Iron Flame (Chapter 46 to Chapter 48)
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 have a chat about runes that rams two retcons (and tears two new plot holes) into the story. We then cutsto a joint sparring session between the rider and flier cadets. Apparently, the two have been taking classes separately since the fliers arrived in Aretia, but now their squads are being formally integrated to address the conflicts that Yarros couldn’t be bothered to actually demonstrate. The fliers and riders are allowed one round of sparring challenges to beat the bad blood out of each other before the integration of squads is formalized. Naturally, Violet ends up fighting Cat. She quickly realizes that Cat was also trained by Xaden, invalidating much of Violet’s skills.
As the two spar, Cat uses her Signet on Violet while revealing to Violet that she never loved Xaden - she just wanted Xaden’s political power. Violet tries to strangle Cat. She is only stopped by Xaden reminding her to think about how her own feelings will be hurt if she kills Cat. Cat is then reprimanded by the teachers for using her magic, despite that being allowed under the rules of the fight.
Xaden carries Violet to the meeting room of the rebel leaders, thereby taking her out of Cat’s range, and kicks the leadership out of the meeting. We get a scene of pornography. Afterwards, Xaden invalidates the insecurity conflict by reassuring Violet that all of her doubts and the things she is worrying about are all on her head, so she just needs to find her own way to live with them rather than overcoming any flaw or engaging in any self-improvement.
PLOT
Violet may be a disciple of Khorne, but Yarros must be hiding a shrine to Slaanesh in her home, for only a Slaaneshi cultist could show such … passionate … zeal for violating the corpse of this narrative.
The Rune Scene
Yarros uses this scene to try to make runes seem like something that have always been a part of the narrative, using them to explain vague elements from earlier in the series. Unfortunately, anyone who has read the series up to this point could immediately tell you that these explanations don't make sense.
Violet's Knives
Remember how, back in Chapter 24, I mentioned how magic placed upon Violet’s knives allowed her squad to escape the interrogation exercise?
I didn't go into detail about this at the time because, in the moment, it seemed like adequate setup for something. Violet and her friends got through the first door on their own, and once they got her knives back, they had a way through the second. The way this was framed worked as mystery. It didn’t work well, but it did work.
Only, no. There’s no mystery. The incident was completely forgotten by the narrative (almost as if said incident was a second-draft addition by Yarros to “foreshadow” a later ass-pull) and is now being invoked 240 pages later as if it was always in focus.
Here is how Violet brings up the topic:
Picking up the wooden disk in my left hand, I gently move the buzzing strands of power, pressing them into the disk. Much better than the last five. “You put runes into my daggers,” I say, turning in the wooden chair.
This is reasonable. The runes on the pommels of her daggers have been established since Xaden gave them to her in Fourth Wing. That’s part of the magic that enabled them to kill venin, right?
Except Yarros means more than that.
“You put an unlocking rune into my dagger, didn’t you?” I ask, sliding all the disks besides the one I just finished into my pack, ignoring Warrick’s journal, which mocks me fromthe edge of the desk. “That’s how we got out of the interrogation chamber.”
“A variation of it, yes.”
Huh. A bit weird for Xaden to give her that, when those knives were just to help her fight. Still, maybe the Tyrrish like to give weapons utilitarian functions via magic. Lock-picking is a standard feature they like to add, maybe?
Nope.
“You can do the unlocking rune. It’s simple enough.” He shrugs. “I added an element of need into the rune. So, you can’t walk up to any door and open it just because you want to, but if the dagger’s on your body and picks up on the need for a door to unlock, it will. If you’d made it up to the forge at Basgiath, it would have opened to your need.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, he puts on his boots.
“I had the key the entire time?” My eyebrows rise, and if I didn’t already love him, I would have fallen right then.
“You did.”
No, she didn't. He didn’t give her that. If he did, then this reveal breaks both Fourth Wing and Part One of this book.
Let’s consider that runes are visible phenomena. Violet can see the runes on her daggers. A quick keyword search confirms that Violet did not notice any change in her daggers between Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. That means that Xaden would have had to do this before he gifted the daggers to Violet. This is later confirmed in Chapter 48, when Xaden reveals that one of the daggers has a rune to protect Violet from Cat’s Signet (more on that later), and Yarros has both Violet and Xaden explicit acknowledge that this was given to Violet during the events of Fourth Wing.
The problem is that this is back when Xaden was trying to keep his distance from Violet. He wanted to keep the weapon smuggling operation separate from her. What possible motivation would he have had to give her the power to unlock the luminary at that point?
Even if we assume that Xaden did add this specific rune to one of the daggers between books without Violet noticing, it doesn’t make sense. He was adamant about Violet keeping her head down and not getting involved. He was angry about her just chasing the wardstone research. Why would he have given her the keys to the luminary?
The one time that Xaden adding the rune might have made sense was Chapter 22. He was already taking Violet down to see the luminary, was interrupted by Draconis, and wanted Violet to succeed in her interrogation exercise. That’s plenty of motivation to give Violet a tool to cheat her way out of said exercise. Ignoring how this once again confirms that Xaden interferes with Violet’s agency in ways that Dain didn't, this might have made sense … except this didn’t happen. Yarros does not say here that it happened then, and revisiting Chapter 22 yields nothing to even imply that it happened. This explanation is pure head canon, and thus, cannot be used to defend the canonical text.
(Also, this is further confirmation that the all-important facility for Navarre’s military, one they knew was being looted for their most precious military resource, is not guarded. Violet being able to unlock the door means nothing if there are any number of guards between her and the luminary.)
The long and short of it is, this is more contrived nonsense that breaks Xaden’s character so that Yarros could arbitrarily drive her plot forward. It’s just that, this time, the nonsense is coming hundreds of pages after the fact, rather than in the moment.
Rebellion Relics
“What’s the rune on the stone you keep by the bed? That’s what it is, right?”
If you read Iron Flame and can actually remember this stone without running a keyword search, congratulations. I completely forgot it existed. It was mentioned only once, as a background detail in Chapter 12. It’s another clear case of second-draft “foreshadowing” by Yarros.
And that is not the end of our problems.
“Stones?” I look up at him. “As in more than one?”
“A hundred and seven,” he answers, watching me with expectation.
The marked ones. He wants me to ask.
“What does it do?” I rub my thumb over the blackened design.
“Did. It’s a protection rune, but it was only intended to be used once.” He runs his hand through his damp hair and pauses. “As you get better with runes, you can pull elements into them. Things like strands of hair or even other full runes for locating things. Or protecting them. This particular rune was made to protect someone of my father’sbloodline.”
“You.” I look up and hand the stone back. “You’re his only child, right?”
Xaden nods. “Each of the children of the officers were given them before our parents left for the Battle of Aretia. We were told to carry them at all times, and we did, even to the execution.” His fingers brush mine as he takes the stone.
I damn near stop breathing, keeping my eyes on his.
“It was designed to counter the signet of the rider whose dragon would kill them.”
He swallows. “But it could only activate when killed by dragonfire.”
“Which is the primary method of execution for traitors,” I whisper.
He nods. “I kept it closed in my fist—we all did—as we stood there, watching our parents put into lines for execution. And the second they were…” His shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath. “…burned, heat raced up my arm. The next time I felt anything like that was after Threshing.”
My eyes widen, and I close my hand over his. “The rebellion relics?” That must be why the swirling marks always start on the marked ones’ arms.
He nods. “Our parents knew they’d die one way or another, and the last thing they did was make sure we were protected.”
Nice try, Ms. Yarros. Unfortunately, your effort to shove bullshit down your audience’s throat is once again undermined by the fact that some of us read the previous book.
Let’s start with the plot hole, then sift through the layers of sheer, mind-numbing idiocy at play here.
Fourth Wing made it very clear, from Chapter 1, that Melgren’s dragon imparted the rebellion relics.
[Mira] nods. “Mom says General Melgren’s dragon did it to all of them when he executed their parents, but she wasn’t exactly open to further discussion on the topic.”
This created a absolute clusterfuck of nonsense when it was revealed that these relics blocked Melgren’s Signet. It was utterly baffling that his dragon would shoot the Empyrean-backed regime in the the foot like this, especially when so much effort had been put into emphasizing that the dragons were in charge. Still, at least that was a small hole. The fact that the dragons aren't proper characters created a numbing haze thst made it hard to pin down the full extent of the damage. Maybe, just maybe, Melgren’s dragon had a reason for doing this.
Now we are told that his dragon didn’t do it at all.
There is no way that Melgren or the other riders would look at this mess and assume, “Oh, the dragon did this.” It should have been very obvious that this was not a dragon’s doing. And, as soon as the source was identified (because not all of those 107 children will be able to hide these rocks if they are searched), Melgren would absolutely have had rebel children slaughtered.
There is no way this regime would feel any compulsion to honor their deal with Xaden after he and every child he swore was trustworthy pulled this. Even if one wanted to toy with legalism, the rebel children violated Xaden’s promise by concealing that they had this power on hand. There is a clear conspiracy to undermine Navarre, even if the children are mere pawns in it.
Now, let's get to the idiocy.
How did all 107 children manage to hold on to these things up to the execution? They must have been rounded up (some of them potentially captured after attempting escape), detained, transported to the execution site, and then walked under to the place where they watched the executions. How did not one of the stones get noticed through all of that? I could believe that maybe a few of the older children (Xaden being 17 at the time) could have successfully pulled off the guile and sleight of hand to both keep the stones in their possession and to move it into their hands when the execution happened, but taking into account 107 children (we are not given a minimum age, so some of these could have feasibly been toddlers), there is no way that this would have worked for all of them. Some would be caught with their stones on their persons, some would drop theirs, and some would simply forget theirs.
Why was the rune so mind-numbingly specific as to only block the Signet of the rider of the dragon to kill the parents? What if the dragon tries to harm them? What if the rider tries to use a sword on them?
It sure is convenient that the executioner was Melgren. Even if we assume that one of his duties is to personally execute traitors, there is every chance that he might have died in battle or from natural causes between the time these things were created and the execution. What if a sudden outbreak of illness had elevated Nolan to Melgren’s rank?
Are we really supposed to believe that not one rebel officer died in the Battle of Aretia? None went down fighting? None were killed while surrendering? None died by any means other than dragon fire? Common sense indicates that some of the rebel children either should not have a relic, due to their parents dying in circumstances that won’t activate the rune, or else they would be protected against different Signets.
The Sparring Match
The entire altercation between Violet and Cat is so horrendously executed that it soils a few points that are worth praise. We’ll drag these flecks of gold out of the muck first before disposing of what’s left behind.
The Positives
Much like the fights in Chapter 10 and Chapter 30, Violet's success is believable. She is trained and battle-hardened at this point. I think that the reason she wins is more than a little contrived - we are supposed to think that sparring with Rhiannon makes her a better fighter than Cat, who surely must also have had other teachers and almost certainly has more practical combat experience - but this isn’t a big enough issue to invalidate Violet’s win.
This Is My Fight is again in effect, but this time, it makes sense. Violet hears someone asking Xaden to intervene in the match, and he refuses, saying that Violet wouldn't want that. This is also a supervised test with strict rules, not a death match with an assassin whom anyone could shank from behind. The decision to let this be Violet’s fight is therefore both logical and character-driven.
Yarros manages to do a proper cliffhanger here. The transition from Chapter 46 to 47 is as follows:
She comes at me with a combination of punches that I block withmy forearms, shifting my body so the blows glance off without their full impact. It’s…easy, like I know the choreography. Like it’s muscle memory. Her stance adjusts, and I jump back a second before she kicks out. Connecting only with air, her balance falters as I land, and she stumbles sideways.
Holy shit. She fights like Xaden.
He trained both of us.
So much for thinking I have the advantage.
Can you guess where the chapter break was? To be honest, there are three locations where it could have been, but any of them would have been functional, because this is a cliffhanger that actually works. The reveal the Cat was trained by Xaden fundamentally shifts the perception of the fight. The action before this reveal and after it are fundamentally different scenes. It therefore makes perfect sense to break the chapters at this revelation. What’s more, the fight has barely started at this point. Chapter 47 is not three pages that mop of a fight scene that could have easily squeezed into Chapter 46. The events that follow this reveal are substantial enough to stand on their own.
Violating the Other Woman’s Corpse
We will do a full exploration of the catastrophic failure of the Romance subplot’s Jealousy conflict down below. For now, let’s just acknowledge the basic problem here.
This conflict with DOA because Yarros undermined the very idea of Violet being jealous of Cat. It was all a product of Cat’s Signet. These chapters try to spin it as Cat only bringing out emotions that already exist, but that doesn’t matter, because the only times we are shown any meaningful amount of jealousy are when Cat is influencing Violet.
To use a more extreme example, imagine if Cat’s ability was to drive people into nymphomaniac promiscuity, causing Violet to have sex with Dain, and then Xaden got angry because Cat could only amplify existing physical attraction. It would be utter nonsense. Violet was very clearly not be responsible for that, as she would not have had sex with Dain under any other circumstances.
Here, Cat now reveals that she doesn’t love Xaden. She just wants his political power. This is fine for making her less sympathetic … except she was never sympathetic in the first place. On top of that, we already know Xaden is not interested in her. He gave the political relationship a shot and then ended it. Even if he was interested in her, that would now be dead, as Violet can just pass the memory of what Cat said through their dragons.
In other words, Yarros took the Other Woman, whom she already established as not really threatening Violet, and had not explicitly confirmed that she cannot serve as Violet's rival on any level.
The entire Jealousy conflict was a complete waste of the audience’s time.
Cheaters Never Prosper
Despite - or perhaps, as a result of - the nonsense Yarros has already splattered on the page to ensure that the audience could only side with Violet, she feels the need to condemn Cat further by having her “cheat.”
Unfortunately, she does so by accusing Cat of cheating while spelling out how Cat is completely within the rules of the fight.
Here are the rules that Devera (all of the teachers are apparently present for these sparring matches) lays out:
“No weapons. No signets,” Devera says. “Match ends when one of you -”
“Unconcious or taps out,” Cat finishes without taking her eyes off me. “We know.”
Notice what isn’t prohibited?
Lesser magic. Mindwork. The magical powers that fliers receive from their gryphons. The last may be functionally similar to a Signet (hence why I refer to them as such), but Yarros has, at multiple points, established that the people within the world consider them to be different. Cat using her Signet is therefore permitted. Violet could likewise fight back with any lesser magic. We know that lesser magic telekinesis can drag furniture around, and there was a snippet in Chapter 43 where Violet seriously considered the possibility of deflecting a falling boulder with it, so this is absolutely something that could tip the outcome of a fight.
Which makes it very strange when Violet follows up with this.
Devera may have set the rules, but something tells me Cat is about to break them.
The only way one could make this logically consistent is if one argues that something not being prohibited does not mean that it is permitted … but that makes Violet an enormous hypocrite. Poison is also not expressly prohibited, and she found herself wishing she’d poisoned Cat as soon as she is challenged.
If I’d know this was where today was headed, I would have acted earlier, maybe laced her breakfast with the fonilee I saw growing on the ridge just beneath the valley.
As a result, Violet’s reaction to revelation that Cat is using her Signet comes off as hypocritical and childish.
But I’m not making a choice. There is no choice. There’s only the swirling, chaotic vortex of anger and jealousy and -
She’s fucking cheating, using mindwork.
And then the teachers and everyone else get involved.
“Riorson!” Devera snaps. “Why would you interfere in a chall -”
“Because she cheated!” Imogen shouts. “She used mindwork!”
Followed by:
“Catriona!” Professor Kiandra forces her way through the line of fliers. “Tell me you didn’t …” She glances from Cat to me and back again. “Let go, Cat!”
This is just so bizarre. It’s as if Yarros is so desperate to eliminate Cat as a threat to Violet that she gets even get through one scene without breaking internal logic to … demonize …
Oh.
Cat’s another person that Yarros hates in real life and is desperate to strawman, isn’t she?
She’s Making Me Kill Her
Cat’s Signet allows her to amplify emotions. We are given no reason to believe that she can only do this with anger (and we will later see in the climax of this book that she can use it to amplify things that aren’t even emotions, like greed). This means that a wide array of options are available for defeating Violet:
Amplify Violet’s fear so that she flees from the sparring match.
Amplify Violet's anxieties so that her reflexes are slowed by second-guessing herself.
Make Violet so blissfully happy or so melancholic that she loses the willpower to engage in violence.
The later explanation that Cat can only work with existing emotions doesn't matter. Violet is capable of all of the above. At most, this restriction just affects the thoughts Violet will have when the emotions manifest.
Despite this array of options, Cat chose to make Violet angry. The taunts she throws during the fight make it clear that she wants Violet to try to kill her. This is to demonstrate that Violet is too emotionally unstable to be with Xaden. She wins the moment Violet starts strangling her.
At this point, Cat taps out, but she keeps amplifying Violet’s rage, thereby causing Violet to violate the rules and come across like a murderous psychopath. Then, once people are forced to physically restrain Violet, Cat turns off her Signet, erasing the evidence of -
What do you mean, she doesn’t tap out?
Cat glares up at me, and the anger burns even hotter as she tries to work her thumbs beneath my hands, wrath burning in her eyes.
She’s not going to tap out. She’d really rather die than lose to me.
“I don’t want to kill her.” I have to let go. But my hands don’t get the signal.
Why would Cat not tap out? She won the second Violet started strangling her. Keeping the fight going just allowed Violet to realize that Cat is influencing her. What’s more, if Cat dies, she loses. She can’t steal Xaden back if she’s dead.
While the effort to demonize Cat is what tipped me off to Yarros attacking another strawman of someone she hates, it’s this nonsense that really hammers it home. This bizarre behavior is the kind of patch you’d expect an untalented writer to slap onto a narrative to justify a personal fetish or fantasy, not unlike the contradictory logic to justify semen harvesting in Notorious Sorcerer. Yarros really wanted her self-insert Mary Sue to strangle whomever Cat is meant to represent. However, she must have realized how sociopathic this was, so she tried to remove all fault from her self-insert Mary Sue by blaming her desired victim.
This could have worked. All it would have required would have been for Yarros to rework the parameters of her fantasy to …
Yep. There’s the problem. Yarros won’t let her self-insert Mary Sue have a single meaningful flaw. Why would she admit to a flaw in a scenario she has clearly spent a great deal of time fantasizing about?
Pornography
This sex scene is less overtly pointless than the one in Chapter 37. The key word here is “overtly.” It is absolutely pointless.
Immediately after kicking the rebel leadership out of the meeting room, Xaden tells Violet that they can discuss what happened between her and Cat in a moment, magically locks the doors, and then performs oral sex on Violet. He then refuses to let her reciprocate in any way, because he wants to prove that he doesn’t value her just for sex (which was a taunt Cat threw during the sparring match).
No, I am not leaving anything out (except, you know, the six pages of detail about the foreplay and sexual act itself).
The closest thing that this has to narrative purpose is that Yarros uses the false insecurity conflict as a pretense for the sex. Pornography is the bullet she chose to use to put this dog down. Unfortunately, she herself sabotages the kill shot. The moment that Xaden admits why he did this, Violet gets angry again, thereby invalidating the narrative impact the sex scene could have had. The conversation that follows could also have happened regardless of them having sex here and now, especially given the sexually charged nature of their relationship. Referencing their sexual history (which itself didn’t need to be told in graphic detail) would have achieved the same narrative result. The pornography was therefore extraneous because Yarros chose to make it extraneous.
Putting Down a Dead Dog
The conversation between Xaden and Violet after the pornography is the fulfillment of what was set up as early as Chapter 37: the invalidation of the Mary Sue’s insecurity.
This process takes several pages. It focusses primarily on Violet’s jealousy of Cat, but Violet also vomits up the other things she is feeling insecure about. Xaden then proceeds to validate Violet at length, including praising her rationality and assuring her that any sense of inferiority she feels towards Cat in meaningless.
In all of this discussion, the closest we get to Violet admitting a flaw is when Xaden tells her that Cat’s Signet amplifies existing emotions. There’s nothing about her being ruled by her emotions in general or her generally spiteful behavior. She just owns up to having feelings that she should have already known were her own feelings.
And then, for good measure, Yarros invalidates Cat as a threat in the future. Remember that dagger I mentioned earlier, the one that blocks her Signet? We are told that the only times Cat affected Violet were times when she didn’t have this dagger on her (when she wore a fancy dress at Teclis’s place, and now at the sparring test). All she has to do is keep the dagger on her going forward, and Cat will no longer matter.
CHARACTER
Violet
Violet’s general awfulness has hit a plateau. However, there is a spot atop this plateau that I think is worthy of acknowledgement.
This is how Xaden gets Violet to realize that Cat is using a Signet on her, thereby getting her to a point where she can break free.
“I honestly don’t care if you kill her, Violence.” Xaden’s voice filters through the rage that holds me with the same unbreakable grip I’m using to choke the life out of my opponent. “But you will.”
I don’t think this is worth criticizing in isolation. If anything, I might take it as a semi-acknowledgement of a flaw, one that would go a long way towards humanizing Violet. It’s often difficult for us to uphold our principles in moments of heightened emotions. Often, it is the selfish desire to avoid negative emotions that gets us to adhere to those principles. Fiction is full of examples of one character saying a variation of this line to another character who is considering some dark act. Sure, it’s not exactly a moment of virtue for the character needing to be talked down, but it is relatable.
The reason it is a problem here is that Yarros has leaned too heavily into Violet’s emotions throughout this series. Everything is always about her feelings, especially when those feelings fly in the face of the very rationality Violet claims to embody. As a result, rather than reminding us that Violet is a human being with human limitations, we are reminded that she is a spiteful, selfish bitch who prioritizes her own feelings over everyone and everything else.
Context matters in characterization, and here, that context destroys what otherwise could have been a very human moment.
Cat
I do have thoughts on Cat, but they need to wait for the discussion of the Other Woman trope down below.
Squad Dynamics
This is how Violet reacts t the news that the rider squads and flier squads will need to inegrate.
This goes against everything we’ve been taught. Squads are sacred. Squads are family. Squads are born after Parapet and forged through the Gauntlet, Threshing, and War Games. Squads aren’t merged unless they’ve dissolved due to deaths - and we’re the Iron Squad.
We do not bend. An we definitely do not blend.
This has never been demonstrated. Violet’s squad, as a collective entity, has zero presence in this story. We’ve been over the pointless dithering over her accessories; the rest of the squad, including Sloane and Aaric, are even more pointless, with individuals surfacing whenever Yarros wants to use them and then rejoining the Red Shirt mob when that use is expended. If anything, the way the squad squabbled during Presentation (which you may recall was directly between two of the three events Violet named) demonstrates that squad unity is meaningless as a concept.
Once again, Yarros chose to do this. She has written this narrative as one where Violet is the center of the universe, regularly going off on her own adventures. She could have earned this idea by having the squad as a whole be an active entity working alongside Violet throughout all (or, for that matter, any) of the story. She instead chose to neglect them.
This moment is only hollow because the author couldn’t be bothered to do the bare minimum of work to give it substance.
WORLDBUILDING
Runes
I’m not going to rehash all of the issues from Plot. I only want to point out that, with how reliable, effective, and diverse runes are shown to be, the issues from Chapter 45 are even more glaring.
Why would Navarre not exploit this magic like crazy to enhance their own military - no, their entire society?
Why would Poromiel getting this magic even be an issue? Between the stones that granted the rebellion relics and the daggers that protect Violet from Cat, it’s clear that runes could simply be made in such a way as to negate flier magic, so Navarre would still have the upper hand within their own borders (which is all they care about, anyway). Worse-case scenario, they have an arms race on their hands, versus the very real possibility that Poromiel would get the runes another way and leap forward while Navarre was hobbling itself.
We learn here that the knot-tying thing Xaden had Violet doing in Part 1 was prep work for learning runes. This, coupled with him enchanting her daggers, means that Tyrrendor has kept this magic alive and well despite the ban, to the point that they could train their nobility in secret to master it as adolescents (since Xaden would have had a hard time learning the skill after the rebellion, when he was put into the foster care of loyalists). Why did they not use this magic to gain an edge on the dragon riders during the rebellion, or else use it to buy the support of Poromiel?
There is also a line from Xaden that demands further explanation.
“I added an element of need into the rune. So, you can’t walk up to any door and open it just because you want to, but if the dagger’s on your body and picks up on the need for a door to unlock, it will. If you’d made it up to the forge at Basgiath, it would have opened to your need.”
How is “need” arbitrated? Is the rune sapient? Does it have a strict code of values programmed into it that can judge whether or not there is actual need? Or does it just go off its wielder? I am inclined to think it is the last option, as this thing allowed Violet to escape from the RSC exercise. If the rune were governed by some impartial arbitrator, it wouldn’t have bothered helping her escape from what is effectively a school field trip. Draconis was too incompetent to be a legitimate threat. The only way “need” makes any sense there is if Violet believing she needs to escape is enough to activate. However, if that is the case, it begs the question of why Xaden would ever give this power to someone as blatantly entitled as Violet. She things she deserves a security clearance because she pursued sex with Xaden. Why would she not thing she “needs” to get through any door she happens to want to open?
Royalty
“Wait. Are you … are you the king of Tyrrendor?
“Fuck, no.” He shakes his head, then pauses. “I mean, yes, technically, I’m the Duke of Aretia by birth, but Lewellen’s on our side and doing just fine at governing the province.”
Lewellen is a family that is mentioned exactly one other time in this book, in the epigraph of Chapter 48. (This means, yes, technically, this is another instance of Yarros establishing information in the same chapter that she has to use that information, making it seem like she pulled it out of her ass and doubled back to cover up said ass-pull.) They were appointed rulers of Tyrrendor after the rebellion.
The problem here is the “on our side” bit.
Why did Navarre not thoroughly investigate the nobility of Tyrrendor to verify who was a loyalist and who had rebel ties? How would they miss this?
Why did Navarre not appoint a noble family from outside Tyrrendor, one who could be more reliably counted on to be loyal, to take over the province (and, you know, rebuild the capital so that the rebellion couldn’t restart in the ruins)?
If the noble family that Navarre trusts to take over rulership of a rebellious province is on the rebels’ side, that calls into question just how deep sympathies for the rebels run across all of Navarre. How many people know the truth about the venin? How many willing allies are ready to plunge into the war outside? Why is the sympathetic force of unknown size just sitting on their asses while a new force of dragons establishes itself outside of Navarre’s control?
PROSE
Between Cat’s taunting and the discussion after the pornography, there is a lot of very explicit references in sex in these chapters, including descriptions of specific techniques. It is a distilled version of what I highlighted back in Chapter 29. If this book did not have multiple scenes of pornography, I would say that it is crass, yet it does effectively conveys information about the characters’ sex lives. It could have been an effective method to get this information to the audience without subjecting us to gratuitous scenes. The issue is that we do also have the pornography. As a result, rather than being informative, these moments come across as oversharing.
Also, something that only really hit me when I was writing up the review for these chapters: isn’t the framing device of this book that it’s something Jesinia “faithfully transcribed”?
At best, this means that Violet through that pornographic descriptions of her sex life were necessary for the historical record. This is what she thought future generations needed to know about the venin crisis. Her friend then needed to read and translate this, including doing substantial research into our modern-day pornography to ensure that she translated all the terminology in a manner that would preserve the same tone (because, as anyone who’s studied foreign languages can attest, colloquialisms, including those used for sex, do not always translate literally).
At worst - and, frankly, this is the more hilarious possibility - Jesinia also wrote down the original text. Violet would have dictated multiple graphic, blow-by-blow descriptions of her sexual encounters (via sign language, no less) to her friend to record for posterity. Jesinia transcribed all of it without ever stopping Violet to say, “Look, Violet, this has no scholastic value. You’re just being an exhibitionist at this point. Get back to the actual story.”
THE OTHER WOMAN - CONCEPT AND EXECUTION
It is rather embarrassing that such a well-established Romance author could screw up so badly with writing Cat. I should not be in a position to give the following analysis, at least not to criticize such a well-established Romance author The following analysis is, by its very existence, a testament to how badly Yarros botched this.
The Trope
There are many ways in which to write a rival for the love interest’s affections, also known in fiction as the Other Woman trope.
The Bitch
At one end of the spectrum are the stories that make the Other Woman, an obviously worse choice than the protagonist. She might be selfish, conniving, narcissistic, inconsiderate, materialistic, or any other of number flaws. Commonly, she doesn’t even love the Love Interest, merely being enamored by something the Love Interest represents. The goal here is to make her less sympathetic than the protagonist, so that we don’t feel bad for her when Love Interest choses the protagonist over her. We may even feel good for the Love Interest’s sake, as avoiding this Other Woman means happiness for him as well as the protagonist.
A good example of this type of Other Woman is Priscilla from the 2012 film A Christmas Kiss. (Technically, the main character of the film, Wendy, is the Other Woman, as the Love Interest in this film starts the movie as Priscilla’s boyfriend, but the morality of this film is aligned with Wendy, so let’s roll with this for the sake of argument.) Priscilla is Wendy’s boss, a stereotypical Alpha Bitch who overworks Wendy and steals credit for Wendy’s ideas. Early on in the film, we learn that Priscilla’s attraction to Love Interest is not genuine: she sees them getting together as a fulfillment of expectations for the social circles that she wants to stay relevant within. At the climax, when she notices a growing attraction between Wendy and Love Interest, she fires Wendy, then tells Love Interest that Wendy quit of her own volition. The reveal of this underhanded move is the straw the breaks the camel’s back for Pricilla and Love Interest’s relationship, causing him to go to Wendy and make his big Love Confession.
The Victim
At the opposite end, you have the Other Woman who is a sympathetic character. She cares about the Love Interest and wants to be with him for that reason alone; she doesn’t have any flaws that would make her obviously worse for him than the protagonist. When the Love Interest does choose the protagonist, it’s somewhat bittersweet. The happiness of the winning couple is offset by the loss for someone we like, or at least, someone we can readily empathize with. There are two ways that this style of romance will compensate so as to maintain a positive experience for the audience:
Lay the fault with the Love Interest. His relationship with the Other Woman (whatever that relationship might be at the start of the story) is overshadowed by some personal flaw. His arc within the story is about growing as a character and overcoming that flaw. When he makes the “right” decision and chooses the protagonist, it is the best choice he could have made for the long-term happiness of himself, protagonist, and the Other Woman. For him to choose the Other Woman would not have made her truly happy, so in a way, her not ending up with him is the happiest ending the story could offer her.
Pair the Spare by introducing another character for the Other Woman to enter a romantic relationship with.
A great example of this is the 2007 film Enchanted. The Love Interest of that film is a jaded divorce lawyer who does not believe in love. His relationship with the Other Woman, Nancy, is one of procedure and obligation, devoid of genuine passion. His arc within the film is about rediscovering passion, both in romance and in life in general, which is facilitated by the protagonist, Giselle. Nancy is very obviously hurt by this turn of events, yet she also understands that Love Interest does not feel about her in the way that he feels about Giselle. She is also then paired off with the prince whom Giselle was formerly paired with, thereby getting a literal fairy-tale ending.
Balance
Between these two extremes is a case where the Other Woman is a sympathetic woman but where the relationship is clearly not in the best interest of herself and Love Interest. Perhaps there is a fundamental incompatibility that sabotages any potential for long-term happiness. Perhaps their lives are simply moving in different directions, and neither one is willing or able to sacrifice their obligations, dreams, or ambitions for the other. In these situations, either the Love Interest, the Other Woman, or both must come to terms with the reality of their relationship and break it off, thereby allowing Love Interest to get together with the protagonist. There’s not necessarily a need to provide the Other Woman with an explicit happy ending in this situation, as her happiness is implied by freeing her from a relationship that wouldn’t be suitable in the long run.
This can be seen in the 2001 film The Wedding Planner. The worst that can really be said about Fran, the Other Woman of the story, is that she is a career woman whose greatest passion is helping to grow her family’s business. She loves the Love Interest, but she is constantly missing wedding preparations as she travels around for business meetings. The absolute closest she comes to an unsympathetic moment is the climax of the film, when Love Interest tries to call off the wedding. For only an instant, she comes off as a Bridezilla, saying something to the effect of, “How dare you do this on my wedding day.” However, thanks to the very real bond between her and Love Interest, he is able to calm her down and ask her honestly if she still wants to marry him. After a few deep breaths, she admits that she does not. Fran then departs the film on good terms with Love Interest. They are two people who love each other, but their futures simply are not on the same path.
Commonalities
There is a single thread that is entwined throughout the above scenarios: the Other Woman must be a legitimate threat to the romantic pairing of the protagonist and Love Interest. The relationship cannot move forward to a happy ending until she is dealt with, in one way or another. This can’t be a simple matter of jealousy on the part of the protagonist. There needs to be a legitimate and daunting obstacle that she poses, raising the stakes of the story.
In all three of the examples I gave, the Love Interest began the story in an established, long-term relationship with the Other Woman. He had, effectively, already chosen her; the protagonist not only needed to win his heart but also convince him that he was belonged with her rather than the protagonist.
A Christmas Kiss had Love Interest be blind to Priscilla’s true nature. It was only when he grasped the truth that he was able to leave her. (In this story, Priscilla was also Wendy’s boss, so Wendy growing closer to Love Interest created the risk that Priscilla would destroy her career.)
Enchanted had Love Interest be blinded by his own cynicism and sense of obligation. He had to overcome this (in part, with Nancy’s help) before he and Giselle could have a future together.
The Wedding Planner had Love Interest and Fran both operating on auto-pilot. It was only when they together realized that they were happier apart that he was able to go to the protagonist. (Additionally, the protagonist, Mary, is the titular wedding planner for Fran and Love Interest’s wedding, and she has trauma from having her former fiancé cheat on her. It would damage her career and go against her principles to allow Love Interest to walk out on Fran for her sake.)
There are, of course, other options to an established relationship. Some of these were secondary obstacles within those two examples, but I do have a further two examples that are more clear-cut.
In the 2002 film Maid in Manhattan, the protagonist, Marisa, is the victim of a case of mistaken identity. In a moment of temptation, she tries on the clothes of a guest of the luxury hotel where she works - that guest being the Other Woman, Caroline. This leads to a situation where she is spotted by Love Interest and mistaken for Caroline. This is a problem because Caroline is also gunning for Love Interest. He is repulsed by her, but because he keeps trying to find the mysterious Caroline whom he met in the hotel, he cannot avoid the real Caroline. In this situation, the threat posed by the Caroline is purely the power dynamic between Caroline and Marisa. Caroline can (and, ultimately does) get Marisa fired if she finds out that Marisa was borrowing her clothes. She is, at most, a manifestation of the class differences between Marisa and Love Interest that the film tries (admittedly, with not much success) to explore as an obstacle to their relationship.
Another noteworthy example is the 2010 film My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend. In this film, the Other Woman is actually the Other Man. The story begins when the protagonist, Ethan meet the Love Interest, Jesse, at a coffee shop. He asks her out in a moment of impulsivity. No sooner does he walk out of the door, however, that a man named Troy enters the coffee shop. Troy is Ethan’s superior is every conceivable way, and unfortunately for Ethan, he also decides to ask Jesse out on the spur of the moment. The film then follows Jesse as she juggles her relationships with both men simultaneously. I don’t want to spoil the ending of that film (as I feel that the film is a perfect example of how to execute a great twist). However, I will say that the reason Troy is an obstacle to Jesse and Ethan is not because of the relationship itself. Rather, Troy embodies the failure of both Jesse and Ethan to communicate their insecurities. He offers both of them an easy out from hard conversations that neither Jesse or Ethan are ready to have. The conflict is only resolved when Jesse and Ethan independently come to the realization that neither of them will be truly happy unless they are honest with the other person.
What Yarros Did with Cat
Cat is very clearly at the unsympathetic extreme of the spectrum. Not only is she presented as a nasty individual, but she is open and honest about only wanting Xaden’s power, not caring about love. Even Priscilla was demonstrably insecure about what the Love Interest in A Christmas Kiss thought about her. Cat lacks that humanity.
In and of itself, that is not a problem. The problem is Cat’s position at the time she brazenly announces this.
Xaden is not in a relationship with Cat. They tried it, and he rejected her. Xaden has chosen Violet. This means that Violet is actually the obstacle for Cat, rather than Cat being the obstacle for Violet.
Cat announces this information in a manner that Xaden will hear it. It doesn’t matter than she lowers her voice when she tells Violet the most condemning bits about her political desires. She should know that Violet is mentally linked to Tairn. Even if she thinks that Xaden will never believe Violet if Violet repeated the things Cat says here, she must know that Xaden will trust the word of a dragon. (Plus, before she lowered her voice, she announced that she knows Xaden doesn’t love her. That’s something she should know that everyone watching the match would here.) In other words, Cat has just performed the reveal of her true self that cost Priscilla the Love Interest in A Christmas Kiss.
Cat isn’t being up as an insurmountable threat for Violet and Xaden’s relationship. She is actively digging a hole for herself while building up Violet’s position. This is so bizarre. Why did Yarros waste our time with this Jealousy conflict if she wasn’t even going to properly write the Other Woman?
Pulling Out the Pin
Remember this snippet from Chapter 28?
My chest tightens. The way she looks at Xaden isn’t just doe-eyed. There’s an unmistakable longing there, a hunger that has me blinking. It’s like she’s been trudging through a desert and he’s the oasis.
She looks…like how I feel.
Let’s assess what Yarros intended with this, then double back to point out how she just sabotaged Violet.
We were led to believe, back in Chapter 28, that Cat loves Xaden as much as Violet does. She could offer Xaden the same things as Violet, and she has the benefit of prior history with him. That is the obstacle that Yarros chose to set up.
This is what Yarros should have stuck with. The Other Woman being the underdog can work if she offers something that could lure the Love Interest away from the protagonist. If Cat genuinely loved Xaden and would go to any lengths to get him back, then Violet could at any point lose him by making a mistake that would drive Xaden to seek comfort with Cat. Cat’s Signet, and her use of this Signet to sabotage Violet, would make a whole lot more sense in this scenario. She would be in a state of desperation, not unlike the state of desperation that led Violet to fly to Samara when she thought Xaden had been hurt, and would be resorting to every tool at her disposal to destroy the person who was the Other Woman of her own story. I could even see a scenario when this suicidal behavior on the sparring match would make sense. If this Jealousy conflict were given a lot more time to play out, then Cat could have a reached a point where she knew she had lost and could cope. Forcing Violet to kill her would be both her way out of her emotional pain and a final act of sabotage to at least destroy Violet’s hopes of happiness.
Instead, the Cat we got is such a screamingly obvious villain that Xaden was never going to go back to her, thereby invalidating any potential of her being an obstacle.
Now, on to the sabotage. Cat just admitted that she doesn’t love Xaden. That hunger is for how she can use him. She doesn’t see Xaden as a person, only as an object - no, less than an object. He is a plot coupon toward getting the power she craves.
Violet looked at Cat and concluded that she feels the same longing for Xaden as Violet herself does. Remember, when Violet jumps to a wild and unsupported conclusion, she is always right. I didn’t write that rule. Yarros herself did.
So … by Violet’s and Cat’s mutual admissions … Violet doesn’t love Xaden. Her longing is for how she can use him. It’s just that she sees him as a plot coupon for sexual gratification rather than political power.
Why are we supposed to be supporting this relationship again?
IN-SUE-FERABLE BITCH
Chapter 49 FINALLY has Violet stoop to the level of having an honest conversation with Dain about why she hates him.
She only does this so that she can use him.
I feel like this chapter needs to be analyzed in isolation not because of what it says about Violet’s character - frankly, this is nothing new - but because it highlights just have badly Yarros squandered Dain. He could have been a villain. He could have been a well-meaning antagonist. He could have been Violet’s friend through thick and thin. If Yarros wanted to bring back the love triangle, he could even have worked his way back to being a rival love interest. Yarros chose instead to make him someone for Violet to blame for all her problems and casually abuse - but she nevertheless could have stuck the landing. With a well-written scene of resolution, she could have tied up Dain’s role in the story in a manner that brought a sense of finality and satisfaction, perhaps even redeeming Violet for past behavior towards him.
What we got instead is … unpleasant.
I suspect that, on some level, Yarros knows that some people won’t like how much she’s demonized Dain. Rather than simply rewriting past chapters (since, you know, that would mean showing mercy to the strawman of someone she evidently hates), she decided to try arguing her position to the audience, then forcing her strawman to accept blame he didn’t deserve.
What a waste.
It’s coming your way on July 19th. I hope to see you all then. Have a good week.
