Iron Flame (Chapter 50 to Chapter 52)
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 has another scene of training with Felix. He helps her advance by taking the conduit he gave to help her focus the power and asking her to maintain an electrical arc between herself and it. She manages to maintain this arc over a few feet of distance before losing control. Felix then tasks her with preserving the arc over a 15-foot distance.
Xaden returns to Aretia after a mission. Violet hears a battle report from the riders who were with him (including Heaton, allowing Yarros to indulge in the Token Non-Binary Character’s pronouns for the second and final time in the book). The scene ends with Violet being told that the wyverns and venin are bypassing most of Poromiel and preparing to launch an invasion of Aretia.
Violet finds Xaden moping on the roof of Riorson House. She tries to cheer him up, and he relays just how outmatched the Aretia rebels are. Xaden reveals that Mira ordered him to retreat from the battle to protect Violet’s feelings, and he apologizes to her, since now he knows how she felt being protected for his sake.
We cut to a scene of Dain and Violet translating the journals. After sending Dain away to get some sleep, Violet realizes that she mistranslating “breath” as “blood”. The way to activate the wards is for the dragons to breathe on the wardstone. With the knowledge of how to protect all of her loved ones in hand, Violet …
… keeps it to herself.
Violet calls for a meeting of her entire squad at Rhiannon’s sister’s house. Multiple pages are wasted on inane drama that the accessories and Red Shirts are involved in. Violet then reveals to the squad that she can raise the wards, but doing so will deny the gryphon fliers of the ability to use magic. Despite the fact that everyone surely knew this already, given that this is the effect of the wardstone, this is treated as a huge betrayal. The fliers are shocked, and Cat is furious. Violet tells them that she will keep the information a secret until the fliers decide if they want to remain in Aretia or return to Poromiel. The scene ends with Violet revealing that she already has a solution to the fliers being denied magic: maorsite. (You all remember maorsite, right?)
Violet has another prophecy dream. Yarros assures the audience that it is a prophecy dream by having Violet and Tairn have a long discussion about how it is just a dream.
Violet and her squad prepare for another training mission, this one to hunt for summoning runes. The winning squad in this mission will get a waiver for a few days of leave. Xaden returns from a mission during the briefing. Rhiannon lets Violet go to talk to him, at which point, Violet reveals that she knows how to raise the wards. Xaden insists that they so immediately, but Violet says it will have to wait until after the training mission.
PLOT
The Training Scene
This is not a great scene … but it is mostly functional. That’s not high praise in a quality narrative. Here, it is gold.
That said, it is functional in isolation. Context destroys it. Let’s go through it point-by-point, discussing first what works on its own and then showing how the context ruins things.
Character Progression
There is an actual sense of progression and growth in this scene. Violet starts unable to do the task that Felix sets for her, so he slowly walks her through the steps. She ultimately falls short at the end. Felix then tasks her to practice and grow more proficient. This growth may be limited to power scaling, rather than any actual aspect of Violet’s character, but it is better than nothing. That final task that Felix sets at the end also makes it easier to swallow growth in Violet’s power in the future, at least in regards to the electrical arc technique. If enough time passes in-story, we can easily handwave a certain level of improvement as a result of her practicing this technique in the background.
Unfortunately, the progression and growth Violet undergoes here is meaningless. Yarros tries to frame this scene as Violet learning control by learning to regulate the flow of magic. The fact Violet can't control her emotions is never addressed, and since her powers flare up in accordance with her emotions (as shown multiple times across the series thus far), learning the regulate the flow of magic while she is calm means nothing.
Setup and Payoff
This scene is an effective setup for the electrical arc technique, which will be relevant in Chapters 53 and 54. That’s not a lot of lead time, but it is better than Jack bellowing about his orange allergy one chapter before it becomes relevant. Unlike that travesty, this actually feels natural. Furthermore, unlike the sudden focus on Violet’s lack of accuracy, this technique isn't making a mountain out of an issue that was previously a molehill.
As we will get to in Chapters 53 and 54, the setup of the electrical arc is going to get a nonsensical payoff in an arbitrary action scene with no broader impact on the story. It would not shock me if Yarros wrote the arbitrary action scene first, finally realized that she couldn’t do all her setups as throwaway lines, and merely wedged this scene of setup into a convenient location.
Inner Turmoil
During this scene, Violet admits to fearing her own power.
It’s the only time my power is beauty without destruction—without violence.
“You’re not watching it, Violet. You’re doing it. And you’re supposed to love it. It’s better to find joy in your power than it is to fear it.”
“I don’t fear the power.” How could I when it’s so beautiful? So varied? I’m afraid of myself.
In a better-written story that actually put focus on Violet’s power as a terrible burden, I think that this snippet could work as-is.
Too bad Yarros made this conflict about a Mary Sus’s false insecurity, killed it in Chapter 48, and desecrated its corpse in Chapter 49. There’s no foundation left for this idea.
Thematic Journey
“You wield your power like a battle-ax, and sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed. But you of all people”—he gestures to the daggers sheathed in my flight jacket—“should understand when a dagger is called for, when only the precise cut will do.”
This could have been a great journey for an overpowered character to undertake. Not every problem can be resolved by overwhelming power.
The thing is, nothing in the narrative prior to this point has engaged with or supported this theme. Sure, Violet’s Khornate screeching could be construed as a battle axe approach to problems, but the narrative has never previously acknowledged this to be the wrong approach, and she’s otherwise very good about resolving problems with finesse instead of force. In other words, Felix is right - Violet shouldn't need to learn this lesson.
The Debriefing and Rooftop Scenes
Again, these scenes are ones I like in isolation. They would be functional if set in a different, better-written context. There is a palpable sense of mounting dread here. Yarros at least gets across the general ideas that things are going badly in Poromiel and that the venin seem to be gearing up to strike Aretia and its nesting ground directly. She also successfully relays Xaden’s frustration at being coddled by Mira.
The problem is that, much like the training scene, it cannot be divorced from the story in which it takes place. There are two major issues that undermine the emotions.
Invisible War
In both The Order of the Phoenix and The Half-Blood Prince, Harry (and the audience) receives regular updates about the war against Voldemort that is raging outside of Hogwarts. We are never allowed to go too long without a reminder of just how dire things are. There are also pivotal events happening in this conflict, such as Nagini attacking Arthur Weasley and the mass breakout from Azkaban. This is effective for two reasons:
The conflict makes very little progress when Harry is not present. When it does progress without Harry being present, the ripple effect of that progress reaches into Hogwarts and has a tangible effect for Harry. This is most notable with the Azakaban breakout, which leads many of his fellow students to stop trusting the Ministry and instead listen to his warnings about Voldemort with an open mind.
Whenever the conflict progresses, it does so in terms Harry (and the audience) can understand and feel something about. We knew Azakaban was a wizard prison, and we knew it was full of Death Eaters and other Dark Wizards, so the impact of a mass breakout was immediately clear.
In Iron Flame, we are getting these detailed breakdowns about battles fought, cities lost, and the movements of wyverns to within striking distance of Aretia … and we have no context. We haven’t been exposed to the vast majority of the name-dropped places. We have no connection to the people there. It’s a repeat of Clark’s insistence that the Clock of Worlds in A Master of Djinn was bad news, only this time, there isn't any other story that we could have read first to grasp the threat. The result is a very hollow experience
Now, I strongly suspect that Yarros was writing from experience here. She may be capturing her own experience as a military wife, hearing stories from her husband’s deployments and on the news about distant places that she has no personal connection to and that she has no strategic understanding about.
I can see a story where this approach could be incredibly effective … but not a story where the protagonist possesses significant agency within the conflict, both by virtue of being part of the military fighting in the conflict and by virtue of her overwhelming magical power. If such a protagonist is not involved in conflict, then it doesn't feel like she is helpless to intervene. It feels like the conflict is unimportant, beneath her, not worth the engagement of our virtuous and unstoppable Mary Sue.
Ranking Issues
Xaden’s emotional conflict here is at least partially based on the frustration of being ordered out of a battle. That's fine.
However, remember how Xaden is so high-ranked within this rebellion that he can casually order around more veteran riders? Remember how he can end pivotal meetings on a whim so that he can have sex with Violet in the meeting room? Remember how he is the owner of Aretia (somehow, for some reason)?
Why is he being put into battle at all? Why is he not given a higher rank? Why can he not ignore or countermand any order Mira gives him? For that matter, why can’t Sgayel throw her weight around and enforce whatever decision Xaden makes, regardless of orders?
Much like with the chain of command issues in Part One, this is only an issue because Yarros wants to have things both ways. She could have had Xaden be a key officer in the rebellion. She could have had him be a ceremonial figurehead whom the actual rebel leaders tolerate publically but treat as a low-ranked soldier in any actual military matters. Having it both ways just leads to too many distracting questions.
Violet Refuses to Raise the Wards
There is so much that could be said about Violet not immediately raising the wards.. I want to keep the focus on the bare-bones narrative issues, so I will let Elon Musk sum up my thoughts on the other aspects of this fiasco.
"What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good, while doing evil.”
Moment of Revelation, Week of Devastation
I close the journals and sit back in my chair. The six doesn’t refer to riders.
“They’re dragons,” I say out loud in the empty library. Dain. I should tell—
No. He’ll act only on the rules, not taking the ethics into account. There’s only one person I trust to always do the right thing.
Between this point in the story and the end of Chapter 52 (at which point Violet finally tells Xaden about what she figured out, and then refuses to raise the wards right away, all because she wants to win leave time), no fewer than seven days pass, including at least one day when Violet could have told Xaden:
Xaden is away on a mission as of the scene in Chapter 50 when Violet had this revelation.
Violet meets with her squad the next day.
Xaden is in bed with Violet when she wakes up from her prophecy dream. I will be exceptionally charitable and assume that this was the night right after the squad meeting.
We are told another six days pass after the prophecy dream.
That’s seven days in which Aretia could have been attacked, everyone could have been slaughtered, and the venin could have empowered themselves by feasting on the magic of the Aretia nesting ground.
And, to be clear, Violet is fully aware of this consequence. In the start of Chapter 51, before the squad meeting starts, we get this:
I refuse to believe that it could all go up in flames if those dark wielders decide to test their wyvern at altitude. Four hours. That’s all it would take for them to reach us from Draithus.
And then, at the end of the meeting, Imogen doubles down.
“And by not raising those wards right now, we’re exposing all of Aretia—the riots, the drifts—hell, all of Tyrrendor beyond Navarre’s wards to danger that’s no longer necessary.”
This is disastrous for the narrative, no matter how one slices it.
If Violet can wait this long, with the venin this close, then the venin threat can no longer be taken seriously. They could have won at any point in those seven days, yet they did nothing.
If the venin threat is serious, then Violet is needlessly dragging out this conflict for multiple chapters by not using the game-winnjng knowledge she already has in her grasp.
Pointless Dithering
This is, in Violet’s own words, why she is withholding the information:
“If you weren’t here, it would be done already,” I retort in the same tone she’s giving. No doubt the majority of the Assembly will condemn me as a traitor for this, and maybe they’ll be right. “But you are here. You do matter.”
Violet risks losing Aretia to the venin … for Feelings.
That’s it.
All that raising the wards will do is deprive the fliers of their ability to channel magic. It won’t harm them. It won’t harm the gryphons. It will just deprive them of their ability to use magical powers … within the radius of the wards … where they won’t need that magic, since the venin will be rendered powerless, too.
And that’s before we consider that all of the fliers should have already expected this. Violet’s efforts to raise the wards were not a secret, and the fliers, who have warred with Navarre for years, would have known the implications of that. They should either have consented to this already or be bound by the military hierarchy to deal with it.
This conflict is inherently hollow and pointless, and seems to only exist so Yarros could signal the virtue of her self-insert Mary Sue.
And then she makes it even more pointless by pulling a solution out of her ass, one that didn't have even a throwaway line for prior setup.
Maorsite
“And if you stay, we won’t leave you powerless.” I reach under the table and retrieve my pack, then set the black leather bag on the table and unbutton the top. “Turns out alloy isn’t the only thing we can imbue.” I take out the six conduits Felix gave me yesterday after I trusted him with the truth, each containing an arrowhead like the ones I’ve been imbuing for weeks.
“What’s in that?” Bragen asks, two lines etched between his brows.
“The kind of ore we don’t use to make the alloy. It’s not quite as rare as Talladium but it’s about ten times as explosive. Trust me, I’ve seen this stuff blow sky-high raw, let alone imbued.” I glance at Sloane, who slowly smiles before she responds.
“Maorsite.”
I will analyze maorsite itself in Worldbuilding. For now …
Why is Violet dithering if the means to eliminate the Feelings problem is already on hand?
At no previous point has maorsite appeared in this series. It hadn’t even been mentioned. Therefore, the only way that it makes sense for Violet to have this knowledge of its properties is if it is such common knowledge that it doesn’t need to be mentioned, much like how Violet must be defecating at points throughout the series but isn’t shown to be doing so on the page.
What this means is that, even if maorsite was somehow a secret to Poromiel, the rebel leadership must have already known about it. They must have already been planning around it. They must have already told, or been planning to tell, the flier leadership about it and to arm the fliers with maorsite weapons.
This isn’t even an appeal to realism and logical consistency. This is what Yarros told us is happening in the background.
At the end of Chapter 42, Brennan uttered this line to Teclis when accepting the reques to bring fliers to Aretia.
“Done,” Brennan answers. “As long as each flier we take brings a crossbolt with them.”
During the climb up the Cliffs of Dralor, crossbow ammunition was also mentioned twice as cargo that was being brought into Aretia.
Chapter 58 will directly tell us that the maorsite is being made into arrowheads for the crossbows, thereby explaining why Brennan made this request.
The fliers have been working on carving shimmering maorsite arrowheads to fill their quivers as well.
For once, Yarros manages to do proper setup, only to obliterate the payoff with unnecessary drama. We are being hammered with angst over literally nothing. All of this was already according to plan. Rather than having the plot go the direction that it naturally should, Yarros is wasting time.
All that is accomplished by having Violet dither and then reveal the maorsite is that Yarros gets to make her self-insert Mary Sue to look good even as that self-insert Mary Sue does evil.
CHARACTERS
Violet, Her Squad, Felix, and Their Dragons / Gryphons
Violet knows how to raise the wards, but withholds the information from the rebel leadership.
She tells her squad, and they also withhold the information from the rebel leadership.
We’re told that Violet told Felix in order to persuade him to give her samples of maorsite. Since she does not see this as telling the rebel leadership, this means that Felix agreed to keep the secret from his colleagues.
All of their dragons / gryphons would be privy to this information, but they don’t go over the puny humans’ heads to do what needs to be done.
Elon, be a dear and analyze these characters for me.
"What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good, while doing evil.”
Dain
Remember why Violet decided not to tell Dain that she’d figured out how to raise the wards?
He’ll act only on the rules, not taking the ethics into account. There’s only one person I trust to always do the right thing.
“The rules” to which Violet is referring is that Dain will prioritize the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents in Aretia (not to mention any place the venin overrun after absorbing the magic in Aretia) over Feelings.
Violet’s “ethics” are to risk all of these things happening, whilst admitting how terrible it would be if they did, just so that she can look virtuous.
There’s something perversely funny about how Yarros’s continued efforts to demonize Dain just keep redeeming him and damning her self-insert Mary Sue instead.
Red Shirt Bloat
Before the squad meeting kicks off, Yarros wastes well over a page updating the audience on the interpersonal dramas of the members of Violet’s squad. It is immensely frustrating to read through.
I do not care about any of these people. They do not matter to the story. At most, they accessorize, validate, and facilitate Violet. They otherwise are casually ignored.
As a result, for Yarros to waste a paragraph, let alone a full page at the opening of a scene, to get us caught up on their petty day-to-day concerns in the midst of a looming existential threat is nothing short of absurd. There are ways to add a small-scale human element to these types of stories. However, drama we are only told about in passing, featuring characters who are not important to the story, is just a waste of time.
VIRTUE SIGNALLING
As was the case with Jade City, Iron Flame handles its virtue signaling about homosexuality in such a manner as to reveal how little the author actually embodies the virtue she is flashing in our faces. Also like Jade City, the author shows her true feelings by providing direct points of comparison between the handling of heterosexual romance versus homosexual romance.
I’m willing to let Yarros off the hook when it comes to the pornography. She is very brazen about wanting the whole world to know what she masturbates to, and that evidently does not include homosexual sex. Likewise, I’m happy to acknowledge that at least her handling of homosexuality in this book does not have the distinctly fetishistic vibes that we saw in A Master of Djinn or Foundryside. That is a a far more sinister form of exploitation.
However, also like Jade City, we don’t need the pornography to establish the trend. The basic amount of relevance and effort put into the writing of romantic relationships exposes the author’s true feelings.
Jesinia and Saywer
Jesinia and Sawyer have been on a miniature romantic arc in the background. It has zero substance, contradicts other events in the story, and is exploited to help Yarros virtue signal about sign language, but at least effort is taken to sell the idea that these are two people bonding at an emotional level.
Chapter 30 has Sawyer expressing eagerness to visit the Archives. Ridoc says “we all know why” he is so eager, implying his attraction to Jesinia is obvious.
Chapter 45 has the sign language virtue signal, wherein Sawyer asks Violet to redeem his sinful soul by helping his to learn the holy language of hand signs, that Jesinia might accept such a sinful man as he. (For those who did not read the book, yes. The virtue signal really is that loud.)
Chapter 49 includes Sawyer making a fumbling attempt to make small talk with Jesinia.
Chapter 52 has Sawyer fumbling through a conversation with Jesinia prior to Violet beginning the squad meeting.
This is not well-written. I can’t even say that it is functional as far as Pairing the Spares goes. It has no relevance to the plot, yet is shoved in our faces in a manner that only serves to bog down the narrative.
Despite this, it is clear that Yarros cares about the pairing. She at least values Jesinia and wants Jesinia to have a love interest. Additionally, while this pairing is exploited for virtue signalling, there is at least substance outside of it. I do believe that she would have included this element even if Jesinia was not the Token Disabled (Deaf) character.
Rhiannon and Tara
We split as the hallway grows too crowded, and I continue up and up the stairs, climbin gto the fifth floor, then nodding to Rhi and Tara as I pass by the open door to Rhi’s room. Clearly, by their wide smiles, they don’t know yet, and I decide to give them a few more minutes of blissfully ignorant happiness and keep walking down the long hallway to the back stairs.
We are supposed to feel happy about this relationship … except there is no relationship on the page for us to care about.
Recall, if you will, my analysis of Tara’s character from the review of Chapters 10 through 12. If you don’t recall it (and given how much ground we’ve covered and how insignificant Tara is, I wouldn’t fault you for that), the following two snippets are the most relevant.
Tara’s only contribution to Fourth Wing was to give Rhiannon “a few much-needed orgasms.” The phrase “a piece of ass” was a fitting summary of her characterization.
In Iron Flame, Tara name appears a grand total of 5 times:
Name-dropped in Chapter 11
She appears in Chapter 17, being named twice in the process, so that she can hand Violet a letter that advances the Rebellion plot.
She is mentioned in Chapter 45 when Rhiannon thanks Violet for giving her and Tara privacy to have sex.
This scene in Chapter 51
The bare minimum required for a romance subplot is two characters to engage in romance. Jesinia and Sawyer barely clear this threshold. Jesinia may be shallow and utilitarian, but she does have her own identify and personality. As for Sawyer, his status as an accessory makes him more of a tool than a person, but enough traits have been tacked on to him to produce as least a shadow of character.
Rhinannon and Tara fail even this most basic of requirements. Rhiannon is no more substantial than Sawyer. That would be fine if Tara had at least that much characterization, but she doesn’t. Her entire identity is her sexual orientation and the ability to sexually gratify Rhiannon.
But then again, writing characters, let alone a romance, was never the point. Showcasing Yarros’s virtue was. See how good she … I mean, her self-insert Mary Sue is! Violet supports her Token Queer Best Friend in the quest to get laid! Doesn’t that make her a paragon?
Pay no attention to the fact that there is no substance outside of the sex. Pay no attention to the fact that this entire relationship could be deleted with zero impact on either the narrative as a whole or even the scenes in which is appears. (At least the elimination of the Sawyer and Jesinia romance would kneecap the sign language virtue signal on Chapter 45.) Pay no attention to the fact that there isn’t the bare minimum of conflict to give us any reason to invest in said relationship.
Pay no attention to the fact that the heterosexual pairing is portrayed as an emotionally fulfilling relationship, whereas the homosexual relationship is … just sex …
Oh, dear.
Archimedes’s Death Signal
I do not know Yarros personally. I cannot comment upon her personal life. I cannot comment upon her beliefs. I cannot refute the possiblity that she does believe and wholeheartedly support everything that she signals about. For all I know, this woman is a paragon, at least in regards to the causes she claims to support.
With that disclaimer out of the way …
Yarros chose to damage her narrative to signal to us about her virtues. She has insisted upon our judgment, based upon nothing but this book (well, this book series) in isolation. Therefore, let us assess what she is telling us here and render a verdict as to what she is actually signaling:
Heterosexual characters have at least a shadow of identity. Queer characters are empty tokens who have nothing at all to their identities outside of the fact that they are queer.
Heterosexual relationships are fleshed out and explored. Homosexual relationships are background noise.
Heterosexual relationships derive their satisfaction from romance and emotional connection. Homosexual relationships are purely sexual.
I’ll stop there. You can draw your own conclusions as to Yarros’s true beliefs.
Final Thoughts
While I have made many comments throughout this review that could be construed as direct criticism of Yarros outside of her qualities (and failures) as a writer, I do maintain that a writer cannot be judged purely by the things they write. Things get taken out of context. Things get lost in communication. Readers can hyper-fixate on details that serve a narrative purpose but don’t reflect the writer’s true values.
Here's the thing, though: when a writer chooses to virtue signal, he or she is demanding to be judged based upon the interpretation of him or her that we derive from the published word. The entertainment experience is being disrupted so that the writer can shout, “Notice how I speak for this virtuous cause! Aren't I wonderful?” The writer therefore has no one else to blame if the audience draws a very different conclusion than what is intended.
I guess the moral here is that, if one must comment upon the real world, that person must put in the work to integrate it into the story. Make it relevant. Make it natural. Make it matter.
Because rest assured, audiences will notice when you half-ass it, and when we do, we will draw conclusions and render the judgment you so desperately crave.
WORLDBUILDING
Wardstone
These two points should be a nitpick, but because Yarros is using translation errors to lie to the audience and drive the plot, they’re worth mentioning.
Violet jumps directly from “the riders of the six most powerful dragons must put their blood on the wardstone” to “the six most powerful dragons must breathe fire on the wardstone”. Why did she never consider that the dragons should bleed on the wardstone? They are the origin of the magic the riders channel. Why was that never tried, even before the translation was corrected?
(Dragons bleeding on the wardstone will come up later, and what we are shown there makes a lot of sense. My issue here is that Violet never considered this possibility, despite her supposed “intelligence’ and how easy it would be to test.)
Maorsite
I cannot overstate what a terrible addition maorsite is to the worldbuilding. This is a cyclonic torpedo that cracks the entire series yet again.
In the interest of not having to use too many smaller quotes, here is again the quote that identifies maorsite’s properties.
“The kind of ore we don’t use to make the alloy. It’s not quite as rare as Talladium but it’s about ten times as explosive. Trust me, I’ve seen this stuff blow sky-high raw, let alone imbued.”
Let’s start the bombardment.
Introduction and Implementation
Maorsite did not exist within this setting until Yarros made it up to write her way out of a problem she herself had created. That’s not a flaw in and of itself. What is a problem is when the artificiality is this blatant and when the problem it is meant to solve didn’t need to exist in the first place.
First, the artificiality. Maorsite is name-dropped a grand total of three times in Iron Flame. It was not mentioned at all in Fourth Wing. Its only actual role in this story is here, so that Violet can present it as a solution to the problem of the fliers losing their ability to channel magic. The only other times it pops up are a couple moments of hollow spectacle in the climax that have no impact on the actual resolution of that climax.
Second, the conflict that maorsite was introduced to resolve is only an issue because Yarros wanted to make Violet look virtuous. Her self-insert Mary Sue put Feelings over unnumbered lives and then showed that said Feelings were valued by pulling a weapon out of her ass. The thing is that, as mentioned above, the maorsite isn’t needed inside the wards. The places where gryphon fliers need to fight venin are outside the wards. On top of that, the story has put massive emphasis on the venin-killing alloy as the thing needed to kill venin anyway. They have already resolved that issue (at least, we are supposed to think that they have). What is the narrative purpose of the maorsite, then, outside of making a big deal out of Violet’s supposed virtue?
Talladium
Note that, in the quote above, Talladium is a proper noun … but as that quote from Chapter 58 shows, maorsite is a common noun.
The fliers have been working on carving shimmering maorsite arrowheads to fill their quivers as well.
The third mention of maorsite, later in the book, is also a common noun. This is important because it proves that Yarros doesn’t treat all of her made-up materials as proper nouns (something that was at least ambiguous when she was just using “alloy” to refer to the venin-killing metal). For her to use Talladium as a proper noun therefore implies that this is indeed the same material as the trademarked, biocompatible dental alloy.
Which brings us to the main problem: biocompatible metals are not explosive. The whole point of being biocompatible is to not undergo an adverse chemical reaction due to processes inside the body (impacts, exposure to biological processes and chemicals, etc.). Even biocompatible materials that literally are explosives, like nitroglycerin, are not administered at such dosages that they would turn the patients into walking bombs. In the case of biocompatible materials used as implants - such as, as, metals used in dentistry - the goal is to have the metal to as inert as possible, ensuring that it doesn’t need to be replaced and doesn’t release harmful byproducts into the body. I’m sure a talented chemist could figure out how to use such metals as an explosive reactant, but they should not explode if dropped or subjected to a mild charge.
Which means that Yarros using Talldium as a reference of maorsite’s explosive power would be like if I argued that cheese is more explosive than pita bread. It would be pretty silly if I then made cheese-tipped crossbow bolts, wouldn't it?
And, just to be clear: we can’t handwave this by saying that magic makes them explosive. Violet explicitly said that the explosive potential before it is imbued with magical power.
“Trust me, I’ve seen this stuff blow sky-high raw, let alone imbued.”
Ms. Yarros, could you not be bothered to do the bare minimum of actual research?
How Maorsite Works
We do not see maorsite in action until the climax. However, we’re going to have enough to cover then. Let’s deal with all its problems in one go.
In Chapter 59, we are explicitly told that the maorsite uses runes as a detonator, which will ignite the maorsite upon impact with a target.
“These are all maorsite arrowheads, imbued and runed to explode on impact.” She lifts her dark brows. “They’re cushioned in the quiver but do. Not. Drop. This.”
Okay, that’s fine. Unfortunately, the only two times we see maorsite actually be used, this is contradicted.
In Chapter 61, Violet shoots a venin with a maorsite arrow after it climbs onto Tairn. The arrow does not immediately detonate. Before the blast, the venin has time to fall off Tairn and for Tairn to get far enough away to avoid being caught in the “sky-high” explosion.
The arrow hits true, striking the venin in the sternum as Tairn banks hard right.
The dark wielder falls, but the sound of an explosion comes from behind us as I grip Rhi’s ankle, ignoring the screaming protest of my shoulder as the wrap fights to keep the joint in place.
The only other time we see maorsite detonated is Chapter 62. In this case, the prose is vague enough that an immediate detonation is not impossible, but the issue of a dragon being in the blast radius still exists. Since we are not told that the dragon suffers blast damage, a delay must have taken place.
“Now, Ridoc!” Using Sliseag’s horn for leverage, I hurtle down his neck as an explosion sounds behind me, heat flaring along my back.
Why was Yarros not consistent about this? Why not just say that the detonation rune takes a few seconds to activate?
I strongly suspect that one of Yarros’s kids plays a lot of Call of Duty. In at least the early COD: Black Ops games, there was an explosive crossbow. This weapon has a lag of a second or so between the bolt impacting on a target and detonating. Yarros may have written these scenes with that weapon in mind and then jotted down the bit about the rune without thinking through the implications.
Also, given the G-forces we know that the dragons pull (given how riders are thrown off in training), shouldn’t the arrows explode whenever a dragon makes a sharp turn? If there is a danger of the quiver exploding if it is dropped, even with the cushioning, then having arrowheads clashing against one another inside the quiver doesn’t seem like a particularly a good idea.
Exterminatus
The existence of maorsite makes the entire luminary subplot irrelevant and undermines the entire premise of the rebellion.
Look again at what Yarros tells us about maorsite.
This is a substance that is wholly disconnected from the venin-killing alloy.
Violet has seen this stuff used before, despite it never being shown on the page. This means that she must have seen it used before the events of Fourth Wing, when she was a civilian with no right to view classified information.
No mention is made of the luminary being used to make maorsite.
Despite Aretia having such severe supply shortages that Brennan needed the fliers to bring crossbows and bolts with them, the rebels has no trouble making enough maorsite to arm every flier in the climax.
Maorsite has more raw destructive potential than a material used to make venin-killing alloy.
As indicated in the analysis of how maorsite works, Chapter 61 will have Violet use a maorsite bolt to blow up a venin … implying that, much like her lightning, maorsite can kill venin. Even if maorsite can’t kill venin (it is possible that the venin in that scene was merely thrown back by the blast, neutralizing it by creating distance), it is used to blow apart a wyvern in Chapter 62, so at the very least, maorsite can kneecap the venin’s hopes of conquest and revert them back to a threat that Poromiel contained for at least 550 years.
Why was the luminary ever an issue? Why did Aretia not just manufacture maorsite weapons and distribute them to the fliers? This would eliminate all the risk of Xaden and the rebel children needing to access the Basgiath luminary and steal alloy. It would eliminate the moral issues of undermining Navarre's ability to sustain its own wards. On top of that, maorsite is an area of effect weapon that can be fired at the range of the crossbow, whereas venin-killing alloy is only ever used in daggers that, a best, are limited to the range of a throwing knife. This is the superior option for supporting Poromiel on every way.
For that matter … why is Navarre not using this explosive? Why not use it (with the help of rune magic) to revolutionize their military? They can reserve the venin-killing alloy to keep the wards running while giving themselves a titanic edge in battle. Imagine if they had trained all riders to use these explosive crossbows as an alternative to throwing away their knives. Navarre could even trade maorsite to Poromiel as a means to bribe fliers into not attacking their border outposts (though this strategy would not be without risks, given that the fliers could then turn those weapons on Navarre to try to steal the venin-killin galloy anyway).
If this series has been written with maorsite in mind from the beginning, that could have made the setting so much richer. There is a way that the core conflicts could have been kept more or less intact. Slamming it in like this, for the sake of making the self-insert Mary Sue look virtuous and the climax into a COD BLOPs level, is yet another piece of evidence that Yarros has no respect for the craft of building a secondary world.
Speaking of no respect for the craft of building a secondary world …
Chocolate Cake
I reach for the plate, thenhold it in front of him. “I know chocolate cake isn’t going to fix this, but in my defense, I got it for you when I’d just thought you’d had a shit day, before I knew what really happened.”
Aretia - a supposedly secret rebel base, in a supposedly cursed ruin - has access to chcolate.
Actually, no. Navarre, an distinctly European civilization on a continent that can’t be much larger than the continental US, most of which is spread in an east-west direction, has access to coca, a crop grown in a far more tropical climate than anything that has even been hinted at.
This may seem like a nitpick, but it really is the little details that show care for the craft of worldbuilding, and this is a good example of that.
The Questions
Is cocoa an import? That would be the easy answer, except Yarros has made a point to tell us that trade from outside the continent has been strangled by the venin crisis. The chocolate supply chain in our own world is deteriorating without the existential threat of life-draining fiends. Shouldn't Navarre, which is blighted by such fiends, be experiencing a severe shortage by now?
Is magic used to grow it? There’s no precedent for that, and that begs the question of why everything isn’t grown with magic.
Regardless of how chocolate gets into Navarre, how is it getting to Aretia unnoticed? Aretia is not a port. It’s up in the mountains. Chocolate would need to be shipped from one of the cities that is still under Navarre’s conrol. Luxury goods (and make no mistake, chocolate is a luxury good) are the kind of thing that gets noticed when moved around in any significant amounts, especially if those amounts are high enough to literally feed a small army. How have the scribes not noticed this stuff being moved towards Aretia?
The Answer
Ultimately, I think Yarros wrote chocolate into her story because she can’t conceive a world outside of her day-to-day experiences. That's why lemonade is the go-to beverage; that’s why chemical contraceptives are commonplace; that's why she used a trademarked, biocompatible dental alloy as an ingredient for magic metal. The bare minimum of research to insert a regionally appropriate foodstuff is too far outside her comfort zone.
There is nothing wrong with writing what one knows. That’s actually a foundational aspect of writing compelling fiction. However, this walks hand in hand with making an effort to learn things you don't already know, especially if your setting is, by its very nature, not the world you already know. If even the food of your secondary world is transplanted from the average Coloradoan home, audience immersion is going to take a severe hit.
JUST LET IT END
Back in Chapters 22 through 29 of the Fourth Wing review, I noted that the narrative felt as though Yarros was making things up as she went along just to hit a word count goal.
Up until this point in the story, this problem has not existed in Iron Flame. Yes, the book is bloated. Yes, the pacing is a nightmare. Yes, so much of the conflict is either inherently pointless or is invalidated after the fact. However, it hasn’t felt like Yarros has been deliberately dragging things out. She’s had a story to tell. It’s just a bad story made worse by terrible execution.
Chapters 53 through 56 are where even the minimal standard of quality slips.
Chapter 53 wastes time with melodrama that goes nowhere. Chapter 54 is an arbitrary fight scene that makes no sense within the broader context of the narrative and is forgotten almost immediately. Chapter 55 has Yarros plunge the Romance subplot back into the Trust conflict for infuriatingly contrived reasons. Chapter 56 then takes agonizingly long to activate the wardstone, have Violet and Xaden argue some more, and show the aftermath of the wardstone activation.
If the chocolate cake reflects Yarros’s inability to conceive a world outside of her own experiences, then these chapters reflect Yarros’s slavish devotion to formulaic writing, and her execution of this formula is so poor that I’m now starting to question how she’s even made it as a Romance author.
It’s … It’s bad. And it’s barreling down upon us on August 2nd.
I hope you’re ready for it.
