Iron Flame (Chapter 41 to Chapter 44)
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 and Xaden bicker briefly, before Violet is dazzled by the wealth and luxury of Teclis’s palace. Teclis himself greets them warmly and offers to lend them formal attire for dinner before they begin the negotiations. It is here that Violet discovers that Catriona (whom I will hereafter refer to as “Cat”) is Teclis’s niece and that Xaden has been to Teclis’s palace many times before, stoking her feelings of insecurity. Xaden and Violet bicker some more as they walk to the rooms where they can get changed, with Violet ending the argument by comparing him to Dain and then shutting him out of their psychic link.
After Violet and Mira have changed into formal attire, there is a brief scene of Cat needling Violet while Violet feels more and more insecure. When Violet and Mira rejoin Xaden and Brennan, Xaden reveals to Vioelt that Cat’s Signet is the amplify emotions; Violet is feeling jealous and insecure because Cat is making her feel that way. Then, rather than feeding them dinner, Teclis escorts them to the open-air theater where Violet can demonstrate her powers. She is instructed to user her lightning Signet to hit a target Teclis has prepared: a magical treasure chest. However, Teclis’s guards then open the chest to reveal that the actual target is inside: a venin.
What follows next is a very confusing fight. Despite being instructed to kill the venin, alone, by hitting it with lightning, Violet instead tries to kill it with her knives, with Mira and Brennan supporting her. Mira levels up her warding Signet so that she can save the three of them from the venin’s life-draining powers. Violet then kills the venin by calling down lightning to strike the ground (which is soaking wet, due to a convenient downpour that overlaps with this fight), rather than hitting the venin.
Teclis then agrees to negotiate for the luminary. His effort to tempt Violet into staying at his palace is swatted aside without effort. His next request is that Aretia house and education 100 gryphon flier cadets, whose training academy had been destroyed by the venin.
Since gryphons can’t fly at a high enough altitude to enter Tyrrendor by air, this will require a lengthy overland trek, including scaling the Cliffs of Dralor - 12,000 feet of near-vertical cliff face, with only a narrow path that varies from 6 feet to 18 inches wide. The rider cadets from Aretia are forced to make the climb with the gryphons and their fliers as a team-building exercise. It is a tedious affair. We are introduced to new Red Shirts via lifeless conversations. There is a rather pointless sequence where Violet and company try and fail to bypass a booby trap on the path, which is immediately followed by a wyvern attack. Violet uses her lightning Signet to slaughter four wyverns with no effort.
PLOT
Luminary Subplot
This was an enormous disappointment.
Teclis has lurked in the background of the story for all of Part One. Xaden’s repeated refusals to let him even see Violet implied that he would be a significant obstacle to overcome. Yarros acted as though he had the means to force Violet to stay, whether by force or by being a tempter. This was a big deal.
And then he gives up the luminary without any serious resistance, despite Violet failing the one task she was instructed to do for the demonstration.
The Worthless Test
This is the demonstration that Teclis demands of Violet.
“How will I know what she’s capable of without you? Tecarus’s eyes narrow on Xaden. “My offer is simple. As long as you don’t step foot into the arena, Riorson, and she doesn’t leave the field until she strikes the target, we’ll open discussions for your luminary. Take the deal or leave it.”
For the briefest moment, I thought Yarros was actually going to let the limit on Violet’s Signet serve as a meaningful obstacle to the plot. Violet cannot destroy the target by any other means. To overcome this obstacle, she must level up her Signet. She must experience some epiphany and grow as a -
Oh, right. That’s not happening.
The moment that it is revealed that Violet’s true target is a venin, her inability to aim ceases to be narratively relevant. She selectively ignores the rules of the demonstration and decides that the venin must be killed in melee. She is aided in this endeavor by Mira and Brennan, which means that she’s not even demonstrating what she is capable of alone at that point. While killing the venin via electrifying the ground was clever, it does not satisfy Teclis’s demand that she hit the target. She missed the target and let AOE deal with it.
Why, then, is Teclis satisfied by this? It can’t be because Xaden chokes him out (which is what happens as soon as the fight is over). Xaden intervening in that way would technically be intervention on Violet’s behalf, so if anything, that should make Teclis even less willing to accept the results. We also learn after the fight that Teclis is holding other venin captive. Why does he not say, “That was impressive, but let’s try again. Get it right this time”?
Why has Yarros yet again wasted our time by setting up an opportunity for character growth and then ducking out of it so lazily?
Setups after Payoffs
Yarros has evolved as a writer. The days of her establishing Jack’s orange allergy with a cringey line of exposition a mere chapter before Violet exploits it are in the past. Now, when she pulls a development out of her ass, she establishes it in the same chapter, sometimes after the moment when the development is relevant.
This entire venin fight hinges of three pieces of information that Yarros has not established prior to this chapter.
Despite previously assuring us that she can’t use her Signet outside of Navarre’s wards, Mira levels up and generates a ward bubble just in time to save herself, Violet, and Brennan. The audience is told that this will happen in the epigraph of Chapter 42, the same chapter in which this development occurs. We are told that Mira can totally do the thing she explicitly said she couldn’t do if put in a situation of heightened emotions. (Rhiannon leveling up in Chapter 29 does not count as setup, as we had not been told that it was impossible for Rhiannon to do the thing she levels up to do, only that she wasn't yet at that level.)
Venin can drain magic if they are in contact with the ground. This was previously established. What was not previously established is that the magical treasure chest that held the venin was enchanted to suspend whatever was inside it in midair. Xaden knows that the chest does this (and thus delivers this exposition) because the chest was an heirloom of his family that his father gifted to Teclis. For some reason, though, he waited until AFTER the battle to explain this, despite the fact that he should have seen that chest, known what it did, and immediately asked questions that would spoil the venin reveal.
The reason that Teclis, Xaden, and the various people in Techis’s palace don’t die when the venin does the drain move during this right is that the theater is constructed of stone from lands that the venin had already drained of magic. Violet figures this out, mid-fight, and explains this to Teclis (and the audience) afterwards. The idea that the venin can’t drain magic through a surface that they’ve already drained has never been previously established, and Violet had no reason to think that this was a thing. She just jumped to another wild conclusion. (Thus, she was correct.)
Couple these slapped-on explanations with Teclis not complaining about Violet failing his test, and it’s clear that Yarros wrote this in one draft and then just added the explanations as an afterthought.
The Temptation
After ignoring Violet’s failure, Teclis opens the negotiations.
He presents his offer. Violet has to admit, for a second, that it’s tempting. Spending a few years as Teclis’s personal guard dog, monitoring the riderless wyvern who have begun flying over routinely in patterns that look suspiciously like control, in return for living out the rest of her days with Xaden, their dragons, and her loved ones on an isle committed to peace sounds perfect. She ultimately decides that it is coward’s way out. She also doesn’t think that Teclis could even deliver on his promise, given that the islands adjacent to the continent don’t accept Navarrians even as visitors.
What I just summarized seems decent, right? This sounds like a wonderful scene of back-and-forth, of Violet consumed by her emotions and weighing her options, of her accepting the facts of her situation and turning away from her selfish desires. Come to think of it, Yarros probably wrote something like this when outlining this book. I know from experience how easy it is for an emotional dialogue scene to get away from a writer. Perhaps Yarros wrote this to help herself stay on track as she worked her way through the actual scene.
Sadly, this isn’t a summary or outline. It’s what was published.
He presents his offer, and I have to admit, for a second, it’s tempting. Spending a few years as his personal guard dog, monitoring the riderless wyvern who have begun flying over routinely in patterns that look suspiciously like control, in return for living out the rest of my days with Xaden, our dragons, and my loved ones on an isle committed to peace sounds perfect. It’s also the coward’s way out and completely unfeasible. The isles don’t accept Navarrians even as visitors.
What is wrong with you, Ms. Yarros?
Did you really think no one would notice you handwaving an entire scene?
You had time to show Violet wallowing about things she can’t control in multiple scenes, but you couldn’t spare even a few paragraphs of internal struggle to show her wrestling with legitimate temptation?
You have time to detail what it means when Xaden wants Violet “feral”, but you couldn’t be bothered to write a scene that drives the plot of this bloating monstrosity of the book?!
I don’t know which is worse: that your priorities as a writer are this borked, or that you think so little of your audience that you thought no one would care that you did this.
Incompetence (and possible malice) of the author aside, this scene pisses away the greatest potential of Teclis: character growth for Violet. That is the entire narrative point of tempter archetypes. We are supposed to see the protagonist struggle with herself before making the right decision (or the wrong one, if she still has growing to do). To just skip out on the struggle entirely serves no narrative purpose.
In short, between the failed demonstration being treated as a success and this handwaving of a critical scene, Teclis has been a complete waste of the audience’s time. The luminary might as well have been sitting in the open in venin-haunted wastes, waiting for a dragon rider to swoop in and collect it.
Romance Subplot
Overprotectiveness
As recently as Chapter 40, the conflict between Violet and Xaden over Violet meeting Teclis has been engaging. Both characters have clear and understandable motivations for why they take the positions that they do. What’s more, unlike so many other conflicts between Violet and other characters (like the conflict that drove the Romance subplot in Part One), Violet’s position does not clash with the realities of her situation. She actually is the “rational woman” in this scenario. We’re not being expected to side with her purely because she is the self-insert Mary Sue and has strong feelings about something.
Unfortunately, Yarros destroys this setup by the midpoint of Chapter 41.
During Violet and Xaden’s bickering, Violet decides to remind us of Fourth Wing.
“Stop keeping me safe!” I immediately regret raising my voice with Cat in the room and try to steady my ire with a deep breath. “You never would have pulled this bullshit last year.”
Xaden absolutely “pulled this bullshit last year”. As we have covered previously, the only difference between what he did and what Dain did is that Xaden bulldozed through Violet’s protests, rather than backing down the second she showed her teeth. If anything, because Xaden broke Threshing rules to protect Violet, whereas Dain allowed Violet to deal with the consequences of her own choices, Xaden has actively violated Violet’s agency to keep her safe.
Which makes the way Violet ends the argument utterly laughable.
“If I ever see a way to keep you safe? I’ll take it.”
The fuck he will. “Do you know who you sound like right now.”
“Please, enlighten me.” He folds his arms across his chest.
“Dain.” I shut the door in his face.
So … Xaden sounds like the guy who lets Violet live with the consequences of her own actions … who only ever offers Violet options that she is free to accept or reject as she pleases … and whom she screamed at for accurately pointing out her weaknesses when said weaknesses would have killed her many, many times over without her dragon protecting her?
In one swift stroke, Yarros destroyed any credibility Violet had in this situation. Xaden is unambiguously in the right. Yes, the rebels need the luminary, but he clearly has a far better understanding on this situation than Violet does, so I’m inclined to side with him over this delusional Khornate.
Then Yarros makes this worse. A few scenes later, Xaden apologizes for being overprotective.
“I can’t fucking breathe when you’re in danger, but that’s not your fault. I should have brought you here when you asked me to.”
My lips part and I blink, certain that I misheard him."
“Now it’s your turn. Can you admit that you should have waited for me to bring you so we could have formulated a plan?” His fingers trail deliciously up my bare back.
“No.” I shiver at the touch. “I’m sorry for not telling you but not sorry for coming. We need that luminary now.”
A corner of his mouth quirks up. “Figured.”
I figured, too. Violet’s too much of a spiteful, self-centered bitch to ever admit fault.
Oh, and this gets much worse in Chapter 44. Dain tries to stop Violet from engaging with the wyverns.
“Would Riorson let you rush off into battle against gods know how many wyvern - or worse, the venin who created them - when you’re wounded?” His eyebrows rise.
“Yes.” I step out onto the midpoint of Tairn’s tail, my stomach settling at the familiar territory beneath my boots as I look back over my shoulder at Dain. “That’s why I love him.”
This is such a bizarre interaction. Did Yarros forget that she disproved this point a mere three chapters earlier?
Jealousy
A Jealousy conflict is nothing original in Romance. I wouldn’t fault anyone for saying it is cliché. However, there are good reasons why it is used so often. It deals with very relatable insecurities that many of us will experience at some point in our lives. It is also, narratively speaking, very easy to do. This is such a simple concept that it almost takes active effort to mess it up.
When one is an established Romance author who has put out nearly 20 novels, I dare say it should be nigh-impossible to screw this up.
There is therefore something grotesquely beautiful about how Yarros manages to completely kill this conflict within the same chapter that she makes it a focus of the story.
Violet’s insecurity at Xaden’s past with Cat, her jealousy at what they may have had, is not even her own fault. Cat is using magic to amplify emotions that, by the story’s own logic, Violet would otherwise brush off. Violet has effectively been drugged. This isn’t just a flat conflict that only exists to pile more validation onto the self-insert Mary Sue - it’s a conflict that shouldn’t exist at all.
There’s more I could complain about here. I could dissect how Yarros tries to amplify anticipation for the Jealously conflict by having Violet jump to irrational conclusions over Xaden knowing basic details about the layout of Teclis’s palace, or dissect how the banter between Violet and Cat, as well as between Mira and Cat’s sister, show that neither Violet or Mira have any business being near the diplomatic side of the rebellion. However, when the entire conflict is DOA, what would be the point?
The Cliffs of Dralor
Chapters 43 and 44 are entirely taken up by the scaling of the Cliffs of Dralor. They are even more pointless than the RSC exercises. At least the RSC exercises went out of their way to set up opportunities for character growth, even if Yarros squandered it. This is just filler. That’s why, up in Story, I could condense everything from these two chapters into less than half the word count of the Chapter 41 and 42 summary. There is very little of narrative value.
It Didn’t Need to Happen
Why can’t the gryphons just fly into Tyrrendor?
While we riders have been conditions in the mountains surrounding Basgiath and often fly at twelve thousand feet, the fliers can’t say the same. The highest mountain in Poromiel tops out around eight thousand feet, which explains why only the summitwing drifts would carry out the high-altitude village raids we heard about in battle brief.
Why wouldn’t ALL gryphons train for high-altitude operations? Flying isn’t like mountain climbing. You don’t need a physical objects to stand on. Why would the gryphons not train to just go up? The fact that the “summitwing drifts” do exactly this begs the question of why all gryphons aren’t trained for it. It’s not like they need to be able to endure high altitudes for extended periods, just for the few minutes or hours needed to clear geographic barriers. Arguing this is like arguing that human beings could only endure heighten G forces and become jet pilots if they lived on Jupiter for a few years first.
On that note … they can’t endure flying at high altitudes, but climbing is on the table? Are we really supposed to believe that creatures that use flight for long-range travel would have the muscles needed to mountain climb into the same high-altitude conditions that their wings, their primary form of locomotion, can’t handle?
What makes this worse is that Brennan, at the start of the climb, tries to justify this as a team-building exercise. This is a terrible idea. They are risking getting many riders, fliers, and gryphons killed, which will only put more bad blood between them at the cost of manpower.
So, why don’t they have the dragons airlift the gryphons and fliers? Dragons have already caved on this rule in this very book, transporting Jesinia and other scribes to Aretia. Why not do this vital airlift?
Tairn explains it in a manner that immediately destroys the credibility of his own answer.
“They’d never tolerate the indignity of it. Besides, all they have to do is crest the cliffs. We have wagons waiting to carry the ones who will allow it.”
Why would the gryphons object to an airlift but not object to be lugged around in a ground vehicle? What is the plan if a gryphon collapses from exhaustion? Also, if they just need to get over the cliffs, why not tolerate the indignity for that short period?
Yarros’s efforts to rationalize this exercise read like she knows it makes no sense and is desperate the plug the holes - but she fails to plug the biggest hole of all.
Why not go AROUND the cliffs?
Yarros wants us to believe that Navarre couldn’t track more than 200 dragons flying to Aretia from Basgiath. There are only 100 gryphons. Gryphons have also been established to be far smaller than dragons, and as Yarros pointed out with the bit about the summitwing drifts, they can certainly fly high enough to cross the border elsewhere. Why not have the rebel children encircle the gryphons, then have this combined group rush Navarre’s border from another point, cross Navarre's, and enter Tyrrendor from the north? Melgren won’t see them coming, and we’re supposed to think that no one else would report this massive movement. It would be far less dangerous than climbing a 12,000 foot cliff.
The Trap
About one hour before Violet’s mixed squad of riders and fliers reach the top of the Cliffs of Dralor, they encounter one of the many booby traps along the path. This one is a pressure-activated trap (there’s no indication as to whether this is a mechanical pressure plate or something magical) that affects a section of the path that’s about six feet across and shoots projectiles from the rock face. Everyone who passed through before Violet’s squad was able to run and jump this. However, Violet’s squad has a Red Shirt who is as short as she is and is suffering severely from the hypoxia. This woman has little hope of making the jump. For that matter, Violet herself is unlikely to make it.
So, naturally, Violet calls for Tairn, who lifts them around -
Nope.
Tairn comes in and slaps the pressure plate with his claw, thereby unleashing the arrows, which will surely bounce off his -
Nope.
If it’s a mechanical pressure plate, it probably has metal incorporated into its construction. Sawyer can use his Signet to -
Nope. Violet tells the audience that no one has a Signet that can help here.
Oh, it’s a magical trap! Get Bodhi down here to use his Signet on the -
NO ONE HAS A SIGNET THAT CAN HELP HERE.
Fine. What do they do, then?
Violet has Ridoc edge around the pressure area and pound a sword into the wall. Violet and Red Shirt will need to jump, grab the sword hilt, hang on by one arm as they swing back and forth (without dislodging or breaking the sword), and then let go at the right moment to launch themselves to safety … all while suffering the effects of altitude sickness.
Needless to say, this fails catastrophically. Red Shirt triggers the pressure plate, Ridoc gets riddled with arrows, and Violet dislocates her shoulder in a failed bid to pull Red Shirt to safety before Red Shift falls off the cliff.
Violet blames herself … for dropping Red Shirt. Not for this idiotic plan. Just for failing to pull Red Shirt to safety afterwards.
And to be clear, this is how Yarros wants us to read the scene. When Cat learns that Violet got a Red Shirt flier killed, she is apoplectic, but then another Red Shirt flier says,
“I saw it happen. It’s not Violet’s fault. [Red Shirt] almost killed both of the riders because she couldn’t jump the trap.”
What makes this all the more pointless is that the wyvern attack happens immediately after this. It is initiated by a wyvern chomping Red Shirt’s gryphon after Red Shirt dies. Rather than wasting 10 pages on this trap drama, the wyvern could have attacked the squad, knocking Red Shirt off the cliff while chomping on the gryphon. This would produce the same amount of death without the bloat.
Ridoc Got Shot
Do I really need to tell you that there’s no weight to this? That it’s obvious that Yarros won’t let Ridoc bleed out, no matter how much drama she heaps on his injury in the moment?
When Brennan ultimately mended Ridoc, my reaction was not relief. There was just a bland sense of, “Yeah, that went without saying.”
The Wyverns
The wyvern attack is itself pointless on multiple levels.
First, the only reason the wyverns can sneak up on the riders, fliers, and gryphons is that there is a cloud against the cliff, obscuring visibility. When Violet engages with the wyverns, though, she had Brennan issue orders to have a rider with a wind power Signet push the cloud away from the cliff. Why did they not do that earlier, thereby ensuring that the dragons could protect everyone who was climbing? For that matter, why were dragons not patrolling the outside of the cloud, towards Poromiel, to keep watch for wyverns?
We know that the wyverns were not inside the cloud to begin with because Yarros provides an explanation for why the wyverns are here. A dragon hatches in Aretia while they are climbing the cliff, thereby triggering a magical changes that converts Aretia into a nesting ground. Ignoring for a moment the question of how a dragon is hatching there already (maybe the defecting dragons brought their eggs), this is a beacon to wyverns and venin. We are supposed to believe that this brings new danger. The logical conclusion is that Yarros wants us to think these wyverns were lured towards the nesting ground. Why, then, weren’t there dragons watching to prevent this very possibility?
Let’s accept that this had to happen for a moment. Finally, we can see Violet’s lack of aim come into play, right? We were told in Chapter 40 that her hitting the wyverns in the climax of Fourth Wing relied on luck and the number of targets available. Here, there are only four wyverns, and she has no visibility. Surely she will miss at least one.
Nope. She kills all four in one shot. This is explained by a new rule that is made at the moment that Violet shots them and then properly laid out for the audience afterwards.
“Wyverns are created with dark wielder magic, and Felix said something to me about energy fields the other day. I took the chance that the lighting would be drawn to their magic, and Tairn agreed to try.”
What an absolute waste.
CHARACTERS
Violet
It is rather hilarious that Yarros expects us to believe that Violet being a jealous wreck is entirely Cat’s doing. Violet is absolutely irrational and emotional enough that she would go to pieces at the realization that Xaden had a romantic relationship before her.
Dain
We get this curious line about Dain after Violet slays the four wyverns. In response to her explaining the contrivance that allowed her to win, we get this:
Brennan’s jaw drops slightly and Dain bites back an uncharacteristic smile, reminding me of the years when he cared more about climbing trees than our curfew.
This implies that the reason that Violet distanced herself from Dain is that he is a buzzkill, which does not at all reflect what we have been shown thus far.
Cat
As one might expect for a Jealousy subplot, the Other Woman is characterized in a very unsympathetic manner. This is par for the course. After all, if the Other Woman is too sympathetic, it will undermine the payoff when the Love Interest choses to stay with the POV character.
There is one line that I do want to highlight. One of the things that Cat decides to be … well, catty … about is the dress Violet chooses to wear to dinner, which leads Violet to decide that she doesn’t like Cat.
“You went with black?” Cat stares from the doorway.
“I’m a rider.”
“Of course.” She tilts her head to the side. “I just would have chosen something more colorful. Xaden always laments how … monotone everything is at Basgiath. There’s still time to change if you would like.” Her smile is anything but kind.
And that’s it. I officially loathe her.
Remember the sheer spite that Violet has shown towards Dain? How we are expected to laugh along with her as she and her accessories put him down at every turn? How she is so devoted to her hatred that she refuses any efforts to talk about it and then doubles down when she learned that she didn’t actually have a reason to hate him?
At this point, there’s just no weight to her saying that she hates someone. What makes Cat special?
(And, no, Cat amplifying Violet’s emotions does not explain this. Violet will not walk back this assessment after learning that her emotions were played with. Even if we did entertain that possibility, it would just make the line even more pointless, as it wouldn’t even be Violet’s genuine assessment.)
WORLDBUILDING
Decadence in Poromiel
On a first read, I really liked the way that Yarros had Violet react to Poromiel. She is dazzled by the wealth and beauty on display in Teclis’s palace. She is awed by the luxury of the silk dress she is allowed to borrow for the dinner with Teclis. She is amazed that the gryphon fliers don’t undergo life-or-death trials to be selected by their gryphons. There is a clear contrast between the brutal militarism of Navarre and the world outside.
On a second read … yeah, this doesn’t make sense.
Poromiel should be more militaristic an austere than Navarre, not softer and more luxious. Navarre has spent six centuries living in safety, with only raids by the far weaker fliers and gryphons (who are only after one easily protected objective) to test them. Poromiel has been those same six centuries fighting a two-front war, one against the vastly superior dragon riders and the other against an existential threat. Navarre’s natural resources are out of the reach of the venin, while Poromiel loses resources every time the venin claim new territory. It’s not even like Navarre’s isolationism is strangling its economy. Remember, Fourth Wing established that they do trade with outsiders. Yarros tries to imply that their isolationism has hurt trade with islands adjacent to the Continent, but Chapter 41 makes it clear that the islanders are scared of the venin and have cut trade with Poromiel as well. All available evidence therefore indicates that Navarre should be softer and more prosperous than Poromiel.
It is not impossible to justify this. After all, our only exposure to the Poromish are Teclis and the fliers. Maybe Teclis is the type of noble who squanders resources on luxury as his taxpayers are stripped away from him. Maybe the fliers being soft is merely a reflection of the attitudes of the gryphons versus the dragons.
That’s the thing, though. This is our only exposure to Poromiel. Yarros is choosing to only show us examples of Poromiel being the softer culture, despite all logic indicating that they should be subjected to far stronger survival pressures.
Misplaced Hatred
We are told in Chapter 41 that the gryphon riders hate Violet and Mira because they hate General Sorrengail. Xaden claims that Violet’s life is in danger in Teclis’s court for this very reason. (I didn’t mention this in Plot because nothing becomes of this.)
Maybe this is meant to explain why Brennan changed his last name, to avoid poisoning relations between the Aretia rebels and Poromiel? If so, the name change still doesn’t make sense.
This is not an “obvious reason.” Yarros wouldn’t bother to spell it out for the audience here if it was that obvious,
Brennan doesn’t bother hiding that he’s Violet and Mira’s brother when they arrive at Teclis’s palace, implying that he’s not actually worried about Poromiel knowing who he is. (Come to think of it, any intelligence assets for Navarre within Poromiel will soon know who he is, thereby further invalidating the deception on the Navarre side of things.)
Also, the reason that General Sorrengail is hated doesn’t make sense on its own merits. This is what Cat says about the matter in Chapter 41:
“Sure. If it makes you more comfortable, we can discuss how your mother has perpetuated a lie that’s cost thousands of Poromish lives some of which your own sister is responsible for taking.”
Are we really supposed to believe that Poromiel would single out General Sorrengail for that? This would be like holding the US Naval Academy’s superintendent accountable for foreign policy decisions of the US president. There are so many people with greater relevance, authority, and agency to be angry at. Why are they not angry at General Sorrengail for something she did in her military career prior to being assigned to Basgiath? Chapter 43 acknowledges that Violet and other children of officers were tracked as potential random targets (how that was done is another can of worms that’s just not worth opening), so why not say that General Sorrengail has made enemies while fighting against Poromiel?
Supply Issues
The Aretia rebels have the luminary. Fantastic!
What are they actually going to put into it?
Remember, the venin-killing dangers are made of a very specific alloy:
“An amalgamations of Talladium, a few other ores, and dragon egg shells.”
I am happy to accept the Tyrrendor has easy access to all the metals they need (including the trademarked, biocompatible dental allo)y, but how can they possibly have enough dragon eggshells? Even taking the new hatchlings into account, they can’t possibly have access to enough eggshells to produce at the same rate that the Basgiath luminary does. If Navarre needs to conserve its resources, surely Aretia would be even worse off.
Unless … the number of eggs brought to Aretia represents a significant percentage of Basgiath’s eggshell supply … meaning that the rebels have just damned Navarre by hampering their ability to preserve their wards.
Great job, heroes!
Soft Hands
During the climb up the Cliffs of Dralor, an idea that is touched upon is the softness of the gryphon fliers. Their version of Threshing is not a life-or-death exercise. They leap off of a cliff into a flock of gryphons, and if they land on a wyvern, they are bonded; if not, they fall into a body of water and are sent to serve in another branch of the military.
Much like Violet feeling off about the Riders Quadrant being a death school, I feel like Yarros is on the verge of something interesting here, but is unwilling to commit. This feels as though she is reassuring her readers that she doesn’t actually like the Quadrant being a death school, not that she actually wants to interrogate the ideas at play.
I highly doubt that there ever will be a meaningful interrogation. Yarros has tied the brutal nature of the Riders Quadrant to the dragons, so in order to really explore the flaws of the system, she would need to explore the flaws in the dragons. The effort put into demonizing the rider leadership while making out the dragons to be victims make it unlikely that she’d be willing to do that.
Artillery
When one of the Red Shirt fliers is explaining the bonding process for gryphons, she follows up the explanation about choosing another branch of service by saying:
“Infantry and artillery are popular.”
Infantry and artillery are separate branches? Well, that’s a bit unconventional, but it’s not unprecedented. China has the Rocket Force, which handles its arsenal of land-based strategic missiles, and I’m sure I’ve heard that another real-world military has a dedicated branch for its tanks. Much like with egalitarianism, what matters in military organization is that all of the military’s assets can do their jobs as effectively as possible.
Except … hold on … what does artillery even mean in this setting?
The word “artillery” does not need to apply to gunpowder weapons. The word can be stretched to include pre-gunpowder siege weapons, like catapults. However, this begs the question of what the military technology in Poromiel is like. Do they have cannons? Do they have explosives? Do they have ballistae, like those dragon-killing darts in Game of Thrones and the Peter Jackson Hobbit films? Or are they fighting wyverns and venin - highly mobile targets, usually airborne - with trebuchets?
Gods and Dragons
Thus far, The Empyrean has been a good example of a series where the religious worldbuilding hasn’t mattered. There is a pantheon of gods, but the only one who really matters is Malek, the god of death. Even he is only significant in so far as he is associated with the tradition of burning all possessions of the deceased, which links to things like Brennan’s journal in the last book and the assassination attempt by the infantry in Chapter 30. Otherwise, the gods are only mentioned in passing, such as when Violet makes transactional prayers or when references are made to visiting temples.
This isn’t a bad approach. It works for this book … until, like so much else, Yarros goes out of her way to make it a problem.
During the wyvern fight, we get this:
“Thank you, Zihnal.” I lean forward as tears streak from the corners of my eyes. “I know, I know. Dragons pay no heed to our gods.”
This is such a strange line. Why would Violet say this? Tairn has never expressed any criticism of her praying before.
Since Yarros has put focus upon this, what do the dragons believe? Are they atheistic? Do they have their own gods? Actually, if Navarre’s culture is shaped by the dragons, why don’t humans in Navarre worship the dragons’ gods, while the rest of the world worships different gods?
Let’s take the Inheritance Cycle as a point of comparison. I’m not a huge fan of the religious worldbuilding of that series - it seems to exist primarily so Paolini to make shallow commentary about religion (which, much like his commentary on vegetarianism and puberty, is as shallow as any message from Notorious Sorcerer, and is therefore annoying rather than stimulating) - but at least he gives us clear answers regarding the interaction between dragons and religion. Sapphira openly states that all dragons are atheistic. Dragons are prideful creatures, and they are not about to humble themselves before non-dragons, especially when said non-dragons are not an active threat to them. Even when Sapphira is exposed to a god, she is quick to rationalize it as something she doesn’t need to concern herself with. This makes complete sense within the framework of the world.
Here, I feel like I’m rereading Foundryside. This aspect of the world didn’t matter before. Now, author is shining a spotlight upon it, and the world feels flimsier than it did before.
Gravity
Yarros does not understand how gravity works, or at the very least, she assumes that her audience doesn't understand how gravity works.
The death of Red Shirt and the wyvern attack both occur one hour below the top of the Cliffs of Dralor. If we assume a steady rate of vertical movement, that means that Violet and her squad are roughly 10,500 feet above the fields from which they started their climb. (Exhaustion and altitude sickness are slowing everyone down the higher they go, so that should really be even higher that that if the time estimate is to be accurate.)
Assuming that gravity in this world is identity to our own (and we have been given zero reason to think otherwise, just as we have been given zero reason to believe that Violet exhales cyanide instead of carbon dioxide), an object dropped from this height would take no less than 25.5 seconds to reach the ground. (That’s the time in vacuum. Air resistance would increase this.)
Why, then, does Yarros present the death of Red Shirt as though she died the instant Violet dropped her?
But she slips farther, and [Red Shirt’s gryphon’s] beak closes on nothing as she loses her grip and falls, the cloud swallowing her whole.
“[Red Shirt]!” a woman shouts from the left.
[Red Shirt’s gryphon] screams, and the shrill sound vibrates through my chest as I stare and stare and stare at the space where [Red Shirt] was, as if she’ll somehow emerge from the mist.
As if there’s any chance she’s alive.
As I was reading this, I was thinking, “Why does her gryphon not dive after her? Why not warn the dragons and have THEM dive after her?” Even without doing the math, it is common sense that there would be a lag before hitting the ground. Earlier in the climb, it was mentioned that gryphons that fell off the cliff were able to catch themselves and fly back up. Why is this not an option from higher up?
On a first read, I tried to rationalize this. The path doubles back on itself. Maybe everyone knows that Red Shirt will clip a lower section of the path, shattering her skull. If, say, another section of the path is 200 feet below, would take only around 3.5 seconds for Red Shirt to die.
Then Yarros pulls the same stunt with the wyverns.
Four distinct shapes light up beneath us, two directly under and two closer to the edge of the cliff, flashing brightly with the endless stream of power.
“Break free!” Tairn demands.
I force my palms shut and shove the Archives door in my mind closed, blocking the endless torrent of Tairn’s power before I end up in the same condition I’d been in at Basgiath under Carr and Varrish’s punishment.
The flashing stops.
“Go!” I shout down the bond, clutching my right arm with my left as Tairn banks deeply to the left and dives for the ground.
This time, the wind is a welcome reprieve from the heat of my skin and the burn within my lungs as we pass through the cloud and emerge on the other side.
Four wyvern carcasses litter the ground, one in the middle of the very field we’d stood in this morning.
Did the bodies just teleport to the ground? Because that’s the only way they could already be down there.
The reason I highlight this is because it is another realism toggle. Yarros wants us to believe that falls are not instantaneous when, say, Violet needed to rescue Liam (both times) in Fourth Wing. She wants us to believe that they are instantaneous when she needs to dispose of bodies for maximum drama.
PROSE
When Violet and Tairn engage the wyverns, we get this line.
“We’re rolling,” he warns me a second before he does so, executing a move that disorients me thoroughly, a move most riders can’t hold their seat for.
Violet can’t hold on, either. We are told in this scene that Tairn is wearing his saddle. We aren’t told that Violet hasn’t buckled herself in, and since she usually does buckle herself in, it’s safe to assume she’s buckled this time. Doing this crazy move isn’t that impressive when one realizes that the Violet isn’t actually succeeding at it.
After the fight, we get this line about Brennan.
He wields the older brother disapproving stare like the professional he is.
What does this even mean? Brennan is not a professional older brother. He is a soldier. Or is this meant to be a lighthearted line that clashes with the tone of this entire chapter?
SHINE THE SIGNAL
Next time, we will discuss Chapter 45.
This is a slower-paced chapter. Aside from more interchangeable Red Shirt banter and beating the dead horse that is the Jealousy conflict, it primarily exists to introduce the concept of rune magic. I do think that this is an effective introduction for the concept. It’s just that it comes far too late in the story, and it manages to add a few more cracks to the foundation of this world.
The primary point of interest in this chapter, though, is the virtue signaling. The nonsensical handling of sign language has all built towards this moment. Now, after all that nonsense, Yarros finally turns to the audience and makes an objective declaration of virtue.
The Chapter 45 review will be similar to the Chapter 13 review. We will start by assessing Plot, Character, and Worldbuilding as normal. After that, we shall analyze Yarros’s handling of sign language and deafness within The Empyrean.
It’s coming your way on June 28th. I hope to see you all then. Have a good week.
