Iron Flame (Chapter 45)
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
The chapter opens with a morning role call scene, with the officers reading off casualties to cadets. Violet banters with her accessories, first about how the gryphon fliers are more emotional, then about Cat being catty. There is a lot of Telling instead of Showing, compressing multiple scenes of character development into weightless, throwaway lines.
Violet attends rune magic training. She banters some more, this time having parallel conversations with her dragons and her accessories. This is where the virtue signal about sign language shines in the audience’s eyes. The rebel leader assigned to teach about runes, Trissa, arrives, and we get a scene of exposition about runes.
PLOT
Nothing happens.
I think that what Yarros was trying to do here was to drive the Rebellion plot and Romance subplot, the former by exploring the consequences of integrating the gryphon fliers into Aretia and the latter by exploring Cat’s efforts to make Violet miserable. The issue is that she doesn't SHOW any of it. All of these developments are delivered via throwaway lines, each of which has no little emotional weight that they could be outright deleted without any impact on the reader experience. The chain of cause and effect is technically being preserved, but the narrative momentum is lost. We are skimming over multiple chapters worth of content here.
Ms. Yarros, you had time to waste two chapters on the nonsense on the Cliffs of Dralor, but you couldn’t sink the same amount of time into actually showing us the scenes that you rammed in as summary?
CHARACTERS
It would be disingenuous for me to say that there is absolutely no character work in these chapters, but what we have is so sparse that there's nothing to analyze.
I hate to be that guy who keeps plugging Show, Don't Tell, yet this chapter is a perfect example of why that saying is so important. The stuff that is presented here throwaway lines - the fights between riders and fliders, Cat showing up to Violet and Xaden's room in an obvious attempt to seduce Xaden - COULD drive significant character development if they were fully fleshed-out scenes. If we saw characters acting, reacting, and interacting, we could learn so much about them. Throwaway lines do not achieve that same effect. They present facts without any of the emotional or intellectual substance.
In the case of the fliers, what we HAVE been shown contradicts the information being fed to us with throwaway lines. During the climb up the Cliffs of Dralor, Violet and her squad got along just fine with the fliers walking with them. Only Cat made any trouble, and she has an obvious motivation for that. The throwaway lines in Chapter 43 about other squads fighting is not enough to balance this out. Yarros has shown us one thing and is now telling us another.
There are only two elements in this chapter that have something resembling substance. I say “resembling substance” because, in isolation, they are worthless. They’re not so much something worth analyzing as they are things to stick a pin in for analyses that are coming in a few weeks’ time.
Pair the Spares
The comparison of the relationships that Yarros has slammed Violet’s accessories into is coming in Chapter 50. All Yarros does here is remind us of these relationships. The way in which she does this is rather telling of her true objectives.
First, in response to a comment about Violet sleeping in Xaden’s room instead of her room with Rhiannon, we get this:
“Which I appreciate.” Rhiannon rests her hand over her heart. “As it gives me a little privacy for whenever Tara and I actually get time to see each other.”
“Happy to help.” I crack a smile.
Hey, Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue is an ally! Notice how she helps her queer friend get in those “much-needed orgasms”, to use her phrasing from Fourth Wing? Such a virtuous person. (Never mind the fact that she only does this to facilitate her own orgasms. Truly, this is a paragon of virtue.)
Then, when we get to the virtue signaling about sign language, we get this:
“Oh!” I blink, putting the pieces together. Jesinia. “Don’t worry, Sawyer. I’ve got you. Rhi signs fluently, too. So do Aaric and Quinn, and—”
Setting aside for a moment that Violet should not have needed this long to put the pieces together if Sawyer wanting Jesinia is something that the characters all knew about back in Chapter 30 … Hey, Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue is a matchmaker! She deserves credit for this relationship! (Never mind the fact that this was clearly happening with or without Violet’s help. She is involved now. It is by her grace that this relationship moves forward.)
Jack Barlowe
“Do not humanize [Cat],” Rhiannon counters. “I climbed the entire cliff with her, and I’m starting to think we’d be better off having Jack Barlowe uphere instead.”
He’s one person I’m glad stayed behind, no matter how nice he’d been to me. I still don’t trust that guy. Never will.
I think Yarros brought this up to remind us that Jack Barlowe is still a character. The problem is, by doing this, she pounds him into even more meaningless paste.
Jack was dismissed as a threat within moments of his resurrection. The possiblity of him being hostile was erased when he saved Violet’s life. Now, because Violet cares not from whom the blood flows, he is being thrown on the altar with everyone else she blindly spites, so Yarros has preemptively closed the door on him being an ally.
At this point, I’m baffling why Yarros even bothered to bring Jack back. His narrative role later in this book is not enough to justify his return. At this point, he is so devoid of actual character that slotting a Red Shirt into his place would have been the better option.
WORLDBUILDING
Rune Magic
Exposition
I think that the deliver of exposition about rune magic is mechanically effective. The context of this being a lesson dedicated to runes allows Yarros to go into fairly significant detail without it being forced. By the end of the scene, it’s clear the rune magic operates on the following rules:
Runes need to be created and imbued with power by someone with existing abilities to channel magic.
Runes need to be imbued into a physical substrate to take effect. Said substrate needs to be physically able to withstand the stresses of the rune’s magic.
Once a rune is laid into a substrate, it will be sustained off of ambient magic in it's vicinity, such as the magic naturally given off by dragons and riders.
Much of the magical infrastructure at Basgiath, like the wall-mounted mage lights, are powered by runes. (This implies that things like the Archives wards are also powered by runes.)
Timing
Iron Flame is 725 pages long (in the ebook version), as measured from the start of Chapter 1 to the end of Chapter 66.
This exposition comes on page 508.
And this is the second book on the series.
This is a rather strange location to introduce something that, as this scene itself acknowledges, is a game-changer for the magic system. Runes allow the user to accumulate immense magical power for later release, and it produces far more predictable and diverse results than the Signets. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that this concept changes the entire paradigm of magic within this story. Why, then, is it being brought up so late and so casually?
The Inheritance Cycle had exposition-heavy sections popping up fairly late in all four of its books, too, but these were always layering upon previously established ideas, not introducing brand new ideas. The one exception to this is probably the Eldunari, but even that was set up previously as the answer to the question of Galbatorix’s power, so its formal establishment didn’t flip the world on its head.
Yarros tries to patch this problem by blaming the rider leadership for suppressing information. The professor who teaches this rune class expresses exasperation that the cadets are ignorant about runes. Unfortunately, this is (A) an in-world patch, not a fix for the narrative problems, and (B) it doesn’t even work as an in-world patch (as we will get to in a second). This entire scene ultimatley makes it feel like Yarros didn’t even come up with runes until after she had finished Fourth Wing and Part One of Iron Flame and now must rush to fold them into the story.
The Cracks
The problems start before the exposition about runes does. When the cadets can’t immediately tell their new professor how the magical infrastructure at Basgiath works, this is her response.
She looks us over with expectant, dark-browneyes, then rubs the bridge of her nose. “Gods, I thought Felix was joking. Sorrengail, you’re practically covered in them.”
Why would a dragon rider - who must have been trained at Basgiath, given that we have been given no other source for dragon riders - not know that Basgiath does not train people to use runes? Especially given that she is about the explain WHY Basgiath does not train people to use runes?
Speaking of which, the explanation of why Basgiath does not train people to use runes is as nonsensical and disastrous as the explanations for why RSC was not mentioned in Fourth Wing and why Carr did not teach Violet precision applications of her lightning.
“Why does no one teach this?” Maren asks, glancing from her parchment to the board.
“It’s a skill the Tyrrish once controlled and perfected, but it was banned a couple hundred years after the unification of Navarre, even though many of our outposts and Basgiath itself were built upon them. Why?” She lifts her brows. “I’m so glad you asked. You see, riders are naturally more powerful, given the amount of magic we channel and the Signets we wield.”
Trager rolls his eyes.
“But runes are the great equalizer,” Professor Trissa continues, setting the board on the grass now that it’s stopped sizzling. “A rune is only limited to how much power you choose to temper, how long you want it to last, and how many uses it has before it depletes. They banned runes so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.” She glances at the fliers. “Your hands, specifically. Get good enough at runes, and you can compete with a fair amount of Signets.”
Even on a first read, this was absolute, unadulterated nonsense on multiple levels.
Why would Navarre ban the knowledge needed to keep its own infrastructure running? How are they maintaining the runes at Basgiath and those outposts?
Why would they wait until a “couple hundred years” after the unification to do this? What happened to change the status quo of a “couple hundred years”? At least with the venin secret, it was implied that this was to keep the peace within Navarre - that the system was working, and they just needed to discourage their own citizens from disrupting the status quo - but this is explicitly due to fear of outside factors. Why not erase the knowledge from the start as part of the homogenization of culture, if erasure is needed?
Why ban the knowledge? Why not just classify it and regulate who learns it? What Yarros has asserted is like if the US dropped the nukes on Japan and then decided, “Wow, we don’t want the USSR to get this power. Let’s destroy our own ability to make more nukes and pray the USSR hasn’t already gotten the knowledge?”
Couldn’t the riders negate the advantage of fliers being armed with runes by arming THEMSELVES with runes? Won’t runes made by riders by inherently more powerful, thanks to the greater power of their dragons?
What does it even matter if the advantage of Signets is negated by runes? The dragons and the wards are what actually give Navarre an advantage of the fliers and gryphons - and, more importantly, only rune created by dragon magic work within the boundaries of the dragon wards. Chapter 57 will reveal that the reason that wyverns can’t enter Navarre is that their artificial bodies are powered by rune-etched stones. If runes made by venin channeling magic are disabled the wards, and the wards disable all channeled magic that does not come from dragons, then by the transitive property, runes made by fliers will also fail within the wards.
How did this professor learn runes? If the knowledge was preserved in Tyrrendor despite the ban, why did Xaden’s father not ask sympsthetic riders to arm the rebellion with runes? Why did he not bargain with Poromiel, offering the knowledge of how to make runes in exchange for gryphons aiding his uprising? If the knowledge was not preserved in Tyrrendor, then it must have already leaked outside Tyrrendor, so why did Navarre persist in this policy?
If runes really are so powerful, why does Navarre not revamp the riders and the rest of the military to maximize the utilization of runes?
There are ways to answer some of these questions, but such answers clash with the remaining questions. It could not be more obvious that Yarros did not conceive of runes until this point in the story and is slamming them in with zero regard for the ripple effects on the rest of the world.
The Fix
Much like with the RSC, there is an incredibly easy fix for folding runes into the story:
Don’t make such a big deal out of Violet not already knowing about them.
Literally all Yarros had to say is that runes are an advanced form of magic that riders are not taught until their third year (or, if she wants it to be super secret, that only certain rider specialists are taught). This was would explain how the rider cadets are in the dark, as it is above their level, and it would likewise imply why the fliers cadets are in the dark. It would also explain how all the existing infrastructure that relies on runes can be maintained. The fact that Violet and her squad are being taught it now can simply be a result of the conflict compressing their education.
Dragon Language
During the banter with Andarna and Tairn, we get this.
“I could only be so lucky.” Andarna lifts her head, preening, and Tairn grumbles something in his own language.
Excuse me? What “his own language” could that be? No dragon language has been previously established.
Even if it had been … what is this language? Dragons vocalize entirely in beastial noises. Their telepathy appears to transcend language, as we’ve yet to be shown them having any trouble communicating with the the riders, and they likewise can communicate telepathically with the gryphons (who, likewise, only communicate in beastial noises otherwise). Do dragons have writing? Oral traditions? Much like with the question of dragon gods, I must again ask why this was not folded into Navarre’s culture. Why haven’t the people of Navarre taken the dragon tongue as their common language?
Exposure and Economics
Whilst bantering with the accessories the second time around, the topic of the people being snuck to Aretia once again comes up.
“I would have covered for you. Did you get your family settled?” I ask Rhi.
They’d arrived late last night, travel-weary and with only the items they could fit in a narrow wagon capable of making it up the Precipice Pass, the winding tradin groute up the northeast side of the Cliffs of Dralor, bordering the Deaconshire province.
“Yeah.” Rhi grins and drops her pack in the surprisingly supple grass next to mine. I swear, it’s like the seasons are reversing up in this valley. “Thank your brother for me. He assigned their houses right next to each other near the market square, and they’ve already picked out a spot to set up shop.”
Followed shortly by:
Families have been arriving in Aretia for the last week, led in small, unnoticeable groups by the members of the revolution who delivered their offers of sanctuary. Ridoc’s dad should arrive any day, but we haven’t had word from Sawyer’s parents yet.
The letters were bad enough, but does Yarros seriously expect us to think that Navarre does not notice the disappearance of the families of defecting riders? Does she expect us not to question how Melgren’s future sight does not track them up to the point that the enter the safe perimeter generated by the rebel children? Saying “small, unnoticeable groups” is not enough. Remember how, back in Chapter 2, rebel children had to travel to Aretia as a trio to keep their disappearance from being detected?
That's before we consider that Aretia is now a nesting ground. Do no patrolling dragons allied with Navarre detect that magic? Did no riders notice the wagons moving in this direction and decide that the people must be headed towards the source of magic?
Oh, and then there are the houses. Where are they getting the resources to house all these people? We have been told on at least two occasions that most of the city is in ruins, but they are ready to house this explosive population growth?
Also, I find the “set up shop” line rather interesting. Rhiannon’s parents aren’t being assigned to fulfill some role within the rebellion - they are choosing a location to practice their trade. What sort of economy does Aretia even have? If they had any meaningful amount of resources in the local area, then either some noble from Navarre would have brushed off the “cursed” nonsense (and it is nonsense, since otherwise, Yarros would have elaborated on that point) or else the royals would have confiscated the land to ensure a resurgent rebellion couldn't exploit it. Simply bringing in a work force is not going to fix this problem. Does this mean that Aretia is now trading with other cities (despite being an apparently secret location that Navarre doesn't know about)? Is Aretia importing the resources needed to build a city and an economy, all without being noticed by either the man who sees the future or the organization dedicated to the control of information?
I realize I'm harping on this point, yet I cannot stress enough how contradictory and nonsensical Yarros’s worldbuilding is. She refuses to put in the bare minimum of effort for a coherent setting. She flip-flops things in whatever direction serves the scene at hand. To look at the economics point specifically, she stated back on Chapter 21 that Navarre lost trade partners due to its isolationism, but now she is claiming that an even smaller and more isolated area is economically flourishing. This makes no sense.
Also, while we’re on the subject:
“You might be wondering why we’re meeting in the valley,” Professor Trissa says, her breaths perfectly even as she reaches into her pack and pulls out seven printed illustrations, then hands them out to the seven of us.
Another smile tugs at my lips. Jesinia and the others got the printing press up and running.
Where and how did the rebels get a printing press? No mention was made of the Basgiath defectors hauling it with them, and if the scribes are so decorated to controlling information, surely they’d keep track of the parts needed to construct printing presses. Did Aretia also acquire this without Melgren or any scribes noticing? Or it is somehow survive the annihilation of Aretia after the last rebellion, followed by six years of potential exposure to the elements and/or pressure from rubble on top of it?
Tides of War
The epigraph for Chapter 45 reads thusly:
It was only in the last fifty years that we realized they were no longer solely coming from the Barrens. They’d begun to take recruits, teaching those who never bonded a gryphon to channel what was not theirs to take, to upset the balance of magic by stealing it from the very source. The problem with mankind is we too often find our souls tobe a fair price for power.
If the venin threat has only picked up in the last 50 years, then why was Navarre living in a state of rigorous isolationism for the previous 550 years?
It took 50 years after this new development for things to get as bad as they are now? Then why was Brennan talking earlier as if circumstances had changed only recently?
If the venin only started taking recruits in the last 50 years, how were they sustaining their numbers before? The only way this state of constant warfare makes sense is if they were fighting this whole time, and if the venin weren’t winning, then they must have been suffering losses. How did they not go extinct after 550 years of content warfare with no recruitment? Even the Space Marines view 100 years of penitnent crusading as a death sentence.
BITOKU NO SHIGUNARU NO KATACHI
The full signal takes about a page. Please bear with me.
“Hey, while we’re just standing here…” Sawyer rubs the back of his neck, and his cheeks redden. “I…”
“You…?” I lift my eyebrows at the clearly unfinished question.
“I was wondering if you…” He cringes, then sighs. “Never mind.”
“He wants you to teach him how to sign,” Ridoc finishes, rocking back on his heelsin clear boredom.
“Ridoc!” Sawyer glares his way.
“What? You made that way more painful than it had to be. For fuck’s sake, it was like you were leading up to asking her out or something.” He visibly shudders.
“What if he had been?” I counter.
“Then I’d be stuck cleaning little pieces of him off our shared floor when Riorson ripped him to shreds.” Ridoc shakes his head. “So messy.”
“First, Xaden has more than enough confidence to survive me being asked out.” I glance up at Sawyer. “And yes, I’ll teach you to sign. Why would that be embarrassing?”
“I should have learned years ago.” Sawyer drops his hand. “And…obvious reasons.”
“I’m not fluent enough to make a good teacher, apparently.” Ridoc rolls his eyes.
“You’d teach me the sign for sex and tell me it was hello, just to see what happened when I used it,” Sawyer fires back.
“What? I’m not a total dick.” A smile curves Ridoc’s mouth. “I would have waited until you asked about the word for dinner—that way, when you asked her if she wanted to grab a bite with you—”
“Oh!” I blink, putting the pieces together. Jesinia. “Don’t worry, Sawyer. I’ve got you. Rhi signs fluently, too. So do Aaric and Quinn, and—”
“Everyone but me.” Sawyer sighs, his shoulders dipping.
Translation
Dear readers, are you fluent in sign language?
No?
Oh, you poor, pitiful souls.
Don’t you know that EVERYONE is fluent in sign language?
Don’t you know that you should have learned it years ago?
Aren’t you glad that Yarros, beacon of virtue that she is, has brought this stain upon your soul to our attention?
Signals and Failures
The excerpt shared above would not have been a problem in a well-written story. It could have reflected a stage in Sawyer’s character arc. It would have expressed a theme that was integrated into the very foundation of the narrative. It could have reflected a conflict that drives the plot or changes occurring within the world itself.
None of these apply here.
Character
Sawyer is not saying that he “should have learned years ago” because of some in-character reason. His attraction to Jesinia COULD have justified this virtue signal, except Jesinia is the “AND … obvious reasons”. Yarros went out of her way to make it clear that learning sign language is a moral necessity OUTSIDE of the motivations and desires of her characters. She left no ambiguity that, when Sawyer “should have learned years ago”, it is meant to be taken as a statement of objective morality for the audience’s benefit.
Worldbuilding
Recall where the tally for people who's spoke sign language stood a few months ago:
Deaf People: 1
Non-Deaf Speakers: 10
Confirmed Non-Speakers: 1
There is only one established deaf character out of this entire bloated cast. This implies that the percentage of the population that is deaf is similar to that of our own world. According to the WHO, 5% of the global population have some level of hearing loss, but this includes anyone with “hearing loss greater than 35 decibels (dB) in the better hearing ear”, and it includes all the people who have loss hearing due to environment factors or unsafe practices that simply won't apply in Navarre. This is worth mentioning because, according to the National Library of Medicine, the WHO’s estimate was only 1% back in 1985. The World Deaf Federation advertises the statistic of 70 million people, which is just under 1%. I therefore think it reasonable to conclude that deafness rates in a population without loud machinery and headphones would also stabilize around 1%.
Consider how deafness would not be evenly distributed through the population. Even with that 1%, many people in Navarre would never encounter a deaf person.
The long and the short of it is, with the information that Yarros has chosen to establish, there is no reason why Sawyer would ever need to learn sign language. There is no reason that all these other people would have learned it. It certainly shouldn't be more common than Tyrrish, the language of an entire province, which has clearly survived despite concentrated efforts to homogenize Navarre’s languages.
This virtue signal is patently absurd and insulting. At best, it demonstrates that Yarros couldn’t conceive of a way to naturally fold sign language into the setting. At worst, it shows that she is too lazy to put in the effort, caring only to showcase her virtue.
Given that she couldn't even bother to reformat the dialogue, I know which one I’m leaning towards.
Plot
Sign language has negative relevance to the plot. That’s what happens when deafness is limited to a secondary character and sign language is spoken like normal dialogue. Bringing it up at all is always a distraction from the story being told.
Theme
This virtue signal had no thematic value. At least the ideas pushed in the cringe that is Chapter 21 are tangential to the plot. All aspects of deafness and sign language could be cut outright, and the only change to the narrative would be the improved flow of the impacted scenes.
If anything, sign language embodies an anti-theme that actively undermines Chapter 21. Chapter 21 advocated against the translation of things into a common language. Sign language is a common language that bridges a disability barrier. Why is it okay to mandate a common language to accommodate 1% o the population (who, thanks to the evident literacy rates in this society, could be accommodated by just using written communication) but not okay to mandate a common language that allows a country of potentially millions of people to operate with minimal disruption?
The Signal
When all narrative purpose is gone, only the intent of the author remains.
Had Yarros taken the effort to make sign language integral to the story - if, say, she made it thematically relevant - then the intent here could be interpreted as a noble one. She had a message she wanted to share about the importance of sign language, and she wanted to encourage the audience to take action. Chapter 21 makes it clear that this effort would have been badly written and preachy, but at least some benefit of the doubt could be given. Maybe, just maybe, this could have been read as genuine altruism.
Except she didn’t make the effort. She couldn’t even be bothered to format the dialogue differently. All she could be bothered to do was downplay the very real barriers that deaf people need to deal with and then ram a message that would be sloppy for an after-school special down our thoughts.
This is the behavior of someone whose only objective is to signal her own virtue.
What Could Have Been
What if Yarros’s intentions had been altruistic? How could she have made sign language genuinely matter to the story?
Well, just off the top of my head: what if Jesinia, rather than Violet, was the one who entered the Riders Quadrant?
Being deaf in this environment would be a deaths sentence (just as Violet’s EDS should have been). Jesinia would not be able to communicate with the vast majority of the people in the Quadrant, keeping her from making friends who would watch her back. She would also be easy to sneak up on, meaning that assassination in the hallways would be a genuine threat. Bonding with a dragon would be a game-changer for her. Suddenly, she could communicate freely with someone, without any barriers. She could be drawn into the activities of the rebel children because they use sign language as a means to communicate without being overheard, making them the easiest people for her to make friends with. The romance with Sawyer could then be about them struggling to communicate until he makes the effort to bridge that gap.
What I just proposed is not phenomenal, but at least it makes sign language relevant to the story and the setting. Any presentation of it as a sign of virtue would be within the sense that Jesinia would need it to interact with the world around her. It would not be the virtue signal equivalent of fondling oneself of front of one’s audience.
I Should Have Learned Years Ago: A Case Study of A Silent Voice
To demonstate just how profoundly Yarros failed here, I will summarize the opening of A Silent Voice (or Koe no Katachi, for those of you who prefer Japanese titles). Note that I said “summarize”, not analyze. The gap in quality between A Silent Voice and The Empyrean is so vast that I believe that, just by telling you what happens in the opening of A Silent Voice, you will understand why it was successful and The Empyrean was not.
(I highly recommend that you either read the manga series or watch the 2017 anime film for yourself. For those who haven’t already done this, don’t worry. I’m not going to spoil anything that isn’t already spelled out by the movie’s trailer.)
A Silent Voice opens on the day that high school senior Shoya Ishida has scheduled his suicide. After years of drowning in the shame of bullying a girl in elementary school (and then being made into a pariah by his former friends in middle school), he has committed himself to making amends before flinging himself off a bridge. He has already left an envelope containing one million yen for his mother, and now he just needs to deliver his in-person apology to the girl he bullied.
There’s just one small obstacle to that apology: the girl in question, Shoko Nishimiya, is deaf.
That was why he bullied her.
When Shoko was transferred into Shoya’s 6th grade class, he immediately singled her out as a target for his amusement. He felt justified in doing so. Shoko needed others to take notes for her; she could only communicate with others via writing in a journal; her inability to sing in-tune derailed the class’s ambitions for a chorus competition. Shoya’s classmates, growing frustrated by making accommodations for Shoko, either joined in his torments of Shoko or stood by laughing.
Shoya spent months tossing Shoko’s journal into the school’s fish pond, spraying her with hoses during school clean-up, and writing insulting messages on her desk and the class blackboard. Shoko endured it all with a pained smile and constant efforts to make friends. At one point, she directly asked Shoya to be her friend, signing at him and slurring the word, “Friend.” Shoya responded to this by hitting her in the face with a clod of dirt. Later, when the school sent a sign language instructor to the class to try to help the class communicate with Shoko (which the class almost unanimously rejected), Shoya realized what Shoko was trying to say, but he refused to back down.
Eventually, Shoya graduated to yanking out Shoko’s hearing aides and destroying them. This ultimately led to her withdrawing from the school, though not before he racked up a bill of one million yen in damages (which his mother had to dig into the family savings to pay). At this point, all his friends turned on him, making him the scapegoat for all of the bullying (including all of the incidents where they participated or laughed along). Shoya then became the target of their bullying.
He had six years to ponder his mistake. Eventually, he decided on suicide, though only after making amends. He worked furiously in part-time jobs to make the money to pay back his mother. He also studied sign language so that he can apologize to Shoko.
On the day Shoya has scheduled his suicide, he tracks Shoko down to the sign language class at her local community center. She is flabbergasted that he can sign now. (The film does not use subtitles for the sign language, so everything Shoko signs needs to be interpreted based upon what Shoya and other characters say aloud as they sign back at her.) He readies himself to deliver his apology. What instead comes out of his mouth (and from his hands) is the same question she asked him years ago:
“Can you and I be friends?”
NEXT TIME
Chapters 46 through 48 bring the nonsense of Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue being insecure to their inevitable and anticlimactic conclusion. The resulting pyre is used to roast the corpse of the Romance subplot, and then Yarros subjects us to yet more pornography.
What really annoys me about these three chapters is not that Yarros creates two massive plot holes by elaborating upon the rune magic. It’s not even that she confirms that Violet’s insecurities were indeed a massive waste of the audience’s time. No, what really bothers me is the desecration of the Romance subplot’s corpse, namely in the means by which the Other Woman is dealt with. Yarros is a Romance author. She has no excuse for the fundamental mistake she makes in the process of taking Cat off the board.
It’s coming your way on July 12th.
That’s right, we will be taking a 2-week hiatus from Iron Flame. Next weekend is Independence Day in the US, and I’ve decided to do something special for the holiday. Instead of our usual Friday posts, next week’s post will be on Thursday, July 4th. And since the holiday is about a declaration of independence from a vast empire, I think it’s only fitting that we cover a story where independence is heresy that can only lead to the downfall of Man. The book in question is Xenos, the first book in the Eisenhorn Trilogy, part of the expansive universe of Warhammer 40,000. It’s a book that’s roughly 20 years old at this point, but one that has had enough legs to earn a second printing (which is something the publisher of said book apparently does only rarely).
I hope to see you all on July 4th. It’ll be a shorter entry, but still worthwhile. Have a good week, everyone.
