Iron Flame (Chapter 49)
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.
LET’S TALK ABOUT ANTAGONISTS
At the time of writing this post, Merriam Webster defines “antagonist” as “one that contends with or opposes another”.
In a literary sense, anyone who opposes the protagonist is an antagonist. This is not limited to existential threats or enemies who take the focus of the story. Any minor character who competes against or stands in the way of the protagonist is technically an antagonist, even if only temporarily (such as when an ally opposes the protagonist for the duration of a single scene).
The broad definition of antagonist is useful because it allows for coinciding conflicts and escalating threats. Let’s take The Order of the Phoenix as an example.
Voldemort is the existential threat around whom the series is built. He is constantly on Harry’s mind.
Umbridge is the main antagonist for Harry’s school life.
Slytherin House collectively serves as a low-stakes antagonist to give more life to mundane school events.
Seamus is a temporary antagonist who reflects Harry’s status in society within this story. He is intially dismissive and unfriendly towards Harry, but he eventually comes around and rejoins Harry’s allies as he comes to accept the reality of the Voldemort situation.
The reason I feel compelled to explain such a basic concept is that Yarros mishandled two fantastic opportunities for low-stakes antagonists in this book.
Cat could have manifested Violet’s insecurities and threatened her romance with Xaden.
Dain could have threatened the secrets Violet tried to keep and, by extension, the Aretia rebels.
Rather than explore either opportunity, Yarros methodically disassembled both characters. She was obsessed with having Violet triumph over them that she went out of her way to destroy any value they might have had as obstacles for Violet to overcome. This goes so far that, every time Violet does engage with them, the conflict comes off as an unhinged fantasy fueled by pent-up spite and hatred towards real people, simultaneously no opposition and yet constantly being pummeled into the ground.
I should not have anything else to say about the failure that these two antagonists represent. I would rather leave them and their terrible written conflicts dead and buried. Unfortunately or me, Chapter 49 is where Yarros digs up their violated corpses and parades them in front of the audience for a victory lap.
STRUCTURE
This is another chapter where we need to break things down in chronological chunks, rather than collectively exploring facets of the writing.
Chapter 49 is split into two scenes, the first of which can farther be subdivided into two parts:
Scene One: Before meeting Dain
Scene 1A: The Courtyard
Scene 1B: The Library
Scene Two: Wardstone Chamber
SCENE 1A: THE COURTYARD
Story
Since the rider and flier squads are integrating, the fliers in Violet’s squad are now part of the Iron Squad (the one with the fewest cadets killed in training). Violet brings the patches to these fliers, including Cat. This is presented as Violet being the better woman and defeating Cat with witty reparté, but in actuality, Violet and the other riders are “egotistical assholes”, the fliers accept this mistreatment with humility, and then Violet decides to “fuck civility” and be catty and crass when only Cat has the ovaries to push back.
Analysis
The chapters where Cat and the Jealousy conflict have been truly relevant have been Chapters 41, 46, 47, and 48. It builds upon the false insecurity that appears in these chapters as well as Chapters 37 through 40 and Chapter 44.
As covered in great detail throughout Part 2, Yarros has utterly wasted the audience’s time here. It was clear from the start that Violet would escape this conflict by being validated, rather than admitting to, growing past, and overcoming a genuine flaw. This came to fruition in Chapter 48, when Xaden delivered that valdiation.
Yarros should have cut her losses there, but it seems that she just couldn’t help herself.
First, as Violet brings the patches to Cat, we get this:
We cross the frost-covered courtyard together, and I tap the dagger at my left hip, making sure it’s right where I left it.
Xaden loves me. He chose me. I will be the most powerful rider of my generation.
Cat only has the power I choose to give her, with or without my dagger.
Followed shortly afterwards by this:
I note the twinge of jealousy that she’s been privy to parts of his life that I haven’t, but there’s no rage, no sour jolt of insecurity, and no self-loathing. I fucking love my daggers for a whole new reason.
Let's ignore how utterly laughable it is that Yarros expects us to believe that Violet would not feel rage, insecurity, or self-loathing on her own, despite the bulk of the false insecurity conflict happening when Cat isn’t around. Yarros is nowdirectly telling us that the conflict she wasted so much time with does not matter. It hasn’t been resolved, it simply doesn’t matter. Violet has just … gotten over her insecurity, and she is now protected against the outside factor that is supposedly to blame for her acting characteristically irrational. The story is over. We can all go home now.
While these ideas were DOA, Yarros did have some room to breathe life back into them. She could have shown us how Violet still struggles with her insecurity and her jealousy after Xaden gives her validation. It would be hollow conflict, but as least we could have seen some growth. But, of course, growth implies that Violet was not already perfect, so she just put a bow on things and gave up.
With this final confirmation of how pointless these conflicts are, I have no issue saying that they could be cut from the story outright. All that time we wasted could have been spent to develop more important things or simply removed to cut down on the bloat.
And speaking of more important things …
Iron Squad
“Here we go.” Rhiannon hands six of us familiar green patches.
“Do we really have to give them these?” Ridoc’s lip curls at the patch we worked ourasses off for, the patch the first-years fought to hold on to.
“Yes,” Rhiannon chides. “It’s the right thing to do. As of this moment, they’re partof our squad, whether we like it or not.”
I haven't talked about the concept of the Iron Squad on this review. Much like the character of Panchek, it has been mentioned in passing yet has no substance. It is just an extra mark of specialness slapped onto Violet by being part of this group. As a result, the importance put onto it now feels empty..
This moment also emphasizes the missed opportunity of not actually fleshing out Violet's squad mates as characters and exploring what their survival means to Violet. We get flashes about her not wanting to feel the pain of the first-years dying and forced lines about how she and her accessories will survive to graduate, but these are fleeting and superficial. The reality is that this story is about Violet, not about her squad. Her story rolls right along without them. If Yarros really wanted Iron Squad to have had substance, then she should have made the squad a focus of the story and made their dynamics relevant to the narrative. Violet recruiting her accessories to get the journal simply isn’t enough to support this.
I think the Gudrunites from Xenos are an interesting point of comparison here. Going by the number of their appearances and their word count within those appearances, the Gundrunites got far less establishment and far less to do than the members of Violet’s squad. The reason why this isn’t an issue is that the narrative doesn’t try to make a big deal out of them, either as a collective or as people Eisenhorn has gotten to work with. Their character development remains in the background, observable but not expected to carry the narrative. While Eisenhorn does personally request that they accompany him in the climax, that is purely a practical consideration based upon specific experiences he knows that they have earned, not something abstract. We are not expected to care about these Red Shirts purely because Eisenhorn is associated with them.
Also … does anyone else think it’s rich for Violet to whine about earning Iron Squad when she would be dead several times over (potentially depriving her squad of that patch) if others didn't shield her from the consequences of her actions?
Uniform
I’d thought I’d talked the nonsense of rider uniforms into the ground, but Yarros gives us something juicy when Violet is explaining the patches to Cat and the other fliers.
“Riders, and fliers now, choose whatever location they want for every patch besides wing and rank …”
Why would wing and rank have standardized positions?
The logical answer is that, much like our real world, these patches are designed to convey massive amounts of information to other military personnel at a glance.
Then … why don't ALL the patches, especially the ones for Signets and specialized skills, not also have standard positions? Signets, in particular, should be more important than wing and rank, particularly since they are implied to be a deciding factor in promotions. They are also situational tools that can erase problems. Surely that should be in a standardized positions to make Signets easy to identify?
To illustrate the problem: what if I, as a rider, received the supposedly impossible power to raise the dead as my Signet … and then I decided to sew my Signet patch to my crotch? Is an officer who needs to identify me in the crowd, and only knows to look for the guy with the resurrection Signet, really expected to look over every other rider present, only to be embarrassed when he realized that he missed me because he didn’t think to look at my crotch? This may sound like a ridiculous scenario, but it is absolutely possible with the rules as written and the extremely legalistic nature of the riders. The pants would just need to be black. And so, if I could sew my Signet patch to my crotch, what about my wing and rank is so important that I couldn't sew them to my backside?
Yarros isn't just toggling realism to try to have things both ways. She’s tried to jam the toggle into the intermediate position. It is very silly.
The Fantasy
Much like with the bizarre, “She is forcing me to kill her,” moment in Chapter 47, I can feel the hand - or, rather, the fantasies - of the author at work here.
The entire interaction with Cat feels like a bizarre conversation one would dream up to embarrass an adversary, the type of fantasy where self-awareness goes out the window because it is all in someone’s head. After crushing her rival so utterly, Yarros's self-insert Mary Sue gets a scene that serves no purpose than to show that she is the “better” woman. She does this by justifying incivility to herself and using her sex life to one-up her rival (the latter of which includes a very unsubtle reference to a specific sexual act).
This is so weird and off-putting. There are ways to write this sort of thing to make great fiction. Yarros could have made something great out of this. The problem is that successful execution of this sort of thing requires discipline and compromise, neither of which Yarros seems willing to invest in. (Plus, as previously mentioned, we again have a moment that feels like oversharing, thanks to the presence of pornography in the previous chapter.)
SCENE 1B: THE LIBRARY
Story
Violet’s accessories validate her behavior towards Cat as they walk towards the library. They worry about how Cat might use her Signet to make them hate her. Sawyer suggests killing Cat, only for Violet to remind him that Cat is now a squadmate.
The group enters the library. Violet helps Sawyer with his sign language so that he can flirt with Jesinia. Dain then approaches. Violet reminds herself that she can exploit Dain and is happy when he agrees to be exploited.
Analysis
The treatment of Dain is no less sickening now than it was in Chapter 8, Chapter 14, Chapter 21, Chapter 29, or Chapters 37 and 38.
Throughout both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, Dain has consistently been characterized as an honest man who does everything within reason to help Violet and to make amends to her whenever she believes he has wronged her. Despite the intensity of her obvious hatred for this character, at no point has Yarros ever given him anything to actually characterize him as worthy of that demonization. She has actually redeemed him: by validating Violet’s handling of Sloane, she retroactively approved of Dain’s far less invasive measures. At worst, Yarros has tried to frame Dain as a sex offender, but because she did not support this with any trauma to Violet, it really just comes across as more demonization.
Despite this, Violet has only gotten more and more spiteful towards Dain, even when he behaved in a manner that, by her morality, made him objectively, unquestionably a hero of this story. She is so devoted to hating him that, even when she learns her impression of his actions was wrong, she doubles down. When Dain stabs Draconis in Chapter 36, thereby throwing everything away for her sake, she is so unable to reconcile with reality that she actually questions her decision to not let Xaden kill Dain on the spot.
“He saved me,” I whisper. “Don’t kill him.”
Stabbing Varrish earns Dain a chance…right?
Yes, you Khornate bitch! Why was this even a question?
Even after this, and even after Dain makes the mass defection possible by rallying all the cadets and explaining the venin situation, Violet refuses to cut him any slack. We already covered her disgusting perspective back in Chapter 38. However, I neglected this moment in Chapter 43.
“What the fuck is he doing back here?” Sloane mutters. It doesn’t matter how many times I explain that Dain didn’t understand the consequences of stealing my memories; Sloane still despises him.
There’s an overwhelming part of me that still does, too.
This is AFTER everything Dain for her, whilst fully understanding the consequences of him doing so.
Now, however, things have changed.
Now, Violet can exploit Dain. She needs help translating the second journal that was taken from the sublevel vault, along with other books on the venin that Teclis sent to Aretia.
“So is Krovlish Jesinia’s specialty?” Rhi asks, picking up the top book, which is an accounting of the first emergence of the venin after the Great War. At least, Ithink it is.
“No.” I shake my head as the library door opens exactly at seven thirty. Right on time as always. “It’s his.”
“Seriously?” Ridoc mutters as I walk away from the table.
“You asked to see me?” Dain folds his arms across his chest. “Of your own volition No orders or anything?”
For a second, I hesitate. Then I remember that he stabbed Varrish, he called the formation to split the quadrant, and when the truth came to light, he chose exile with a group of people who despise him because it was the right thing to do. “I need your help.”
“All right.” He nods without waiting for an explanation.
And just like that, I remember why he used to be one of my favorite people on the Continent.
Dain has not changed as a character. Violet has not changed as a character. The variables that Violet uses to convince herself to use Dain have applied since Chapter 36. The only thing that has changed is that, now, she can exploit the man she hates.
And, when he agrees to being exploited, she finally acknowledges something positive about him.
What a disgusting dæmon Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue is.
And, yes, I did need to phrase it like that. Much like with Cat, much like with the general demonization of Dain, you can feel Yarros ramming herself into this story. It reads as though, for all her fantasies of hatred towards whomever Dain represents, she can’t help but acknowledge that he’s useful and that she would happily exploit him if it became beneficial for her to do so.
I Swear I Don't Like This
When Sawyer proposes killing Cat, and Violet rejects the idea, we get a rather strange line.
We all fall quiet, not out of shock but because we actually consider it for a few seconds. At least, I do. “We can’t kill her. She’s our squadmate.”
Wait, is that really the only ethical line there?
There is no follow-up to Violet having this reaction to her own words. Nothing is explored. It is immediately forgotten as her accessories and even her dragons chime in on the issue.
I feel that, much like with the relative softness of the gryphon fliers, Yarros wants to reassure the audience that she doesn’t personally like the bloody ways of the riders. If this was an idea she actually wanted to explore, surely it would have gotten any amount of focus. It wouldn't be a throwaway line.
SCENE 2: WARDSTONE CHAMBER
Story
While working on translating the books, Dain tries to mend bridges with Violet. She gaslights him about how her mistreating him in Fourth Wing was his fault. When Dain gives an unconditional apology for all the things she blames him for, she refuses to forgive him and tells him that she will continue to punish him until she feels better. He can continue to be useful to her, but their friendship is dead. Dain humbly accepts these terms.
Analysis
No, I did not leave anything out. The unrelenting horror of this abusive relationship really is this brazen and devoid of self-awareness.
Where It Begins
“Don’t look so shocked that I remember Jesinia’s specialization. I listen when you talk.” He flinches. “At least I used to.”
“When did you stop?” The question leaves my mouth before I can catch it.
Now, in fairness to Violet, this part was Dain’s fault - though, by that logic, any abuse victim whose will is broken by their abuser is responsible for all further acts of abuse.
Dain never “stopped” listening to Violet. In fact, he ALWAYS listened to her. When she rejected his escape offer and threw herself into Threshing, he stepped back and let her suffer the consequences. When she chose Xaden over him, he bowed out. At worst, one could say that his mere offers of help were not listening to her, except that each offer was a new one, based on new circumstances. He listened to her, and didn’t repeat the offer in question, once she rejected it.
Again, Dain could be (victim-) blamed for brining this up, but Violet saw nothing wrong with running with it. This is absolutely indicative of her perspective of him and their relationship as a whole.
Destroying History
Dain then takes half a page to share his perspective on Fourth Wing. It's a slightly more detailed version of his appeal to Violet in Chapter 9 of that book: the Quadrant is a dangerous place, he’d seen enough friends die and wanted to at least save her, etc. Where it gets interesting is at the very end.
“All I could think was that I’d just survived a yearof hearing my friends’ names called on the death roll, and I was going to make damn sure yours wasn’t. And then you hated me for trying to give you what you’d always told me you wanted.”
What Violet always told him she wanted?
What?
This can't be a reference to him kissing her. Fourth Wing established that the Best Friend Love Interest thing was, at most, an attraction that they never had an opportunity to explore. Violet never indicated that she’d ever told him that she wanted his kiss.
The only way to read this (without concluding that Yarros is outright lying to the audience, which she admittedly has well-established precedent for) is that Dain is referring to his efforts to help Violet: to provide her with escape routes, to shield her from consequences, etc. We are being told here that Dain’s actions in Fourth Wing align with what Violet “wanted” him to do. This suddenly makes Violet’s decision to interfere with Sloane make a lot more sense. She is giving Sloane the help that she would want for herself.
This is catastrophic.
Violet’s spite of Dain has long ago passed the point of no return, so this doesn’t make her treatment of him in either book worse. However, it devastates the Romance subplot from Fourth Wing. What Yarros has implied here is that Violet did not, in fact, grow as a person and move beyond Dain. What Violet did was condition Dain to behave in a certain way, then tossed him aside in favor of the Bad Boy Love Interest.
Delusions
“That’s not why I hated -” I press my lines in a tight line. “You wouldn’t let me grow up, and you were so fucking pigheaded that you knew what was right or me. You were never like that as a kid.”
Lightning round:
Dain let Violet grow up when he didn’t intervene in the Threshing. This is what drove Violet to chose Xaden, the one who shielded her from consequences and, thus, didn’t let her grow up.
Xaden is more pigheaded, as he steamrollers over Violet’s objections rather than following Dain’s example and caving in.
Violet is talking about how Dain was “never like that as a kid” right after Dain spent half a page explaining exactly why he isn’t the person he was as a kid. Why is Violet not listening to a single word that Dain is saying?
Groveling
After some banter about the Codex and Violet’s translations, we hit rock bottom.
The flash of a smile he tries to hide hits me somewhere in the vicinity of my stomach, reminding me of the days when he’d been my best friend, and suddenly this is too much.
I scramble to my feet, dust my leathers off, and walk toward the [ward]stone.
“Vi” he says quietly, but the cavernous space amplifies it so he may as well be shouting. “We finally going to talk about what happened?”
Violet ignores him at first - which is true to her character, as she would rather punish him by shutting him out rather than allow for any reconciliation to occur - and then Dain tries again.
Seconds later, he’s standing next to me. “I’m sorry, Violet.”
More ignoring by Violet, and then:
I’m sorry for the role I played in their deaths. I’m so fucking sorry -”
“Did you steal my memories every time you touched my face last year?” I blurt out, letting the cold seep into my palm.
Silence fills the chamber for a long moment before he finally responds softly. “No.”
I nod and pivot to face him. “So just when you needed information you couldn’t ask me for.”
He lifts his hand and puts it against the stone mere inches from mine, splaying his fingers wide. “I did it by accident the first time. I was just so used to touching you. And you’d gotten close to Riorson, and my father had pretty much bragged about the way your mother cut into him. I knew he had to be out for revenge, but you wouldn’t listen to me -”
“He was never out for revenge. Not with me.” I shake my head.
“I know that now.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I fucked up.”
He says a lot more than that, and Violet takes advantage of that weakness, but I honestly don’t have the stomach to share more.
Dain has just explicitly stated that the memory he took, the one that we are supposed to believe was the one and only trigger for the climax of Fourth Wind, was taken “by accident”. He references other times he did it deliberately, but because he doesn’t elaborate, there is a very real possibility that he was only referring to the incident in Chapter 35 of this book. This, coupled with him confirming that not every touch was him reading Violet’s memories, combined with Yarros’s utter lack of subtlety (because surely, if there were other incidents, she would have actually identified them), means that the only logical conclusion is that the only time he read Violet’s memories prior to Chatper 35 was an accident.
When you combine this with the reveals from Chapter 21 … Dain is blameless. He took no deliberate action that could have led to Liam’s death.
Violet should be able to figure this out, but irrational spite is her defining character trait at this point. It would be out of character for her to be a “rational woman” and figure this out herself. Dain, however, does not have that limitation. He should be able to rationally sort through the information …
… unless his will has been so utterly broken by emotional abuse that he can’t think rationally. He can only think of pleasing his abuser. Right now, the Khornate demands that he bleeds, and so he bleeds.
Conclusion
To really hammer home Violet’s monstrous nature, she ends the groveling thusly.
“I need your help with the journal. And that’s not fair, because I need to know that we won’t talk about this - about Liam and Soleil - again. At least not until I have a lot more distance.”
Violet needs to use Dain, and that’s not fair - to HER. That’s why she sets conditions that are contingent on HER emotional needs. She needs distance, but she also needs to be in contact with him to use him, so she dictates terms to him, knowing that he is so warped by her abuse that he will readily agree to whatever is needed to please her.
The scene ends with Dain asking Violet if she truly loves Xaden. She confirms this. I assume that this was Yarros’s way of ensuring that no one ships Dain and Violet in the future.
Don’t worry, Ms. Yarros. Not only was this not necessary, given how you naturally closed off that path in Chapter 16 of Fourth Wing, but thanks to this little scene, the only man I’d ever think of exposing to Violet is Angron.
Themes
Between the delusions and the groveling, Violet and Dain briefly touch upon the way the Quadrant tries to mold its riders.
“Living only by the Codex will do that to you.”
“Part of me wonders if that’s why they push it on us so hard. They transform us into their perfect weapons, teach us to critically think about everything except the Codex and the orders they give.”
Wasted Potential
There is a seed of a good idea here.
Yarros has indeed set up the idea that the Quadrant trains riders to think critically. The whole point of Battle Brief, as established from the early chapters of Fourth Wing, is to challenge every rider to be able to see both the tactical and the strategic importance of every battle. The Quadrant didn’t need to do this. They went out of their way to foster this skill in their riders.
What’s more, this is an idea with a lot of potential. Far too many people in our world don’t think critically about thinking critically. It becomes a concept wielded in a bid to establish intellectual superiority over opposing viewpoints (i.e. “If you thought critically, you would take my side. You don’t take my side, so you must not be thinking critically”) whilst the wielder simultaneously ignores contradictions in their own position or lashes out at people thinking critically about said position. Yarros is taking the extra step to get some real substance out of this theme. She is acknowledging that people will push critical thought only when it is convenient.
The problem, like so much else in this story, is that Yarros doesn’t take the time to actually do anything with it. Has there even been a point where people had to choose whether to think critically about the Codex or their orders? If anything, what we have seen actively destroys this theme.
Dain and half the Quadrant immediately switched sides when presented with information that contradicted the official narrative. If this is meant to contrast those who think critically versus those who did not, it fails on multiple levels. This vast percentage of the riders used the training given to them by the Quadrant to to think critically about their orders. The ones who supposedly didn't were denied the opportunity by their dragons.
None of the defectors seems to be thinking critically about why Navarre has reacted to the venin threat in the way that it does. This means that Violet, the person who spouted this theme, is representing the faction the actually embodied the anti-theme. They are thinking critically about everything except their new cause.
(Anti-) Militarism
Given the criticism of Yarros for being pro-military, coupled with the way the infantry were treated in Chapters 14 and 15, I think it’s worth highlighted how this line applies to the military specifically.
Violet is implying that the Quadrant is in the wrong for not teaching SOLDIERS to “critically think” about orders - the very thing that distinguishes a disciplined military from a well-funded riot.
Unlike the broader thematic idea that we just went over, there is no potential here. There is no depth. This is one of the most superficial criticisms of militaries that a person can offer, and it is fundamentally at odds with the very nature of the world Yarros has built, for one simple reason:
No one thinks critically about the decisions of the dragons. Humans, yes, but not the dragons. “Dragons don’t make mistakes.” When a dragon gives an order, you obey or you die.
Maybe if Yarros had something deeper and more nuanced to say, this could have worked. As it is, all this does is confirm that Yarros doesn’t understand either her own setting or how militaries work.
Return of the Translation Errors
Violet getting Dain’s help for figure out the wardstone COULD have been an opportunity to acknowledge Violet’s failures. I don’t mean the failure to activate the wardstone, which only serves to feed the false insecurity conflict. I’m referring to Violet botching the translation.
Unfortunately, Yarros decided to go the “egostistical assholes” route again by laughing off Violet’s mistake rather than delving into it.
“Where are your translations for the beginning? Maybe we can compare the symbols.”
“I skipped ahead to the ward entries, seeing as that’s what we needed.”
He blinks. “You … skipped? You, out of all people, didn’t read a book from start to finish?” The flash of a smile he tries to hide …
This is then immediately followed by the groveling. Maybe Yarros was attempting to Discredit Deflect Distract to avoid admitting to Violet’s real mistake. Even if that is not the case, the delivery makes it clear. Much like when Imogen waved off the riders’ terrible behavior by saying that they’re all “egotistical assholes”, Dain is laughing off Violet’s massive error in judgment as a funny moment. This is letting Violet off the hook in a manner that voids any accountability.
WASTE AND INDULGENCE
Next week, we will Chapters 50 through 52 - chapters that I really want to like.
There are a pair of scenes within these chapters that are functional in isolation. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they are remarkable or even great, yet they are mostly effective at what they are trying to do. You can see what Yarros was going for and imagine a scenario in which she succeeded by changing things outside of these scenes. If Iron Flame were to be completely rewritten to make a functional narrative, I would recommend leaving these two scenes intact, as they would blend in quite well in a better story.
The issue, of course, is that these scenes cannot exist in isolation. They are part of this story. Therefore, while I’m going to try to focus on their positives, I will need to point out how they ultimately collapse. The foundations to support them simply don’t exist.
We will then cap off the section with what will (hopefully) be the second-to-last discussion of Violet’s accessories and the Red Shirts in general for the rest of this book (with the last discussion coming when we hit Chapters 61 through 64). Yarros tries to milk more virtue for Violet by showing how considerate she is of this faceless mob. Unfortunately, she does so in a manner that only bogs down the pacing with pointless garbage and damns Violet for selfishness. She also manages to tip her hand and reveal so how shallow her virtue signaling with Token Queer characters really is.
It’s coming your way July 26th. I hope to see you all then. Have good week.
