Iron Flame (Chapter 37 & Chapter 38)
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
Part Two of Iron Flame opens another prophecy-style dream sequence. Violet wakes up. We are then hammered with another scene of pornography.
(No, I am not joking or being hyperbolic. That is precisely how Chapter 37 starts.)
After the pornography, we are shown that Riorson House (the castle in Aretia) is now housing all of the cadets who fled from Basgiath. Violet and Xaden attend a meeting with the Aretia rebel leadership, who are less than pleased that Xaden has stung Melgren’s nose and given away their location, all for the sake of rallying untrained cadets. Xaden tells them that they will just have to deal with it and open a new rider training school in Riorson House. The meeting - or, at least, Violet’s involvement in it - ends when Violet senses Andarna waking from the Dreamless Sleep.
Violet climbs up to the place where the dragons from Basgiath are all nesting and meets Andarna. We quickly get confirmation that Andarna shall hereafter be characterized as a stereotypical teenager. Violet then learns that Andarna is physical disabled: her wings have grown improperly, making it hard for her for fly and impossible for her to ever bear a rider.
The Aretia rebels begin running their impromptu rider academy. Violet attends her first Battle Brief, which is taught by Devera and Brennan. The class is interrupted by the approach of an unfamiliar riot of dragons. It turns out that this riot is led by Mira. Violet readies herself for battle, but Mira instead embraces her as soon as she lands, apologizing for not immediately understanding that Violet was warning her about the venin back in Chapter 20. She and her fellow riders have come to join the rebels. Mira then sees that Brennan is alive and reacts by punching him in the face.
PORNOGRAPHY
With the pornography in Chapter 27, there was a literary topic worth discussing. Yarros was pretending that her masturbatory material was a payoff to the Romance subplot. It was, in the end, a pathetic attempt to hide her inability to write a resolution, but at least lying to the audience represented a degree of care and effort.
Here? There’s no effort. Violet wakes up next to Xaden, she decides she wants sex, and then we are subjected to five pages that were most likely typed out with one hand. The narrative forgets about said sex as soon as the next scene starts.
Back in the Prelude of this series, I said that the pornography in Iron Flame reads uncomfortably like a barely fictionalized version of Yarros’s personal sex diary. This scene is why I came to that conclusion. Yarros’s first and only priority was to share the sexual exploits of a character who is, for all intents and purposes, her. So eager was she to share this that she couldn’t be bothered to justify it within the narrative.
PLOT
Part Two (?)
Chapters 37 and 38 are, in many ways, a rehash of Chapters 1 and 2. With only slightly more exposition, they could have served as the opening for a new book in the series. They certainly don’t continue the story of Part One. We are going into a brand new story, albeit one in continuity with the overall series.
I’ve heard (via KrimsonRogue’s review of Fourth Wing) that Yarros originally wanted The Empyrean to be a trilogy, and that it bloated up to five books. Seeing this opening, I can’t help but wonder if she actually had ambitions for a far more massive epic - perhaps seven or more installments - only to be discouraged by her editors or some other party after she’d already done treatments for more books, thereby forcing her to smash different books into single volumes.
Selective Reset
There is another possibility for the disconnect between Part One and Part Two: perhaps Part Two is the Iron Flame that Yarros actually wanted to write. However, that would not have been compatible with the end of Fourth Wing. Perhaps Yarros wrote Part One just to reposition all the pieces on the board so that she could tell the story that she actually wanted.
The reason I suspect this is how hard Chapters 37 and 38 fall over themselves to scrub the fallout of Part One, without actually restoring the characters or the world to their positions from the end of Fourth Wing. Yarros got what she wanted out of Part One: she rearranged the game board. Now, much like Clark erasing the consequences of action scenes in A Master of Djinn, she is eliminating the consequences of this rearrangement, clearing the way for a story that would otherwise be incompatible with Part One.
With the arrival of Mira at the end of Chapter 38, all of the people whom Violet has designated as Good have been transplanted from Basgiath to Aretia. This should have massive consequences for Aretia, for Navarre as a whole, and for the fundamental structure of the narrative. Yet, somehow, those consequences do not manifest.
Yarros is aware that this is a problem. Her chosen solution is to gaslight the audience, using the very same procedures she laid out for us in Chapter 25 while trying to make Violet seem clever.
She has a character acknowledge the consequences, only to immediately discredit that character.
She deflects the discussion by making nonsense arguments that don’t actually address the problem at hand.
She attempts to distract the audience by shifting the focus back to things Violet is emotional invested in.
Let’s go over the two big selective resets.
The Rebels’ Secret Base
Discredit
Recall, back in Chapter 36, that I pointed out that there was no way that the riot flying from Basgiath to Aretia went unnoticed.
This is how Yarros acknowledges that very problem.
“Secure?” Hawk Nose snaps. “You bring a hundred riders and two hundred dragons here and have the nerve to say that word?” His eyes narrow on me. “You may as well have handed Melgren a map of our location. Or was that what she was truly after?”
After the wheels of the scene spin through Xaden vouching for Violet, we also get this.
“We’ve already doubled patrols to the border, which leaves no one here to fight should Melgren launch an attack on us.” She swings a finger at Felix. “And don’t start with your ‘Melgren doesn’t know we’re here.’ All the rebellion signets on the Continent can’t hide a riot the size of a thunderhead. We have no wards, no forge, and children running amok in the hallways!”
All valid points. Melgren should absolutely know where they are. Yarros was also kind enough to call attention to the fact that Aretia was not all all prepared for such a massive influx of riders. She failed to mention the resource strain that a hundred riders and two hundred dragons would impose (don’t worry, she’ll do that a little later), but what she did call out was enough to be going off of.
Then Yarros discredits the character delivering these arguments.
“Cadets who are acting with more composure than you are.” Xaden tilts his head. “Get a grip.”
The clear implication here, given Hawk Nose’s comment about “children,” is that anyone who thinks about these issues is childish. Dear audience member, surely you are not childish? Therefore, you will not question Yarros.
Deflect
Xaden follows up his dismissal of Hawk Nose’s reasonable complaints with this:
“Melgren isn’t coming. Even if he knew where we are—which he doesn’t—he can’t risk his forces coming after us when the kingdom is reeling from wyvern carcasses we left up and down the border. Half the riders he plans on having in three years are here. He might want to kill us, but he can’t afford to. And as for Violet”—he lets go of my hand and rips at the buttons of his flight jacket, then tugs his neckline down, exposing the scar on his chest—“if you want to confine her, question her, then it’s me you start with. I bear the responsibility for her and any decision she makes. Remember?”
He spews a bunch of nonsense answers about Melgren not being an issue, ignores the issues of them not having wards or a luminary, and then guides the discussion towards the matter of Violet being trustworthy.
(I will return to his nonsense answers in a moment.)
Distract
Over the next page, Violet reels from the implications of Xaden taking responsibility for her. She feels insecure about how she brought them all to this point. Xaden then flexes his authority as the prince of Tyrrendor (oh, we will come back to that, don’t worry) to end the discussion.
Why It is Nonsense
Let's go through the nonsense line by line.
“Melgren isn’t coming. Even if he knew where we are—which he doesn’t—
Xaden was just told that saying, “Melgren doesn't know,” is not a satisfactory answer. He does not provide any evidence to support him standing his ground. His response to arguments as to why Melgren knows exactly where they are is just, “Nuh uh, he doesn't know!”
—he can’t risk his forces coming after us when the kingdom is reeling from wyvern carcasses we left up and down the border.
There are two ways why this is not an adequate response.
The first is simply, “Why can't he?” The control of information in Navarre is handled by the scribes, not the riders. The cat is out of the bag for keeping the secret from military personnel along the border (we’ll come back to this), but they can easily prevent the information from spreading. Melgren doesn’t need riders for that - he needs infantry to lock down traffic away from the border until the cleanup is concluded and non-military witnesses are dealt with. Plus, he can simply redeploy riders from other bases (the venin and wyverns only come from the east, and Tyrrendor relies on geography for defense anyway, so he can draw on riders from the north, west, and central Navarre to aid him) and petition the Empyrean for more dragons. Melgren has no shortage of assets he can use.
Second - how long does Xaden think it takes to clean up a carcass? He and Sgaeyl hunted and delivered these wyverns themselves over the span of a few days. It will, at most, take only a couple dragons to throw each wyvern back into Poromiel and immolate any remaining traces. Melgren’s forces could have finished that up in the time it took to fly from Basgiath to Aretia.
Half the riders he plans on having in three years are here. He might want to kill us, but he can’t afford to.
Oh, Xaden. You sweet, summer child. The best case scenario is that, yes, Melgren can’t kill you … until he has given you a chance to surrender.
Melgren cannot afford to leave you be. As you yourself have pointed out, you have something very precious to him. He will come to take all of those riders and dragons back. He will fly to Aretia and offer to explain himself. He will then explain, in clear terms, why Navarre has adopted its policy of isolationism. Your defectors are not going to hold the line when he explains that this policy kept their friends and family alive for all this time and is the only hope for their continued survival. Everyone knows that Melgren can SEE THE FUTURE. They will trust his word over yours. Very few riders will remain on principle - they have, after all, been indoctrinated in the same culture as Melgren, and only supported you due to knee-jerk outrage. You will be left with a tiny pool of traitors who can then be slaughtered.
(Maybe the dragons who defected could force your riders to say, but then you would have a large number of riders who are resentful slave soldiers. Melgren will have kneecapped you.)
The worst - and far more likely - scenario is that Melgren just slaughters you all. After all, it’s not like you have a transition plan to return these cadets to his forces. They are dead to him. Worse, their flying about makes defending Navarre harder, if for no other reason that any rebel children involved with such activities with damage his future sight. If he is going to lose you all either way, at least he can wipe the slate clean and ensure he’s getting accurate visions again. Melgren ultimately has far more to gain by killing you all than by ignoring you.
Doubling Down
In the very next chapter, during the Battle Brief scene, Yarros has Violet discussing the desertion with her classmates.
“Did you guys get letters to your families?”
My friends couldn’t give out our location, but they could warn their loved ones to leave the border region, or just leave. I wouldn’t put it past Melgren to start executing the families to punish those who deserted
How did those letters get delivered?
Does Navarre have a postal service that runs to and from this city that is supposed to be in ruins? Or did Aretia send out riders to deliver messages?
The mere act of sending all these letters will expose their locations. Whether there are unauthorized postal workers running about or dragons rushing from place to place, the regime that is actively trying to control the spread of information will notice this. One or more of the people delivering these letters will be captured and interrogated, and then Melgren will know exactly where the rebels are.
That’s before we consider Melgren’s future sight. Remember, in Chapter 2, it was three rebel children who brought word of current events to Xaden. They didn’t send a single messenger. Whatever the effective radius of the rebel children’s nullification effect may be, it clearly does not extend far enough to allow anyone traveling to or from Aretia to evade Melgren’s visions. We are given no indication that even one rebel child is working on letter delivery, let alone multiple trios of them. Every single letter should therefore appear in Melgren’s visions before they even deliver said letter.
Speaking of Melgren, he failed to slaughter the rebel children previously, even when he was given every reason to do so. I think the families will be just fine.
Mira
Mira and her group of riders found Aretia because Xaden found them and told them.
Regardless of whether Xaden is now doing recruiting runs all along the border or not went back to Samara, there are two glaring issues here:
How was he not caught, and how were he and the riders he recruited not followed back?
Are we really supposed to believe that not one rider or dragon among these eager new recruits is a turncoat?
This latter point is all the more glaring when Yarros has Mira explain that they were ALLOWED to defect.
“Leadership decided letting us go was a safer choice than letting us stay and talk the others into leaving, or worse, leaking information, and besides, it wasn’t really our choice, was it?” She glances back at Teine.
Let’s set aside the fact that this statement embodies this book’s contradictory handling of draconic agency. The leaking information point is nonsense. By letting these riders go, the leadership has given them free reign to fly anywhere in Navarre and LEAK INFORMATION about the venin. The only way this nonsense can be justified is if the rider leadership is using this wave of defectors to plant a double agent in the ranks of the Aretia rebels. They are covering up this subterfuge by (correctly) assuming that the defectors are idiots who will accept any excuse for the leadership’s seeming permissiveness at face value.
Bonus Round
Because Yarros is exceptionally generous, she manages to repeat this entire cycle of gaslighting and doubling down in the span of half a page. Near the end of the Battle Brief, before Mira shows up, we get this:
Our forces have doubled their patrols at the borders of Tyrrendor”—he rubs his thumb along the bottom of his jaw—“but we feel confident that our location is still secret.”
“Even with flying the Continent’s largest riot across Navarre?” someone from First Wing asks.
“Tyrs are loyal,” Sloane says, her chin rising. “We lived through the last rebellion. Whatever we see, we’ll keep to ourselves.”
Brennan nods. “The good news is: as far as our extensive sources can tell, your families have not been targeted, and we are reaching out with not only your letters but offers of sanctuary. If they’re willing to risk stepping into the unknown, we’ll work to get them here.”
Discredit: Have Sloane, a native of Tyrrendor, assert her superior knowledge of her own people over this nobody from First Wing.
Deflect: Put the focus on the Tyrrish, drawing attention away from all the people of other provinces who would have seen the riot flying towards Tyrrendor on a vector that overlaps with Aretia.
Distract: Dangle the sanctuary offer.
Nonsense: Are we really supposed to believe that no one outside Tyrrendor saw the dragons flying into Tyrrendor on a vector that overlaps with Aretia? Also, we know that not all Tyrrish joined the rebellion, as there are Tyrrish riders who are not rebel children. It would only take one loyalist to alert Navarre.
Doubling Down: Now we also have people offering to share the location of the rebels. On top of the previous risk of capture and interrogation, it would only take one loyalist family of a rebel cadet to expose Aretia. (Also, wouldn't some of these cadets have riders as family members? Surely, the odds of them being loyalists would be even higher than the other cadets’ families.)
Jean Grey School for Higher Learning
Discredit
And what do we do with all these cadets?” Battle-Ax asks wearily, rubbing the bridgeof her nose. “Gods, you brought us Aetos and scribes. It’s not like we can send them out to battle wyvern and venin.”
Valid points. This is a rebel movement is not equipped to train these cadets, nor can they deploy them.
Unfortunately for common sense, Yarros has already discredited the objections of the council with the veiled accusation of childishness. By then having Xaden flex his authority, she also gave him the final word in all matters. Objectors are discredited by his mere decision to disagree with them.
Deflect
“I also brought you four professors, and it’s not like you’re without your share of knowledge,” Xaden replies. “I’ve already questioned the scribes. They can be trusted, and Cath vouches for Aetos. As for the other cadets, I suggest you get them back into class.”
Xaden shifts the focus away from the issues by telling these rebels that they can be teachers, ignoring the fact that these leaders of a military rebellion surely have more vital work to be doing.
Distract
It is here that Andarna wakes up, ending the scene.
Nonsense
Four professors, Xaden? What four?
Devera and Emetterio are the only two established Good Teachers who came. In the Battle Brief scene, we are told Kaori stayed behind. Neither Grady nor his RSC class are not mentioned at all in Part Two, so he must have stayed behind. Nolon is a Bad Teacher now, and Chapter 59 confirms that he stayed behind.
Where, then, is Yarros getting the figure of four teachers from?
I think this may be an editing mistake. Four professors were named in Chapter 36 for the exodus - Devera, Emetterio, Kaori, and Carr. Given how, after Nolon became a Bad Teacher, there were exactly four Good Teachers, I’m guessing that a past version of Chapter 36 had one of the two scenarios:
Grady was present instead of Carr, and he and Kaori proudly stepped forward along with Devera and Emettrio to join the rebellion.
Carr was always one of the four teachers, but he was originally doing to repent his ways as a Bad Teacher and joined the rebellion.
I personally lean towards the later scenario. Violet is going to start undergoing more Signet tutoring from Chapter 40 onwards, and the teacher who replaces Carr has less character than him. Much like with Sawyer taking Liam’s place and Jesinia’s love interest, it feels like Carr’s replacement was a rush job by Yarros so that she wouldn’t need to follow through on the ripple effect of Carr dropping out of the story.
A version of the story where four Good Teachers came to Aretia could have been great. A versio of the story where only Devera and Emeterrio came could have been great. Sloppy editing (and, possibly, lazy shortcuts for the revisions) is not great.
Deathly Hollow
Violet just … goes back to school … again.
There are no obstacles to this. There are no staffing or resource shortages (none that impact the plot, at least). The rebel leadership and the professors who defected just work everything out over the span of a montage paragraph in Chapter 38. After that, it’s smooth sailing.
So … what was the point of leaving Basgiath?
Yes, it makes sense in terms of logical cause and effect. Violet and her allies couldn’t exactly stay in Basgiath after everything that’s happened. At the same time, the rebel leadership is right about the cadets not being ready for the battlefield. Aretia needs to establish a new Riders Quadrant in order to move the story forward.
My issue here is that, by having it be this easy to establish a new Riders Quadrant, Yarros is clearly prioritizing the Magical School trope over good storytelling. She’s refusing to let this story naturally evolve. She’s also refusing to engage with the potentially great story of the struggles involved in recreating Basgiath in Aretia. She’s just swatting away consequences and forcing the story to go in her desired direction.
What’s bizarre about this is that Violet, in particular, should not be going back to classes. She has to decipher the journal and figure out how to get Aretia’s wardstone working, as Yarros so kindly reminds us.
“Any luck on the wardstone?” Rhi asks, and every head turns. Even Aaric and Sloane look over their shoulders.
“I’ve translated the section we need three times, and I think I’m close.” My smile echoes theirs because I think I might actually have it. “I know it’s been three days, but I’m a little rusty, and it’s the oddest form of magic I’ve ever read about, which is probably why it’s never been done twice.”
“But you think it will work?” Sloane asks with blatant hope in her eyes.
“I do.” I nod, straightening my shoulders like the weight of their expectations is physical. “I just need to be sure it’s right.” And I’d better be right. Those wards are our best defense if wyvern crest the Cliffs of Dralor.
Why is she going to class? Why is she not devoting all of her time and energy into finishing this translation? She can do makeup classes after she has saved them all from annihilation.
The Deathly Hallows gets flak for being the Harry Potter book where Harry and friends go camping for a few hundred pages, yet at least Rowling committed to cause and effect. Harry dedicated himself to the Horcrux hunt after Dumbledore death. What’s more, when Voldemort took power, Harry was made a fugitive. For him to have gone back to Hogwarts would have been suicidal. For him to go spend a year at another magical school have been an anticlimax. For him to go camping, have various misadventures, and only return to Hogwarts when he learned of a Horcrux there, was a natural progression of events.
Andarna (Heavy Spoilers)
I’ll lay it out for you up front: the fact that Andarna can’t fly now and will never be able to bear Violet’s weight is narratively pointless.
This conflict resolves itself almost entirely off-screen. I can’t tell if Yarros included it to virtue signal about physical disability, because she had no other ideas of how to keep Andarna out of the action for the bulk of Part Two, or some combination of the two, but this book would be better off without it. All it adds is bloat.
However, that is not the reason I put a Heavy Spoilers tag on this section.
Chapters 63 and 64 will crank Violet’s specialness up even further by cranking up Andarna’s specialness. You see, Andarna is not just a juvenile dragon who was allowed to bond with a rider despite the dragons apparently being terrified of riders learning more about their hatchlings. She’s a rainbow dragon. She can change her color to that of any other dragon and blend in with her surroundings. (Yes, that technically makes her a chameleon dragon, but that term doesn’t really capture the ridiculousness of this situation.) Her being a rainbow dragon is pivotal to resolving the climax.
This is a twist that comes completely out of nowhere, and it is ultimately the reason I stopped making excuses for this book and consigned it to a 1/10. (Yes, I was making excuses for this book on my first read, contrary to what my critique thus far might indicate.) Yarros very obviously made this up at the very end. I know this because she felt compelled to explain her brilliant twist to the audience, insisting to us that, yes, it does make perfect sense, regardless of what common sense tells us.
This was bad enough on a first read, when I thought she did no foreshadowing for it. However, on a second read of Chapter 38, I found this snippet, which comes when Violet first lays eyes on Andarna after the Dreamless Sleep.
Grass moves in front of her snout with every gust of her exhale, and she looks quite content with her scorpion tail curled around her. And kind of … green?
No, her scales are still black. It must be an adolescent thing that they’re so shiny she reflects some of the color around her.
This is not adequate. A writer can get away with subtle nudges to build up to a reveal, but a throw-away line like this isn’t enough when it is buried in a book this bloated. Much like Jack with the orange allergy, it reads as though Yarros pulled a resolution out of her ass as she went along and then doubled back to slap in random lines so that she could claim it was all planned. She’s not engaging us with mysterious clues or deepening our understanding through layers of lore. She’s just trying to fool the audience into thinking her work is clever.
CHARACTERS
Violet
The emotional and mortal validation power fantasy had devastating consequences in Part One, and Yarros is already making it clear that she has no intention of dialing things back.
A common trend with Mary Sues is for the writers to fake flaws and consequence by having the Mary Sue become insecure. She feels guilty over things that are not within her control. She becomes jealous over “romantic rivals” who are nowhere close to competition to her. She fears just how powerful she is. She shuns responsibility - not out of laziness or because she genuinely believes herself to be unqualified, but because she is too virtuous to seek power.
These may superficially seem like flaws and opportunities for character growth, yet all of them are overcome by validating the Mary Sue, rather than by her growing as a person. She is absolved of guilt over the things she can’t control, because, after all, she was never responsible for them in the first place. She lets go of her jealousy when her love interest assures her that she is the best. She accepts just how awesome and powerful she always has been. She accepts the Mantle of Responsibility because circumstances make it virtuous for her to do so.
For Part Two of Iron Flame, Yarros opts to go with both guilt for things Violet can’t control and pointless jealousy. The Jealousy conflict won’t start building momentum just yet, but the guilt starts as early as the meeting with rebel leadership on Chapter 37. To end her first round of gaslighting the audience, Yarros has Violet draw this conclusion:
My gaze falls to the floor as they continue to shout in Tyrrish. I brought the cadets here. I was the one who got caught stealing Lyra’s journal. I’m the one who forced Xaden’s hand, forced them all into this situation.
At first blush, this may seem like self-awareness, but any negative consequence of these actions is either bashed aside by Xaden in this scene or resolved in Chapter 38. Violet has nothing to be held accountable for. This “conflict” can he resolved just by a character turning to her and saying, “It all worked out! You did the right thing!”
This is reiterated again during the Battle Brief, immediately after Violet talks to her accessories about contacting their families.
And it’s all my fault. I’m responsible for Andarna’s wing, for forcing the exposure of the truth before Aretia was ready to act, for bringing a hundred riders here without permission, for the worry etched in Brennan’s forehead about boosting the sheep population for all the dragons I led here, and for putting a target on my friends’ families’ backs. I grip my pen so tight it groans under the strain.
How could I make every right decision last year and every wrong one this year?
Yes, Violet is to blame here, but Yarros is not actually going to engage with these consequences. Violet is just going to feel bad for a while and then realize then everything worked out for the better. She doesn’t grow or change or take any meaningful responsibility. This is just narcissistic self-induglence. “Oh, woe is me. The world revolves around me.”
Notably absent from this is any acknowledgment of Violet’s ACTUAL flaws. There's nothing about her spite or her hypocrisy. There’s nothing about pulling others down to build herself up. There’s not even anything about her trusting the wrong people (as it was Nolon who drugged her), which would have been something of a middle ground, as that was a genuine mistake she made yet could easily be absolved of.
Also, I find is exceedingly telling that Yarros wants us to think that Violet did nothing wrong during Fourth Wing. It seems more and more like she is genuinely blind to Violet having any flaws or making mistakes. She is pushing these flimsy excuses for self-awareness upon us because she cannot comprehend the possiblity that her self-insert Mary Sue could be anything but perfect.
There is a third example, also in Battle Brief, that really demonstrates how flimsy this insecurity is. It is revealed that Poromiel has recently assaulted Samara.
“Fuck it. I’ll say it,” Ridoc mutters. Then asks at full volume: “Were they looking for weaponry?”
“Absolutely.” Brennan nods. “That’s the only reason for fliers to attack Navarrian outposts directly.” He glances at me like he knows the question was really mine, and then stares in that challenging look of disapproval he mastered before the age of fifteen, daring me to rise, to stop avoiding the consequences of my own actions.
Fine. “Did the fliers attack Samara before or after the news of our…” Gods, what are the right words for what we did? “Departure from Basgiath leaked into Poromiel?”
Brennan’s stare softens in approval.
“After,” Devera answers.
The lump in my throat swells painfully, threatening to rip apart what facade of calm I have left. They attacked because they know we can’t supply them. They’re defenseless.
“It’s not your fault,” Rhiannon whispers.
“Yeah, it is.” I focus on taking notes.
This is absurd. The entire reason Violet rushed to Samara at the end of Chapter 26 was that gryphon fliers were assaulting the fort for weapons, despite Xaden already supplying Poromiel with weapons. Chapter 28 also established that the fliers aren’t satisfied with Xaden's supply, and that the fliers who deal with him can't hold back the rest of their military. With the information available to Violet, the “rational woman”, this attack was coming regardless of whether the rebels lost access to Basgiath’s luminary. She should be motivated to secure Teclis’s luminary, not wallowing in her own self-importance.
Ms. Yarros, if you want Violet to “stop avoid the consequences of [her] own actions”, how about you start with the fact she’s a Khornate demon?
Dain
Chapter 37 revives Chapter 29’s strange insistence on treating Dain as a greater threat than he is.
“And what do we do with all these cadets?” Battle-Ax asks wearily, rubbing the bridgeof her nose. “Gods, you brought us Aetos and scribes. It’s not like we can send them out to battle wyvern and venin.”
Why the focus on Dain here?
I understand a degree of suspicion - if it’s applied consistently. The rebel leadership doesn’t fully trust Violet on the grounds that her mother is a high-ranking member of the rebel leadership; them not liking Dain for being Colonel Aetos’s son makes sense. However, are we really supposed to believe that Dain is the only other cadet, out of a hundred-odd defectors, who has relatives in the rider leadership?
Why is Emeterrio not under suspicion? He was a professor at Basgiath. He is an actual cog in the machine of rider leadership, and he was complicit in keeping the venin secret. He should be called out as a far greater threat than either Violet or Dain.
Why is DEVERA not under suspicion? On top of having the same strikes against her as Emeterrio, she worked directly alongside Markahm in the Battle Brief classes. She had direct involvement in maintaining the cover-up. If any one of the defectors should be treated as a threat, it should be Devera.
(If the answer is that their dragons vouch for them, then Dain should already have been let go. That excuse applies to every single defector. Xaden himself points this out, but it shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place, not if the rebel leadership won’t acknowledge the professors as threats.)
Also, even after Dain sacrificed everything to help Violet, we get this during the Battle Brief.
The Assembly finished debriefing and clearing Dainfor attendance this morning, so he’s sitting in the front row with the section leaders. I’m glad he’s out of isolation but also glad he’s keeping his distance.
What an ungrateful bitch.
Brennan AISEREIGH
Brennan is helping Devera with Battle Brief, taking Markham’s role. Yarros thinks now would be a great time to remind the audience that she changed his last name for no reason.
“Still can’t believe he ditched your last name,” Sawyer says under his breath.
My year-mates are the only ones who know who Brennan is, and it seems Devera and Emetterio are going along with the name change as well. Maybe Kaori would have, too, if he’d come with us, but he’d looked at me, clearly torn, and said his place was with the Empyrean.
Everyone who stayed had their reasons. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
“He had to. Besides, I like his name. It’s Tyrrish for resurrected,” I reply. He’s still just Brennan to me.
Ms. Yarros, WHY did Brennan “have to” change his name? You still have yet to give a reason for that. This is Brennan’s only character trait, you could at least make the effort to provide us with a terrible excuse.
Mira
I will come back to Mira in Chapter 39. The first scene of Chapter 39 picks up right after Mira punching Brennan, so it’ll be more productive to analyze her character as a whole.
Aaric
Chapters 37 and 38 effectively wrap up Aaric’s contributions to the story. He is still mentioned, and he still does things, but his important recedes back to that of a Red Shirt.
It's a shame Yarros couldn’t manage this without making Aaric, Violet, and everyone else who knows his identity look idiotic at best and extremely self-serving at worst.
There are two points where is it acknowledged that Aaric is going to continue to conceal his true identity. The first is the non-resolution of his and Xaden's conflict.
I pause when we pass Aaric.
He’s standing off to the side of the squad, his arms folded over his chest, watching everything and everyone around him. “What now, Sorrengail?” he asks, his mouth tightening.
“He isn’t asking about the schedule,” Xaden says.
“Picked up on that.” I glance from Xaden to Aaric. “Your secret is safe with us.”
“So presumptuous.”
I shoot Xaden a glare. “It’s up to you if you want to tell anyone about your family. Right, Riorson?”
A muscle in Xaden’s jaw ticks, but he nods.
“You swear it?” Aaric bites out.
“I do,” I promise.
It’s all I get to say before Xaden takes my hand and tugs me down the wide hallway, where the crowd finally thins.
The second is when Aaric chimes in about sending a letter to his family.
Aaric doesn’t bother turning from his seat directly in front of me. “I declined the offer to correspond,” he says over his shoulder instead.
I bet you did.” I force a small smile. His father would shit himself if he knew Aaric had not only joined the quadrant but turned against Navarre.
Do you know what would be a massive asset for this rebellion, now that it is being forced to rapidly expand its operation?
Propaganda.
Do you know what helps propaganda campaigns?
Celebrity representation.
Aaric is the son of the king. Not the crown prince, mind, but still an heir. Can you imagine the psychological impact that would be had upon Navarre if he stepped into the open, announced himself as a rider while denouncing the rider leadership, and then revealed the truth to all of Navarre? Not to mention the protection that this would provide to Aretia. When Melgren finds them - and, regardless of what Yarros thinks, he will find them in short order, if he hasn’t already - the rebels have a hostage. A king so desperate to protect his son that he would deny said son the change to enter the riders is not going to let Melgren nuke the city that his son is in (and, remember, Yarros wants us to think that the rider leadership listens to the king, even if she also says that dragons are the highest authority). Melgren would be forced to engage diplomatically. Even if this doesn’t force all of Navarre to capitulate to the rebel’s demands for intervention in Poromiel, this could result in a stalemate where Navarre leaves the rebels alone in favor of fortifying the territory that they still control.
The rider leadership should not have a problem with this. If they gave Devera and Emeterrio a pass, and if they later relent and released Dain, then Aaric should not be a problem for them. If anything, they should be jumping at the chance to use him.
The only other potential downside to this is that it might provoke Melgren into doing something drastic. However, I don’t think that these characters would draw that conclusion. Xaden honestly believes that Melgren would not dare attack Aretia. He’s wrong, but the fact that he is that cocky should eliminate any reservations he has about exploiting Aaric. He should be eager to wield the propaganda tool as his disposal.
Which brings us to the character flaw: it is incredibly selfish for Aaric and Violet to want to withhold this. They are prioritizing feelings over survival in an existential crisis. Maybe they really are too stupid to realize this, but given that both Aaric and Violet are both supposed to be clever people, it is far more likely that they are just self-serving. Any character who backs them up on this is likewise self-serving, prioritizing the approval of their friends over the greater good.
Ms. Yarros, if you want Violet to feel guilty for making all the wrong choices, how about you start with this one?
Andarna
Andarna’s physical disability contributes nothing to the plot or the growth of her character. All it does is allow Yarros to bleat about physical disability does not make a person broken (which she then undermines by establishing that Andarna will never be able to do a basic task that all non-disabled dragons can do). This is tokenization at its finest. Andarna is therefore now a Token Disabled (Physical) character, on top of her previous designation as a Token Foster Child.
I strongly suspect that Yarros wrote the twist of Violet being chosen by two dragons without thinking through the implications of needing to write two dragon characters. Between the Dreamless Sleep in Part One and Andarna’s physical disability, there seems to be an active effort to keep Andarna out of the story until Yarros can invest a use for her, despite the fact that her bond to a dragon rider should make her as integral to the events as Tairn is. It’s almost as if Yarros wanted to mark Violet as special without following through on the consequences of how she got there.
WORLDBUILDING
Dragons
The Dreamless Sleep & Draconic Disability
Credit where it is due, the explanation for why Andarna is disabled does make a degree of sense.
“There are many reasons younglings do not leave the Vale. The mass expenditure of energy in Resson forced her into a rapid rate of growth. You know that. But if it had happened here, or at Basgiath where she could have been quickly, safely sheltered for the Dreamless Sleep, perhaps she would have grown as usual.” His tone is enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. He’s never this careful with his words, never this careful with my feelings. “But we flew that critical day between Resson and Aretia,” he continues. “And then we waited again to fly to Basgiath, and even then she woke several times. The elders have never seen a dragon remain Dreamless that long. And now her growth is unpredictable. There is a second set of muscles along the fronts of our wings that forms during our growth. Hers did not. The elders believe she’ll still fly…in time. Once she’s strengthened the existing muscle to compensate.”
In other words, Andarna was forced to endure a critical stage of growth in suboptimal conditions, and she suffered a growth defect as a result.
Unfortunately, that is the limit of praise I can give, as we are once again back to Yarros calling attention to her own plot holes.
If growth defects are a known thing that can happen, then why did the Empyrean allow Andarna to bond with Violet? Why was she ever allowed to leave Basgiath before she underwent the Dreamless Sleep? Why is Tairn not expressing outrage at the fact that the Empyrean’s incredibly irrational decision had left his foster daughter disabled? He values Andarna so highly that he’d bond with an inferior candidate just to thank the inferior candidate for standing up for Andarna in a situation where he and Sgaeyl were close enough to intervene. That someone else’s inaction would cause Andarna harm anyway should fill him with murderous wrath.
The twist in Chapters 63 and 64 is going to pretend to justify this. It’s a strange inversion of the issue that I mentioned in Andarna’s character analysis. Once more, something that should be treated as a mystery or used to deepen the lore is left dangling. The only difference is that the twist trying to patch up a plot hole, rather than a limp excuse of foreshadowing trying to justify an ass-pull.
Also … why does this mean that Andarna can never bear a rider?
Dragons are utterly massive creatures - and I mean that in both size and literal body mass. The weight of a rider, especially one we have repeatedly been told is smaller than other riders, should not matter in the grand scheme of things. I could understand this if it were chalked up to the pressure a rider’s weight applies to specific joints, but we never get any such explanation. If Andarna can lift herself off the ground, she should be able to carry Violet’s weight as well.
Supply and Demand
Aretia should not be ready to serve as a new dragon nesting ground, and it certainly shouldn’t be ready to do so without exposing itself to Navarre.
It’s not clear what portion of the rebel leadership is composed of dragon riders. That fact is further complicated by the fact that Xaden’s father was not a rider himself, setting a precedent that this budding military does not value riders as supremely as Navarre does. However, I am willing to make some generous assumptions:
Let’s say that Brennan and the other five members of the leadership have dragons. That’s six dragons who are permanent residents of Aretia.
Xaden and the rebel children who worked with him can also be counted as residents, though they would almost never be here. Xaden brings eight rebel children with him to the climax of Fourth Wing, and a group of three others come to Aretia in Chapter 2 of Iron Flame to bear messages. That’s twelve extra dragons.
Let’s be extra generous and double the number of rebel children. Given that there are only one hundred and seven rebel children in total, and only a fraction of that would be of age to have entered Basgiath (and, statistically, most of them should die), I think it safe to assume that there aren’t more than another twelve rebel children in all of Basgiath.
That’s a total of thirty dragons that Areta would need to feed, most of whom would not be permanent resisdents.
Now they have most then two hundred (plus an unspecified number of hatchlings and their escorts) as permanent residents. That’s not counting Mira’s defectors or any other defectors who join them down the line. It also doesn’t count the … well. We’ll get to that added burden when they arrive.
There is no way that Aretia is feeding this many dragons. Yarros knows this is a problem. She pays lip service to it without every solving it. Remember this line from Violet’s character analysis?
… for the worry etched in Brennan’s forehead about boosting the sheep population for all the dragons I led here …
This is the only acknowledgement of the resource issue. No solution is ever explained.
What’s more, by acknowledging that the sheep population needs to be boosted (by well over 500%, for those counting), Yarros explains how Melgren will know where the rebels are (outside of all the other ways we’ve covered). The only way to boost livestock populations that rapidly would be to bring them in from elsewhere. Are we really supposed to believe that not a single scribe will notice the economic impact of the purchase and transfer of enough sheep to feed a mini-Basgiath (followed shortly thereafter by the feed for such animals, since they’ll strip the available vegetation bare otherwise) in the province known for rebel activity?
What’s funny is that this is an issue that could have been hand-waved. Had Yarros said nothing, I would still have had criticisms, but the open-ended nature of the resource issue would leave the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the natural resources in the surrounding area can sustain such a large dragon population. By calling attention to a problem without solving it, Yarros once again destroys the realism of her world.
Rider Fortress
The fact that Aretia has the infrastructure to accommodate a hundred-odd riders and see to their education was slightly more believable … until, again, Yarros calls attention to the problem.
“Can we even fit all these riders here?” I ask Xaden as we pick our way through the mayhem.
“There are a hundred barracks rooms between the top three floors,” he tells me. “And that doesn’t account for the family quarters on the second. The question is if they’re all serviceable. Not everything has been repaired and rebuilt.”
Even if we assume that Yarros is misusing the word “barracks”, and what Xaden means is that there are are accomodations for a hundred military personnel (in some combination of communal barracks or individual officers’ quarters), she just broke her world … again. More specifically, she broke the rebellion.
Both the “barracks rooms” and the family quarters must have been designed for dragon riders specifically. The people tasked with defending a castle should not have to walk through the entirety of said castle to reach the defensive choke points that they are meant to hold, and the civilians should not be placed between them and the choke points. That’s why military barracks in real-world castles are typically on the ground level, often outside of the keep itself, close to whatever doors or gates they might need to rush to defend at a moment’s notice. The only logical conclusion is that these particular quarters are designed with the intent of deploying riders as rapidly as possible. In an emergency, they would simply climb up to the roof and be collected by their dragons. Civilian accommodations would therefore be displaced to lower levels to keep them out of the riders’ way in the event of an emergency deployment.
The epigraph of Chapter 37 confirms that this is indeed the intent.
Half palace, half barracks, but entirely a fortress, Riorson House has never been breached by army. It survived countless sieges and three full-out assaults before falling under the flame of the very dragons it existed to serve.
Where were these one hundred riders and their dragons during Tyrrendor’s last rebellion? Are we really supposed to believe that all one hundred riders and their dragons defected - dragons who, remember, already knew about the venin, and thus should not be as vulnerable to the revelation as their riders might be? If the riders did all join the rebellion, why did they not assert their nature as “egotistical assholes” and wrestle control away from Xaden’s father? Did not one of these rebel riders or dragons exploit their superior mobility to race ahead of the scribes’ propaganda and broadcast the truth about the venin to all of Navarre?
If we take the bit about which dragons burned the castle down as literally as possible, that would seem to confirm that the riders in Aretia were the same ones who destroyed the city. The riders (at least, a majority of them) must have remained loyal to Navarre. Why, then, did they not immediately suppress the rebellion by declaring marital law and hold the city hostage to bring Xaden’s father to heel? Why did the wait until the end of the rebellion to destroy the city?
Mending
I’m desperate to find anything nice to say about this book, so how about we praise Yarros for consistency in how mending works?
“Can Brennan mend her?” It’s my fault because I used her power in Resson. Because we’d flown that day. Because we’d had to return to Basgiath. Because she bonded whenshe was a juvenile and I interrupted her Dreamless Sleep. I could list reasons all day.
“You cannot mend what does not exist.”
This makes sense. After all, if mending could fix a physical disability, Violet would not have EDS, and Jesinia would not be deaf.
Cursed Ground
Remember back at the end of Fourth Wing, when we talked about how nonsensical it was that Aretia still belonged to Xaden?
Yarros wanted to make sure we didn’t forget.
“Then you will consider them my guests.” Xaden’s words drag me out of my self-pity. Shadows fill the floor and curl around the dais. “I do not ask permission of you—of anyone—to bring guests into my own home.” Xaden’s tone cools to glacial.
Garrick swears under his breath and rests his hand on the hilt of one of his swords.
“Xaden—” Ulices starts.
“Or did you forget that this is my house?” Xaden tilts his head to the side and stares at them in the same way Sgaeyl studies prey. “My life is tethered to Violet’s, so if you want me in that fucking chair, you’ll accept her.”
Ulices’s skin blotches while I feel the blood rush from mine.
His chair. The empty one. He’s the seventh.
Holy shit. I knew this was his house, of course, but it never really registered. This is all Xaden’s. No noble has claimed the duchy of Aretia. They all think the landis ruined, or worse—cursed. It’s all his.
I’m not going to rehash the full explanation of how ridiculous it is. You are free to revisit the review for Chapters 36 through 39 of Fourth Wing for that. Instead, I will call out a point that I’d skipped over then and a new mistake that Yarros is now relying upon to resolve the leadership meeting in Chapter 37.
First, what curse? We have very little understanding of religion, superstition, folk magic, or any other such things in Navarre that could be linked to curses. WHY would land being scorched by dragon fire lead to the conclusion that it is cursed? This might have been a fun idea, if, saw, the rebels kept sabotaging efforts to rebuild her and made everyone think the land was cursed. However, Yarros cannot seriously expect us to swallow that the brutally militaristic culture of Navarre turned their backs on such a strategic site without clearly defined reasons. (It’s particularly hard to accept when one considers that both of the real-world cities destroyed by atomic bombs, which actually do impart a sort of curse upon the land, began rebuilding efforts within days of the bombings.)
Second, why does Xaden think he has any weight to throw around here? Why do the leaders of this rebellion bow their heads before this edgy boi and his edgy Tweets? Xaden’s legal claim to this city hinges on the legal authority of Navarre. I could understand this giving him some leverage before he announced his true allegiance. He could have controlled them with the threat of going to the rider leadership and saying, “Hey, these rebels have occupied my family’s city. I’ve proven I am a loyal citizen of Navarre, and I’ve proven it again by telling you this. Go kill those people for me.” Now, though? He can’t enforce his claim by going to Navarre for help. The rebel leadership could very easily seize control here. (No, Xaden can’t control them via the brute force of his Signet, as they could stage a coup when he leaves or else find a way to assassinate him that he can’t see coming.)
PROSE
I’ve held you all for long enough, so here’s a quick reminder that Yarros doesn’t recognize the definition of the word “castle”.
Half palace, half barracks, but entirely a fortress, Riorson House has never been breached by army.
RESTORATION OF MOMENTUM
Next time, we will review Chapters 39 and 40.
Chapter 39 is a rare jewel in this series. It offers positive examples of writing. Given how little of that exists within The Empyrean, it’s important that we stop for a moment, give credit where it is due, and learn how our own work can benefit from following this example.
That being said, Chapter 39 is still horrendously flawed. Two huge twists from later in the book hinge upon the events of this chapter. One of these twists is dumb, the other plows this story into the ground, and both have their roots in Chapter 39. We will not go into the twists themselves until they surface on their own, but we will dig into the terrible setup.
As for Chapter 40, it is another wasted opportunity. Yarros went out of her way to set up an opportunity for Violet to face her flaws and grow as a character (while gaining even more power in the process). She chose instead to shift the blame, gaslight the audience yet again, and ultimately set up Violet to be handed that additional power without meaningful struggle.
It’s coming our way on June 14th. I hope to see you all then. Have a good day.
