Xaden killed a character we’ve never met, whose only connection to this story is being the older brother of a character who’s only made contributions to two previous scenes.
And yes, Yarros follows this revelation with a scene break, and carries on with the heist as though the violent outburst never happened.
For the rest of the heist, Xaden and Aaric bicker. Aaric repeats how much he hates Xaden and does petty things to irritate Xaden. Xaden tells Violet how it was totally justified and actually heroic for him to kill this Alic person. It contributes nothing to the heist except to bog down the pace of the text.
This is also a conflict that does not get any further focus or resolution in this book. Later, Xaden will agree to conceal Aaric’s true nature as the king’s third son, but he is really agreeing with Violet when he does so, not mending bridges with Aaric. That’s the last two the time of them interact in any meaningful way.
The inclusion of this conflict is so bizarre. It puts me in the mind of how Yarros tries to convince us that her Red Shirts are actual characters moments before killing them (as was the case with, say, Eya), yet she allowed Aaric to live.
Aaric is important to Yarros. She put effort into his backstory. Chapter 8 shows she put a lot of thought into his appearance. She arranged a personal conflict with Yarros’s Bad Boy Love Interest …
Because, in a previous draft, Aaric was also a love interest.
The Promised Prince
I don’t have access to Yarros’s author notes, but when one takes the evidence on the page and considers the other editing mistakes, pieces start to click into place.
The amount of focus Aaric gets upon his introduction rivals the amount Xaden got on his introduction.
Yarros established personal history between him and Violet.
Violet's dedication to keeping his secret builds a bond of trust between them.
He is a prince, thereby playing into a common fantasy in Romance stories.
He and Xaden have personal reasons to come into conflict, which are exacerbated by Violet bringing them together. He also cannot avoid being in Violet’s orbit, due to both him being in her squad and him wanting to aid the fight against the venin.
The Romance subplot thus far has been driven by an utterly insane conflict that makes no sense within the context of the world, and it spun its wheels before arbitrarily resolving itself, almost is if it is filler.
I suspect that, in a previous version of this book, Violet had a dalliance with Aaric. He was the alternative romantic partner to tempt Violet away from Xaden (perhaps while she was shutting Xaden out for lying to her about Brennan), a Jacob to Xaden’s Edward, a Caleb to Xaden’s Peeta. He would give her the full disclosure Violet feels entitled to. Eventually, Violet was going to have to choose between the two men, and ultimately choose Xaden.
Then, something happened in the editing process. Maybe Yarros couldn’t figure out a satisfying way to resolve the love triangle. Maybe she finally conceded that her story was too bloated and shaved this romance off. Maybe she realized that Violet choosing Aaric for even a moment before switching back to Xaden would somehow imply that Violet was flawed and swiftly moved to buff out the imperfection in her perfect Sue.
Unfortunately, she neglected to remove a key argument between the two love interests, not to mention Aaric’s introduction. Maybe she thought that the argument would flesh out Aaric and Xaden more, or maybe she just couldn’t bring herself to delete elements she’s worked really hard on. Whatever the case, her negligence made for a baffling mess.
Archives Anti-Virus
“Walk softly,” Jesinia reminds us, and my heart pounds as we file into the Archives. “We have to be quick. The Archives close in exactly an hour, and if we’re in here when that door seals shut…”
I swallow the nausea that’s threatening. “I know. We’ll die.” The Archives are warded with the ultimate pest protection.
These wards have not been mentioned prior to this chapter. On the face of it, that’s not an issue. They weren’t relevant prior to this point in the series.
We also don’t get any detail as to what these wards are or do. This is lazy, but not contradictory. Yarros didn’t trust that sealing the doors of the Archives for 12 hours was urgent enough as a threat, so she made up a nebulous kill condition.
Do you know what is contradictory?
At no point is the Oxygen Reduction System, which Yarros made a point to spell out for the audience in Fourth Wing, ever mentioned. It’s not brought up as a threat. It also doesn’t come up as Violet’s team is sprinting out of the Archives to avoid being sealed in (which is particularly glaring, because oxygen is rather important to human physical activity).
Now, I am not an expert as to how long someone can stay within an environment affected by ORS before the symptoms of hypoxia set in. However, I don’t think it is a stretch to suggest that 12 hours in such an environment would not leave a human being in a particularly good position to defend oneself from arrest. The ORS alone would reasonably make being sealed in the Archives into a death sentence, if only because Violet’s team would be easy pickings the following morning.
Much like with Xaden’s shadow powers, I suspect that Yarros wrote this aspect of the heist while Fourth Wing was still being drafted. She may have originally decided that the Archives had all sorts of fantasy magic to preserve and protect its books. Eventually, she decided to go with the established, real-world principles of ORS … and forgot to update her placeholder notes from the heist.
The Takeaway
Authors make mistakes in the editing process. Sometimes, we overlook details and forget things. We skim over text that our beta-readers seemed okay with or copy-paste chunks of narrative or dialogue.
Many times, I have had beta-readers give me comments to this effect. A character who is held in awe by others and is described as a maternal and fair leader talked like a callous taskmaster. A character who was supposed to be stunned into silence was noted to be clutching her weapon. Upon going back, I would realize that I had altered characterizations between drafts but had copy-pasted details that hadn’t been obviously contradictory when I was combing through the text. It took a fresh pair of eyes to reveal where I had failed to reconcile changes across drafts.
Edit your work, people, and make sure you have good beta-readers who pay attention to details.
CHARACTERS
The Accessories
What a wasted opportunity.
Rhiannon, Ridoc, and Sawyer do not develop in these chapters, despite the fact that Violet revealing the truth to them drives the plot forward. They do exactly what they always do: validate Violet. I’ve had more narratively exciting character dynamics with my smartphone when I drop it. At least the cracks on the screen protector represent consequences for the wrong I’ve done to it.
I think that it would have been more narratively satisfying if one of the accessories had told Violet to fuck off after the truth was revealed. At least that would give the offended party some identity, with the added bonus of forcing Violet to taste her own medicine.
Imogen Violet
In these chapters, Yarros tries to assign a certain action to Imogen that flies in the face of her established character: she tells her friend Quinn (one of the Token Queer characters) the truth about the venin and the rebel children’s smuggling operation.
This is not Imogen. She would not do this.
Imogen is … credited … with this action twice over. The first time is in the narrative.
“She’ll make it.” The tension in Imogen’s folded arms tells me she’s not feeling quite as certain as she proclaims. In addition to the extra reps during our nightly workouts, she’s been more than a little short with me since I had to tell her that I spilled our secret, which then pressured her to tell Quinn, too.
Quinn took it a lot like Rhiannon, with grace and a sense of resolve.
Violet telling her accessories should not influence Imogen’s stance on not telling Quinn. We have spent enough time with Imogen to know exactly what her stance is and how resolute she is about maintaining it. She TOLD us this very thing back in Chapter 17.
“You’re eventually going to let him off the hook for keeping you in the dark, aren’t you?” She shoots me a look that says she clearly thinks I should and pulls two hairpins from her pocket. “Better answer quickly. We’re almost there.”
“Can you love someone who refuses to be open with you?” I challenge.
“One,” she blatantly mimics me, “we’re not talking about my love life. I have Quinn—my actual friend—for that.” She pins back the longest section of her pink hair with quick, efficient movements. “Two, we keep information classified all the time. You’d have the same problem with any rider you dated.”
Imogen is very comfortable with compartmentalizing information and the people who can know that information. She can bring up Quinn as someone she confides in for personal matters and then talk about keeping secrets from loved ones in the very next breath, with so little distress that she can pin up her hair in “quick, efficient movements” at the same time. This is not someone who caves to peer pressure because the same hyper-irrational kouhai she is lecturing in Chapter 17 chose to ignore her advice.
I’m going to be honest: when I first read that passage of Violet … crediting … Imogen with telling Quinn, I thought that it said that Violet pressured Imogen into telling Quinn. That was the version that would fit both their characters. It wasn’t until I doubled back to get a screenshot and complain about it on the Shadiversity Discord that I realized I had … misread.
Yes, there is a reason for the sarcastic ellipses. We are getting to it now. You see, Violet has a very clear motivation for pressuring Imogen into telling Quinn and then lying that Quinn did so on her own volition. She knows Xaden will not approve of her tell her accessories. Like many immoral people, Violet chooses to impose ammorality to hide her own brokenness. By pressuring Imogen into abandoning her own principles and then lying then Imogen did it on her own initiative, Violet does not look as bad by comparison.
Is that a harsh assumption? Don't worry. Yarros provides.
Xaden does not react well to the news that Violet told her accessories. He is barely able to contain his rage. When he finally calms himself down to a state of coherency, Violet reveals her true colors.
“Who exactly knows?” he finally asks, slowly opening his eyes.
“Rhiannon, Sawyer, Ridoc, and Quinn.”
“Quinn, too?” His eyes flare.
I hold up a finger. “That was all Imogen.”
Violet could not wait to throw Imogen under the bus.
When characterization is done properly, or at least, competently, we come to understand who the characters are as people. We begin to understand and anticipate what they will or won’t do. Imogen telling Quinn just because Violet told the accessories flies in the face of her character. Violet tearing others down to make herself feel better about herself is well within her character. So, if forced to choose between ruling this as character assassination versus ruling it as biased and misleading narration, the logic conclusion is that our narrator is a Fucking. Liar.
Jack Barlowe
A proper analysis of Jack’s behavior in these chapters needs to wait until Chapter 60. For now, I just want to sum up my thoughts of how his characterization in Chapters 30 and 31 affected the experience of my first read.
Prior to the rooftop assassination, we get this bit of setup.
I never get a chance to tell Xaden about our discovery—or lack thereof. That next Saturday, our squad is pulled into another session of land nav with the infantry, this time with First Wing, and I spend two days wandering the steep terrain of the mountains near Basgiath, avoiding Jack Barlowe—who is weirdly nice to everyone—at all costs.
“It’s like he met Malek and decided to come back a decent guy,” Rhiannon observes when we catch him tutoring first-years on the mat. “But I still don’t trust him.”
“Me, either.” The professors all seem to love him now, too.
Yarros seems to be implying that Jack is acting suspicious. Setting aside for the moment that her decision to tell us this instead of show it robs it of impact, how is what we are being told outside of the norm? Jack may have been a Murderous Sociopath Classmate in the last book, but Caroline’s one scene in that book demonstrated that Jack is indeed capable of caring for members of his own squad (or perhaps even anyone he hasn't marked as too weak to tolerate). It was also implied that that teachers liked him then, as he got away with blatant Codex violations, a couple of which were performed right in front of Professor Emetterio.
Then Jack saves Violet's life. Violet questions why he did this. His explanation addresses not only his saving her but also his change in behavior.
“Look.” Jack shakes his head and peers over at Eya’s lifeless form. “I was on the dorm’s watch for First Wing and ran when I heard the screams. And…well…riders don’t die at the hands of infantry.”
“I killed you. You have every right to throw me off the tower.” I reach behind me one hand at a time and collect two of my daggers, sheathing them slowly, bracing myself for anything.
“Yeah.” He rubs his hand through his short blond hair. “Well, that death was kind of a second chance for me. You don’t know who you really are until you face down Malek. So, the way I see this is I just gave you a second chance, too. We’re even.” He nods once, then walks away, exiting into the tower.
And just like that, Yarros killed any remaining tension that Jack’s resurrection might have incurred. He pardons the Mary Sue for killing him and thanks her for changing him with her holy light. Any lingering possiblity that he might be a threat is put to rest.
I’m going to be honest - even with a reread, Jack’s changed attitude and behavior make no sense. If Jack saving Violet’s life here calls his other actions down the line into question.
Eya
Ooohhh nnnooo. Not Red Shirt #17. She was my favorite.
I’m not going to track individual mob characters from here on out. I think you get the idea by now. Yarros introduces mob character, does nothing with them, and then rushes development prior to killing them. It’s to the point that I can just refer to these sacrifices collectively as Red Shirt for the remainder of this series without anything being lost in translation.
WORLDBUILDING
Most of the worldbuilding problems in this section are in the heist, yet there are a few odds and ends to consider.
Article 2, Section 3
Here’s the Chapter 30 epigraph text again.
Barring invasion, only riders and designated scribes are permitted in the Riders Quadrant. To enter uninvited as infantry or even healer is to welcome a swift death.
Ignoring the question of whether this means that entering the Riders Quadrant without permission means a trial ending in execution or that rider cadets are free to murder trespassers on sight, why would the sentence for trespassing in the Quadrant be this severe?
It can’t be because the Quadrant is involved in classified operations that the other branches are not. If anything, all the classified information we have been shown is kept in the admin offices or the Archives.
It can’t be because all divisions of the military are isolated from the others. The Healers Quadrant is easily accessible, and no indication has been made that the infantry would execute a rider who entered their space. The Archives are only accessible to scribes, but there is an established reason for that (the classified information handled there).
This can’t even be a preventative measure to discourage the other military branches from getting killed by dragons. Dragons coming down to the Quadrant itself is relatively rare. Riders usually need to walk all the way to the flight field. Making the flight field and other areas close to the hatching grounds off-limits makes sense, but if dragons are the reason to make the Quadrant off-limits, then all of Basgiath should be off-limits to non-riders.
Is this an official acknowledgement that the riders don't value the rest of the military, that they would butcher good men and women and deprive the war effort of those victims’ talents merely so that they can be territorial?
Sign Language
Things got really bonkers in this section.
Ridoc speaks sign language. This is implied by the fact that he is able to meet with Jesinia and communicate with her without Violet present. Later on, it will be explicitly confirmed that he does indeed speak sign language.
Aaric also speaks sign language. We see him signing.
During the heist, the group encounters a scribe named Cadet Samuelson. He speaks sign language. What’s more, the manner in which he does this - speaking while he is signing, despite the fact that he only sees Jesinia and riders disguised as scribes - shoots down my head canon theory about scribes using sign language as part of their subculture. He should not be speaking aloud if that were the case (and at no point is it indicated that he is bad at sign language and needs to revert to verbal speech to compensate). This means that I must add him to the list. I must also retroactively add that professor from Chapter 17.
Sawyer explicitly does not speak sign language, as we get two different lines that spell out that Sawyer needs Violet to translate for him. I will add a line to the tally to account for him.
It is unclear within the context of the heist scene if the remaining participants, Rhiannon and Quinn, speak sign language, but Chapter 45 will later confirm that they are fluent.
These bring the tallies to:
Deaf People: 1
Non-Deaf Speakers: 10
Confirmed Non-Speakers: 1
To compound the absurdity, the translation done for Sawyer’s sake is the first time in this series that the translation of sign language has been acknowledged. It is done almost casually, and it does not impede the flow of the dialogue. This eliminates the possiblity the Yarros made nearly everyone a fluent speaker as a shortcut - she is clearly capable of folding in translations without disrupting the narrative. She is deliberately arranging things so that only one person doesn’t speak sign language, all to service her virtue signal in Chapter 45.
Draconic Agency
The rider leadership’s efforts to keep Violet and Xaden separated cross a line in Chapter 30.
On Saturday, not only is Xaden on duty in the ops room, but Mira is on patrol for the majority of my visit, and the weekend after, our squad is dropped into the Parchille Forest amid the changing leaves without supplies and told to walk our way out.
Message received. Tairn and Sgaeyl won’t be denied, but Xaden and I only get to see each other when we play by the rules—Varrish has determined that we’ve broken too many.
The next weekend, I have to choose between my squad receiving a zero if I don’t participate in a cat-and-mouse evasion operation against Third Wing in the Shedrick Woods and flying to Samara for Xaden.
It’s the very scenario Mira predicted last year when she learned I’d bonded Tairn—being forced to choose between my education, my squad, and Xaden and Sgaeyl. Tairn makes the choice before I can bludgeon myself about it.
We stay, but he’s fucking miserable the next day when Threshing comes, and I can’t blame him.
The rider leadership has influenced a dragon’s behavior by bullying the rider. Given that Tairn was not sanctioned by the Empyrean for threatening to kill Solas and Draconis in Chapter 19, the logical conclusion is that Draconis attempting to do this very thing with Andarna was indeed a bridge too far for the Empyrean’s tastes. Why do they not intervene when a dragon’s ability to see him mate (something he and his rider were given special exemptions for precisely because of how important it was) was compromised?
Come to think of it, this also exacerbates the ridiculousness of rider education. The leadership will fail a whole squad? So what? They are suffering from a shortage of bonded dragons at the moment. Is the leadership seriously going to ground four dragons, one of whom is Tairn, for an extra year just to prove a point to their riders?
PROSE
Without the cooperation of the Empyrean, we’re stuck.
Does Yarros not understand the power dynamics that she spent a book and a half developing? (This could be a Violet issue, but for Violet to make this mistake would be to acknowledge she is not a “rational woman” or “fucking clever”.)
The actually dynamic is, “With the cooperation of the Empyrean, all our problems would be solved.” This is a profound difference. The original pretends that rebels and dragons must unite to overcome the rider leadership. The truth is that the rebels’ efforts would be eclipsed, and the rider leadership’s protests would be irrelevant, if the dragons actually cared to get involved in the venin conflict.
END OF PART 1
Chapters 35 and 36 deal with the aftermath of the heist and the end of Part 1 off this book.
I like the concept that these chapters go for. Violet took a bold risk with the heist. She overextended. Now she must suffer the consequences for her actions, along with a corresponding darkest hour. Xaden’s efforts to rescue her tips his rebellion past the point of no return. In concept, this could have made for a thrilling climax of a much shorter book, or perhaps the end of Act One of this book if Yarros had gutted all of the filler from preceding chapters.
Concepts are great. Execution is another matter.
After the virus bombing this book has sustained, it should come as no surprise that Chapters 35 and 36 are rancid sludge. The slightest spark of brainpower on the reader’s part burns everything these chapters try to achieve to ash. As if actively trying to outdo the mess that was the heist, Yarros delivers scenes that are actively self-destructive to not only themselves but the entire narrative, compounding error upon error. Characters are assassinated, worldbuilding breaks, worthless payoffs squander what little setup was done, and Violet sinks into outright psychopathy even as as her Sue-ness is spat in the audience’s faces.
I originally wanted to do these two chapters all in one go, but that simply isn’t possible. The post would be too long. In an attempt to keep the analysis manageable, we will do Chapter 35 on April 26th, and then Chapter 36 will follow on May 3rd. May 10th will then see an intermission that recaps Part 1 and looks ahead to Part 2.
After that … we all deserve a break. We’ve learned a lot in the 3 months it’s taken to do Part 1. It’s important to take time off to unwind. I will therefore be taking the remainder of May to do a three-part post-mortem on another fantasy novel: A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark. This was a book that has a great premise and an engaging world, yet sadly, it comes apart at the seams the farther one goes into it - and I suspect the core of its issues is that Clark simply wasn’t ready to publish a full-length novel.
June 7th will then see us dive into Part 2 of Iron Flame. I’d very much like to finish the whole book before September, but we’ll see where things go. Much like Fourth Wing after Threshing, I found that I couldn’t remember much after the end of Part 1, but judging just by the things we had to flash forward to during Part 1, it is going to be no less of a bumpy ride.
That’s quite a ways ahead, though. Just Chapters 35 and 36 lie in our immediate future.
Have a good week, everyone. Take care, and I hope to see you all soon.
