Iron Flame (Chapter 57 & Chapter 58)
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
At the meeting with Melgren and his retinue, he reveals to the Aretia rebels that the venin and wyverns will breach the wards and overrun Navarre by the winter solstice. He tries to convince the Aretia rebels to lend their aid to Navarre, offering to recognize Aretia’s independence and leave the riders in Aretia alone if they do this. The Aretia rebels refuse to help, arguing the Navarre’s citizens deserve to die for the sins of the rider leadership. Violet is confused and horrified by this.
As the meeting disperses, General Sorrengail speaks privately with Violet and Mira. She is heartbroken to learn that, while Brennan is still alive, he has also sided against her. She warns Violet and Mira that she knows Aretia’s wards are flawed, handing off to them the journal that was originally taken from Violet back in Chapter 35. It is revealed that the writer of the journal Violet used to activate the wards lied about how to raise the wards.
Violet and Xaden resolve Violet’s latest tantrum with a sexy fight. The manner of the resolution makes it clear that Yarros will whip this conflict out again when she needs to force drama.
Violet and her squad attend a battle brief. Here Devera explains that the reason Aretia is ignoring Navarre’s plight is that Melgren lied about the danger. Violet, however, as an unjustified, unsubstantiated, and therefore perfectly correct epiphany that the venin will attack the wardstone at Basgiath. She leaves the Battle Brief without sharing this information with the class, followed by her squad, and fetches Xaden so that they can fly to Basgiath to protect the wardstone.
THE BIG ISSUES
As mentioned in last week’s conclusion, most of the issues with Plot, Characters, and Worldbuilding in these chapters are just the latest iterations of things we’ve already covered. We’ll do an abbreviated rundown of these problems a bit later, just so everyone is on the same page for later parts, but this post will have a more specific focus. Let’s explore four significant issues that have percolated for some time and are now brought to the fore in these chapters.
Yarros lies to the audience.
Melgren’s future sight is inconsistently handled, and then Yarros outright acknowledges that the rebel children damned Navarre without seeming to have realized that she did this.
Yarros finally shines a proper spotlight on the theme of isolationism, only to promptly botch it.
Violet’s story rips off The Hunger Games and the Divergent series as she goes from being a rebel allied with the rebellion to a rebel who rebels against the rebellion because That’s Good.
The Compulsive Lies of Yarros
Misleading the Audience
A story does not need to provide the audience with every fact, or even the truth of events, up front. There are types of stories that thrive upon surprising the audience through careful withholding or misrepresenting of information. This can be accomplished through biased narration, a limited POV, or simple providing information to the audience in limited doses.
For the sake of this analysis, we shall refer to this behavior as “misleading the audience”, or simply “misleading”.
For an example of a film that misleads the audience in fantastic fashion, let’s consider the 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven. (I am about to discuss the big twist of the film, so skip to the last paragraph of this sub-section if you don’t want spoilers. I highly recommend the film in any case.)
Roughly the first two thirds of Ocean’s Eleven are taken up by the planning for the heist. We see Danny and Rusty team up, recruit people, lay out the obstacles that the team will fact, and go through the processes of acquiring intel and rehearsing for how they will breach the Bellagio’s vault. One thing that is notably absent is any explanation of how they will actually transport millions of dollars in cash out of the Bellagio without being caught. This fact is even lampshaded during the initial planning.
Saul: I have a question, say we get into the cage, and through the security doors there and down the elevator we can't move, and past the guards with the guns, and into the vault we can't open...
Rusty: Without being seen by the cameras.
Danny: Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention that.
Saul: Yeah well, say we do all that... uh... we're just supposed to walk out of there with $150,000,000 in cash on us, without getting stopped?
Danny: Yeah.
Saul: Oh. Okay.
This comes to a head in the climax. During the heist itself, Rusty calls the owner of the casino, Terry Benedict, and extorts Benedict into using casino staff to carry out the money for them. Benedict complies, only to summon a SWAT team to go into the vault and gun down the members of Danny’s group that are still in there, whilst sending casino enforcers to chase the getaway van and get back the money that was brought up. To his dismay, Benedict discovers that both the getaway van and the vault are filled with nothing but fliers for prostitutes.
We then get the big reveal: the SWAT team WAS Danny’s group. They carried the money out in duffel bags that supposedly concealed the SWAT team’s weapons. Rusty calling Benedict was all a ploy to trick him into letting the bulk of Danny’s crew into the vault and letting them walk out with zero questions asked. This was aided by hacking the Bellagio’s servers and planting a video of the crew robbing a replica of the vault, thereby feeding Benedict false information about where the threat was.
What makes the mislead in Ocean’s Eleven work is that is that the entire film builds towards it. There are multiple small details throughout the film - throwaway lines of dialogue, things seen in the background or out-of-focus in shots - that inform the audience that the twist is coming. Rewatching this film (or watching it after you know the twist) produces an experience every bit as rich as a first, blind viewing.
Lying to the Audience
A core aspect of misleading the audience is always telling them the truth. This does not mean literal, objective truth or even a subjective truth. Falsehoods can be fed to the audience as part of the mislead. However, any and all falsehoods must be contextualized and justified by truths within the narrative that the audience already understands, much like how a magician’s tricks will make sense when the curtain is pulled back and the audience sees how the trick was accomplished.
To use the Ocean’s Eleven example (I will remain spoiler-free here), the success of the heist hinges of Rusty lying to Benedict, and the impact of the twist hinges on the audience believing the lie Rusy tells. However, this lie is fully justified by character and the established rules by which the plot operates. Rusty is a con man, and he has a strong motivation to deceive Benedict. When the audience is shown the lie, we are seeing the magician's trick on stage; when the truth is revealed, we are shown what was behind the curtain.
Lying to the audience is when outright false information is presented to the audience, without this being justified within the narrative by something the audience already understands.
For a good example of lying to the audience, consider the multiple lightsaber stab wounds to the torso that characters suffer in Disney Star Wars TV shows. The audience knows that stab wounds can be lethal in real life. They know, from The Phantom Menace, that a lightsaber through the center of the torso (not even the heart or lungs) will guarantee death within minutes. Despite this, Disney has the Grand Inquisitor and Sabine each get stabbed through the torso once, while Reva gets stabbed through the torso twice and walks it off without medical treatment both times. It is a lie no matter how one slices it: either in that a lethal injury is being presented to the audience to get an emotional reaction before being handwaved away or that we are expected to believe that something we know to be lethal isn’t lethal when it affects an important character.
Yarros’s Lies, Example 1 - Translation Errors (Heavy Spoilers)
We already covered in Chapter 39 how Yarros lied to the audience by pretending Violet’s translations were flawless and then sneaking in correct translations later. However, for the climax of this book to work, she couldn’t just sneak in a translation. Fault would have had to be found in Violet for missing something so glaringly obvious.
So Yarros projected.
“Fix your wards.” She pulls a leather notebook from her jacket, and my eyes widen with recognition. “If you don’t, they’ll decline over time to nothing. Your father told me once that his research showed that Warrick never wanted anyone else to hold the power of the wards. He wanted Navarre to eternally hold the upper hand. But Lyra thought the knowledge should be shared.”
“Warrick lied,” I whisper. But about what?
At first glance, this may sound as though the previously identified lie was actually a mislead. It’s Warrick’s fault that the audience was presented with false information. A character lied, not Yarros, right?
Except Warrick is not a character. None of the first six riders are. They are worldbuilding footnotes used to explain the origin of the journals. They don’t have characterization that we can understand. They don’t have motivations. Telling the audience that he lied for X reason is not a substitute. Yarros might as well have said that the wardstone itself is the origin of the lie, and that Warrick merely faithfully transcribed what the lump of meteroic iron told him. Either way, it would be a worldbuilding detail, not a character detail, and worldbuilding cannot lie to the audience. The author presenting that worldbuilding can.
Furthermore, this doesn’t hold up to basic logic.
The wards give Navarre the upper hand, shutting down both venin and flier magic. If Warrick really wanted to hoard power for Navarre, wouldn't he have wanted to expand the wards to crush any opposition to Navarre’s dominance?
If Warrick really wanted to lie about the necessity of a rainbow dragon to activate the wards, why did he write “the six and the one” in his journal? Why not just write “the six” and leave it at that? Him separating the rainbow dragons from the others, rather than leaving them out entirely, is an act of focus and emphasis, not concealment. This gets even worse when we get to Chapter 63. Jesinia will there confirm that the only difference between Warrick’s account and this other journal is him saying “the six and the one” instead of “the seven”. How is he lying if the only thing he changed was to separate the rainbow dragon from everyone else? Why would he assume that alone be enough to prevent the wards from being replicated?
What makes this all the more galling is that Violet did not earn this revelation. If Part Two of this story had actually made her researching and translating the journals into the focus, rather than a background activity, maybe this reveal could have worked. Violet could have explored the lives and personalities of the first six riders, gradually come to understand them, and deciphered the riddle for herself - i.e. Yarros could have made the first six riders into actually characters and had Violet uncover the truth from their characterizations. Instead, Yarros is simply handing this information to Violet. She might as well have looked at the audience and said, “I know that I told you that the world worked this way before, but now I have changed my mind. Deal with it.”
Yarros’s Lies, Example 2 - The Wards Will Fall
Melgren claims that the venin will overrun Navarre by collapsing the ward extension at an outpost. Samara is explicitly named as the failure point.
The problem?
The outposts used to preserve the extension of the wards are inside the wards, and Samara is the example Yarros gave to demonstrate this. Consider this passage from Chapter 28, when Violet and Xaden fly out from Samara to deliver venin-killing alloy to the fliers.
The thing about being two riders in an assumed relationship who happen to be bonded to a mated pair of dragons is that no one thinks twice about a midnight flight to get away, and there is no better view of the stars on the Continent than from Tairn’s back.
“I still do not approve,” Tairn lectures as we cross the barrier of the wards a little after midnight.
“And yet, we’re still flying,” I counter, shaking off the feeling of wrongness that sinks further into my bones with every wingbeat. From experience, I know it’ll pass once we’ve been out beyond the wards long enough for my senses to adjust.
This means … well. Let’s allow Yarros herself to explain what it means, as part of the Battle Brief.
I study the map for a heartbeat. “I’d have pulled every dagger from the coastal outposts to reinforce and boost the power supplies at the border outposts. They’re powerless once they cross the wards. Wyvern die. Venin can’t channel. That leaves them with hand-to-hand combat—”
“Or artillery,” Cat adds.
“Exactly.” I glance at her and nod. “As long as the Navarrian forces can physically repel the dark wielders and keep them from scattering the power supply in the armory, then there’s no real danger of incursion.”
Again, Yarros tries to spin this as a mislead. She almost succeeds. During the Battle Brief scenes, Brennan and Devera explain that Melgren was saying whatever he had to in order to get Aretia to aid him. This is true to Melgren’s established motivations. What’s more, Brennan calls Melgren’s bluff in Chapter 57, outright saying that Basgiath is not in real danger.
The reason this is ultimately a lie is that Violet, the “rational woman”, chosen by her dragon for her “intelligence”, does not see through this bluff right away. In fact, Violet jumps to the conclusion that Melgren is not bluffing. By the rules Yarros established, that means that we are supposed to think that Melgren is telling the truth. What’s more, Melgren should have known that the Aretia rebels would not believe something so obviously false, so he should have either provided more information or else chosen another tactic. When a villain whom Violet herself has previously stated to be “brilliant” tells a big lie, said lie should not disintegrate under such casual reflection.
Yarros abused her established characters to feed the audience a falsehood, all for the sake of driving up tension in the moment, and then tried to walk things back a mere chapter later when she realized she couldn’t commit to that lie.
Why Lying to Your Audience is Bad
Lies undermine trust.
It really is that simple.
Whenever an audience consumes fictional media, they are putting their trust on the writer to explain what the stakes are, when their investment should be, and how everything works. This is especially true in Fantasy and Science Fiction, where the entire genre hinges upon divergence from the real and familiar world.
When a writer lies to the audience, that trust is gone. Anything they have been told to accept in good faith is now in question. Who are these characters? What is at stake? How does the world work? Once the writer changes one thing, anything else is also subject to change.
Because Yarros is so brazenly lying to us, nothing she has told us can be trusted - especially since these aren’t the only lies she’s told us. For just a couple of examples:
Chapter 57 reveals that Melgren knew where the Aretia rebels were all along … after she lied to us about him not knowing back in Chapters 37 and 38. (None of the characters who delivered and doubled down on the lie are dumb enough to seriously thing that Melgren didn’t know where they were, so this is not justified by characterization.)
She directly told us that Violet will not get another Signet, despite the character making that assertion having no evidence or reason to believe that and despite shoving prophecy dreams in our faces (which, if they are not a Signet, will require a new worldbuilding element so that she can only technically say that she didn't lie).
She told us that flier mindwork is not a Signet, then had Cat be accused of cheating in a duel where only Signets were banned.
Melgren’s Future Sight is Unreliable and Damns Our Heroes
Questionable Accuracy
Here’s how Melgren announces his vision of a venin victory.
“They’re going to overrun us at Samara,” Melgren interrupts.
Everyone quiets.
I struggle to draw my next breath. Surely he didn’t mean to say that. I look at Mom, and my knees weaken at the subtle nod she gives me. Even Mira tenses.
“I’ve seen it,” Melgren continues. “They come for us on solstice, and they win.”
We’ve already covered how Yarros lies to the audience by having Violet believe this ludicrous statement. Now let’s reflect on neither Violet nor anyone else questions the possibility that Melgren did see this. No one raises the possibility that the rebel children are still screwing with his vision and providing false readings.
Or rather, they DO remember that the rebel children screw up his vision, only they pick and choose when his visions are still accurate.
“The battle can’t take place somewhere else,” Sawyer argues. “Melgren would see it.”
“Not if we’re there,” Sloane counters. “Melgren can’t see the outcome if three of us are there, remember?” She holds up her forearm, where her relic winds above the edge of her sleeve.
“Exactly.” My fingernails bite into my palms. “He can’t see the real fight if we’re there. He has all his forces concentrating on Samara, when they should be—”
“At Basgiath,” Xaden finishes my thought, his eyes searching mine. “The Vale.”
In isolation, this may not seem like a problem. Yarros seems to be implying that Melgren merely has blind spot in geographic regions. Given how vague she’s been on how his future sight works, I’m almost willing to roll with this.
However, by that logic, Melgren should have been aware that the venin would win months (if not years) ago. Xaden's smuggling operation could not explain how his visions were wrong if he is only wrong about specific locations where the weapons smuggling takes place. For that matter, if the block on his Signet is geographic, he should also have been able to see accurate visions regarding Aretia whenever the rebel children were not there. Alternatively, if the idea is that Melgren’s visions being limited to battles means that he only sees literal battles, and the rebel children cloak the events themselves, then why was so much emphasis put on the rebel children’s efforts to mask their activities by working in trios, and why would there need to be regulations in the Codex to prohibit them from casually assembling? Them being together shouldn’t matter unless an actual battle occurs.
Damning Testimony (Heavy Spoilers)
Please reread this. It is crucial to understand just how evil Violet and her squad are.
“The battle can’t take place somewhere else,” Sawyer argues. “Melgren would see it.”
“Not if we’re there,” Sloane counters. “Melgren can’t see the outcome if three of us are there, remember?” She holds up her forearm, where her relic winds above the edge of her sleeve.
“Exactly.” My fingernails bite into my palms. “He can’t see the real fight if we’re there. He has all his forces concentrating on Samara, when they should be—”
“At Basgiath,” Xaden finishes my thought, his eyes searching mine. “The Vale.”
Let’s for a moment accept the rule that Yarros wants us to accept for this scene to work: that the rebel children create blind spots in Melgren’s vision, but these blind spots are geographically confined, so the vision is correct in all other details.
With this in mind, let us consider that Melgren cannot see a threat at Basgiath. There are two possibilities here.
Melgren’s vision is obscured by the rebel children.
There is no threat at Basgiath.
All of the rebel children who were at Basgiath are now in Aretia. Therefore, unless three or more rebel children go to Basgiath, Melgren’s vision is correct. There is no threat at Basgiath …
… so Violet and her squad decide to go to Basgiath, turning the certainty that nothing bad will happen into the possibility that something bad will happen.
Everything bad that happens after this point is the fault of Violet and her squad. This list includes, but is not limited to:
The destruction of the Basgiath wardstone
The death of countless dragons, riders, gryphons, fliers, members of Navarre’s military, and civilians
The transformation of Xaden into a venin
The death of General Sorrengail
The loss of Sawyer’s leg
The dooming of Aretia when its wards inevitably fall, since the only rainbow dragon committed herself to re-igniting the Basgiath wardstone
Actually, no. Violet’s squad is not to blame. The decision is Violet’s. The others just follow her. She chooses to go, and she chooses not to leave the people who cloud Melgren’s vision behind.
And she does this because … That’s Good. Because she cannot bear the stigma of not doing What's Good on her own terms.
The thought of risking my friends, losing them, has my stomach churning. I don’t want to put Tairn and Andarna into danger. I would rather die than gamble with Xaden’s life. But is there really a choice? Going might risk death, but staying risks us becoming just like our enemy.
Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue is a self-righteous yet utterly abhorrent monster.
The Takeaway
Future sight is one of those abilities that, if handled incorrectly, can be immensely damaging to a narrative.
Yarros has handled it incorrectly.
So many problem in this series would be resolved instantly if Melgren’s future sight didn’t exist. There would be no need for Yarros to crowbar in factors to negate it. There would also be no need for appalling character decisions to work around it.
If Melgren’s Signet was almost anything else, and his skill as a strategist was purely a matter of talent and discipline, then this lead-in to the finale would be so much smoother. He could simply have calculated that the venin will overrun Navarre and designated the solstice as the most likely time. Violet could have simply determined that he was wrong, and she and her squad could have gone to Basgiath, without the full awareness that they would be hiding vital information from him.
The phrase Keep It Simple, Stupid was coined for a reason.
The Isolationism Theme
Back in Chapter 28, we analyzed a passage from the meeting in Chapter 57. Here is an expanded version of it.
Melgren’s gaze jumps to Xaden. “We never should have let you into the quadrant.”
“Regrets are truly a bitch, aren’t they?” Xaden cocks his head. “Let’s get to it. You may have nothing better to do with your day, but we’re busy fighting for our Continent.”
“Nothing better?” Melgren snaps, his face blotching. “Do you know the destruction you caused by dropping those wyvern on the outposts? The lengths we went to in orderto keep it quiet? The civilians we had to—” He stops himself, breathing deeply and straightening his shoulders. “You almost tore down centuries of work, of tightly woven defensive strategy designed to protect the people within our borders.”
“But only the people within your borders,” Mira accuses. “Fuck everyone else, right?”
Mom’s eyes flash with barely leashed reprimand.
“Yes.” Melgren turns that unnerving stare on my sister. “When you abandon ship inthe middle of a hurricane, you save those you can in the dinghy, then cut the hands off anyone else who tries to climb aboard so they don’t pull you under.”
“You’re a callous asshole,” she fires back.
“Thank you.”
“Are we here for a reason?” Xaden asks. “You know, besides the evil villain lecture?”
Back in Chapter 28, we discussed how Xaden is a massive hypocrite.
Now it’s actually discuss the thematic ideas at play here.
Theme and Anti-Theme
What Melgren just presented is the anti-theme: the idea that stands in opposition to the main theme. Melgren believes that isolationism is necessary when helping others could potentially harm those within your own borders, those to whom you are beholden. Xaden upheld this same idea back in Chapter 28 when he refused to give the fliers more venin-killing alloy than what he was already bringing them, on the grounds that doing so might compromise Navarre’s wards.
Violet, by contrast, reflects the theme. She believes that isolationism is bad when it keeps one from helping others. Protecting the innocent must always be a priority. The fact that she doesn’t even stop to consider the value in Melgren’s position, and that she at least thought Xaden was an edgy boi for his position, means that she does not consider obligations to others under one’s protection to be an issue. Helping others is What’s Good. That is all that matters.
Aretia occupies something of a middle ground. They mostly share Violet’s position, but they are willing to let Navarre die as punishment for abiding by Melgren’s anti-theme. I think it would accurate to summarize their position as, “Isolation should not get in the way of protecting the INNOCENT,” with guilt voiding one’s right to aid. (As hinted in the Story summary, this doesn’t really work, since the civilians of Navarre are not guilty of the sins of the rider leadership who kept them ignorant of any greater conflict, yet this at least seems to be what Yarros is going for.)
Concept
I think that Yarros’s general approach to delivering these themes is functional at a conceptual level.
Throughout this book, Violet has dwelt upon the virtue of her theme and the evil of the anti-theme. When confronted by Aretia’s stance, she decides that it is also Not Good. She therefore rallies those she trusts and goes to save the day.
If Violet succeeds, she will have proven the virtue of the theme. She will have saved the day and conquered evil. The other perspectives failed in these tasks.
Execution
The climax of this book - and all of the bad things in it - only happens because Violet and the rebel children rush to Basgiath.
The manifestation of the theme leads to all of the issues identified above.
Had Violet done nothing, allowing the anti-theme and Aretia’s middle ground to snarl at each other without interference, then everything would have been fine. Melgren would have seen the climax coming. The day would have been saved.
In other words, not only did Yarros spectacularly fail to deliver her theme, but she also demonstrated that the anti-theme was correct. Not meddling in the affairs of others would have led to less innocent bloodshed.
Good job, heroes!
Shallowness
A secondary issue with the delivery of these themes is how little exploration these ideas actually are. There’s nothing more to it than basic statements of what’s right and wrong.
The theme is good because That's Good.
The anti-theme is bad because That’s Bad.
Aretia’s middle ground is bad because That’s Hypocritical.
Ironically enough, what makes this discussion so shallow is actually the fact that Melgren (and, much earlier, Xaden) is allowed to argue his position.
“When you abandon ship inthe middle of a hurricane, you save those you can in the dinghy, then cut the hands off anyone else who tries to climb aboard so they don’t pull you under.”
Melgren has a point. It’s not a magic bullet that hands him an instant intellectual, emotional, and/or moral victory within the thematic struggle, but it is a valid argument that needs to be addressed before it can be dismissed.
Navarre does not have the resources to scour the venin or the wyverns from the entire continent. As pointed out in the Battle Brief in Chapter 58, they cannot both arm everyone with adequate quantities of venin-killing weaponry and maintain the wards that keep venin out of Navarre. This zone of security is geographically locked and very fragile. They simply cannot take the fight to the venin without endangering the lives of their own people. It’s also not like they could gamble everything on a last-ditch gambit to eradicate the venin forever. We will learn later in this book how easily venin can come into being. This is, as far as Navarre is aware, an eternal war. Everything they’ve done has ultimately been in pursuit of maximizing how long their people survive.
Yarros could have addressed these concerns. She could have countered these arguments. She could have presented benefits that outweigh the risk that Melgren (the man who SEES THE FUTURE) fears.
What does she do instead?
“You’re a callous asshole,” [Mira] fires back.
“Thank you.”
“Are we here for a reason?” Xaden asks. “You know, besides the evil villain lecture?”
If you support the anti-theme, no matter how rational your position is, you are a “callous asshole” and an “evil villain”.
This is every bit as shallow and cowardly as Yarros turning to the audience in Chapter 21 and telling us to shut up if we disagree with her about linguistic diversity. I also think it reflects the same phenomena we saw with Violet being backed into a corner while arguing with Xaden. Yarros is either aware that this argument has merit and is trying to pretend she’s bashed through it or is so incapable of understanding the basic logic that she assumes that no one in the audience could possibly agree with Melgren.
Now, I do want to acknowledge that the hypocrisy of Aretia’s position is slightly better off. They are given character-based reasons for their behavior. What’s more, Violet actually has something of a crisis of faith in the Aretia rebels when they reject Melgren’s please for aid.
“Change the outcome by fighting at our side.” Melgren frowns like he’s being forced to swallow rotten fruit. “In the battle I see, none of you are there.” He glances at Xaden.
“And we’re not going to be.” Ulices shakes his head. “We don’t fly for you.”
No, we fly for… Wait, who do we fly for? Not just Aretia, or even Tyrrendor. And if we’re willing to fight to defend the civilians of Poromiel, why wouldn’t we fight to defend Navarrians, too?
Unfortunately, I don’t think this has anything to do with a genuine desire to explore the pros and cons of Aretia’s perspective. I think Yarros just wanted an excuse to make Violet a rebel who rebels against the rebels, and so she manufactured a scenario where Violet does the “right” thing because That’s Good. She also wraps up this crisis of faith in the same simplistic terms with which she dismissed Melgren’s position.
The thought of risking my friends, losing them, has my stomach churning. I don’t want to put Tairn and Andarna into danger. I would rather die than gamble with Xaden’s life. But is there really a choice? Going might risk death, but staying risks us becoming just like our enemy.
Ripping Off YA Dystopia
Background
Let's flash back to both the franchise that really kicked off the YA Dystopia craze (the Hunger Games series) and one of its derivatives (the Divergent series). To be more specific, we shall he analyzing the film adaptations. This is because I have not read the books. Things are, of course, lost or changed in the adaptation process (I’ve heard that Divergent’s second and third entries, Insurgent and Allegiant, are vastly different stories from their books), but what we got on the screen is adequate to support this portion of the analysis.
The Hunger Games series follows Katniss Everdeen. She starts off The Hunger Games as merely a brave and nurturing young woman who volunteers herself to be sacrificed instead of her sister, tries to save the life of a younger girl in the arena, and then risks everything to save her fellow tribute from her district. However, in doing this, she unwittingly ignites a spark in the people, providing a virtuous focal point around which their grievances with the regime can be anchored. Catching Fire sees her become a symbol of the disenfranchised even as the regime tries to wield her to poison this growing resistance. By Mockingjay, when open war has erupted, she has become a propaganda tool. However, when the new regime tries to use her to establish a new era of bloody tyranny, she instead kills the would-be usurper, a final act of rebellion that paves the way for genuine peace.
Divergent sees Beatrice (later Tris) Prior identified as a Special Snowflake that the regime wants to destroy. She originally tries to hide her specialness, but when her family become targets for the regime, she exposes herself to help save them. Once we get to Insurgent, the regime is hunting Tris and others like her so that they can open a MacGuffin that only their specialness can unlock. In the course of avoiding the regime, Tris is introduces to the rebels against the regime, which is led by another would-be usurper. The chaos created by the hunt for Tris allows the rebels to overthrow the old regime and take over the city. Allegiant sees the usurper solidify her hold, only to be countered by a new rebel faction that wants genuine change instead of a new tyranny. While this conflict brews, Tris is introduced to the government faction that secretly controls her city, learns that they cannot be trusted, and rebels against them. She ends the movie by returning to the city, bringing peace between the usurper and and new rebels, and banding the people together against the outside threst of this government faction.
In both of these cases, our rebel protagonist turns against her allies because they have become corrupted for one reason or another and are prioritizing holding on to power over doing What’s Good. However, there are measurable differences in the quality of their execution. The Hunger Games series definitely does the better job.
Katniss’s identity in her series cannot be boiled down to “rebel”. I’d argue that she isn’t a rebel as all. She is merely a pawn in a greater conflict. The only times she even has significant agency, where she pushes outside of the narrow list of options that others give her, are her unsanctioned mission to kill President Snow (which the usurper retroactively authorizes to save face) and her decision to kill the usurper in front of a massive crowd.of people. Both of these decisions were founded upon well-understood character motivations. We can certainly designate these as actions as acts of rebellion, but that is an effect, not a cause.
Tris, by contrast, is a rebel to her very core. Her entire identity is founded on the idea that she is a special snowflake because she is a free thinker; she is, in short, a rebel. There was an inevitability that she would rebel against any new form of authority that might manifest as her series progresses. The instant that the new authoritative body acting against her own views, regardless of the rationality behind that decision, she would bulldoze her own path through or around them. Frankly, because there is nothing to her outside of this quality of being a rebel, I don’t know whether she could even exist in a narrative without rebelling against something.
Violet’s Rebellion
The rebellion of Violet against the Aretia rebels is even less functional than what happened in the Divergent series.
As we have covered twice now - both in the review of Chapter 39 of Fourth Wing and in the review of Chapter 36 of this book - Violet does not actually have characterization that would define her as a rebel, and especially not someone who would rebel in the name of protecting people she does not have a personal investment in when doing so would endanger those she cares about. Her decision to go against Aretia is actually out of character for her.
The thought of risking my friends, losing them, has my stomach churning. I don’t want to put Tairn and Andarna into danger. I would rather die than gamble with Xaden’s life. But is there really a choice? Going might risk death, but staying risks us becoming just like our enemy.
She would absolutely chose to let Navarre die to protect those she loves. The only consistency here is that Violet will also do What’s Good, as defined by the author, but outside of the fact that she is Yarros’s self-insert Mary Sue and will always do what Yarros would like to think that she herself would do, there’s no understanding of why she would do What’s Good.
That’s just the character problem. The larger-scale narrative issue is that, despite this being presented as Violet rebelling against the rebels, the rebels have not actually been given the opportunity to make a decision for her to rebel against.
It would have been one thing if Violet had immediately rebelled against the rebels and gone to Navarre’s aid when Melgren made his initial offer. She didn’t do that. It wasn’t until she realized that Basgiath itself was the target that she decided to rebel against the rebels. She literally chose not to share this revelation with the class: she realizes it during Battle Brief, with both Brennan (a member of the rebel leadership) and Devera (a professor who is “exactly who [Violet has] always thought she was”) in the room. Violet just walks out of class, with her squad in tow, and tells Xaden in secret, so that they can all leave in secret, thereby denying the rebels the opportunity to make the decision she can rebel against.
(Plus - and I cannot overstate this - Violet chosing to do this proves that the Aretia rebels were in the right, since everything bad that happens in the climax is her fault.)
As a result of everything Yarros chose to establish, what was intended as a moment of virtuous action against moral hypocrites is the self-rightous tantrum of an immoral bitch who engineers destruction so that she can pretend she is virtuous.
PLOT
Rational Response
This is more of a character point than a plot point. I’m also on the fence as to whether or not it makes sense. However, the entire setup for the climax - more specifically, the setup that leads Violet to damn everyone by going to Basgiath - hinges on this, so I feel I should at least mention it.
At the meeting with Melgren, the representatives of the Aretia rebels are extremely childish. I don’t find this impossible for Xaden, as he is a Bad Boy Love Interest and is 24 at most, but Mira is supposed to be a hardened veteran, Brennan is both a veteran and an experienced leader of this rebellion, and the main spokesman present for the rebels has been described and characterized in a manner that puts him in his 30s, if not 40s. It’s puzzling that all of them are this committed to leaving Navarre to die on the basis that it is some moral comeuppance.
This doesn’t make sense no matter how one slices it. If they don’t think Melgren is bluffing, they are risking giving the venin more power (via all the power they can drain from Navarre) and opening up additional battlefronts once the venin have free rein in Navarre. If they DO think Melgren is bluffing, then they are casually rejecting a chance at legally recognized independence, in exchange for a mutial defense pact that Aretia will never actually be called to honor.
Violet only gets to be the rebel rebelling against the rebels because the rebels choose to behave like self-righteous children instead of mature individuals who have meticulously rebuilt their movement from the ashes of a previous conflict.
Arbitrary Conclusion
The way that Violet concludes that Basgiath will be attacked is itself another moment of Yarros ramming in elements arbitrarily to drive the story.
Melgren was bluffing, banking on us not fully understanding how the wards work. He used a scare tactic to get us to agree to fight.
“Did you want to finish that thought, cadet?” Devara asks.
My mind spins as my heart lurches into my throat. I stare at the map, at the thin line of the border that remains uncrossed by what appears to be an undefeatable legion of the enemy, and a thought so terrifying I can barely reach for it begins to take hold. “How old is this information?”
“I’m sorry?” Devera’s brows rise.
“How long have they been sitting on the border?” I clarify, my nails biting into thepalms of my hands as I tighten my fists, pushing down the fear threatening to consume me.
She glances at Brennan, who replies, “They’ve been there for three days. This morning’s report confirms they haven’t moved.”
Oh gods.
“We act now.” Tairn’s voice rumbles through my head.
Violet will later explain to Xaden that because the wyverns are amassing at the border, it means that the attack will come as Basgiath.
That’s her entire line of logic.
The venin have been keeping assets in staging areas for a few days, so they can’t possibly be planning to use those assets. They must be planning to use different assets.
The following would all be more plausible conclusions:
The venin are waiting for infiltrators to breach the border forts and destroy the ward extensions.
The venin know Melgren will move alloy out of the coastal outposts. They are planning to strike from that direction once he has had time to fortify the Poromish border.
The venin are taking time to create more wyvern for a future assault, and they are keeping their existing wyvern in position to strike in case the situation changes.
Melgren’s future sight has been distorted by the involvement of the rebel children. No attack is coming.
If Violet had a hint of rationality, the climax of this book does not happen.
Also, I suspect this may be another product of Yarros writing this part of the book in one draft. Melgren was not bluffing when she wrote Chapter 57. To protect Brennan and Devera from moral stain in Chapter 58, she changed it so that he was bluffing. This, however, means that Violet was an idiot to take Melgren seriously on Chapter 57, so she gave Violet a eureka moment to mask that flaw. This is just a hunch, yet it is one that is consistent with everything else we have seen.
The Sexy Fight
The sexy fight in Chapter 58 is six pages of content that is a waste of time at best and abhorrent at worse.
First, let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way:
Violet is still a foul, irrational, abusive person who is nevertheless rewarded for her behavior.
Xaden is her victim, and he should get as far away from her as possible.
This whole conflict was contrived, and Yarros is just going to make up more contrived conflict to pretend that there’s anything resembling a Romance subplot in previous books.
With the recurring problems out of the way, let’s hit the two items deserving of focus.
Non-Resolution
Violet finally gets the security clearance that she’s bitched about throughout this book when Xaden says this sentence.
“Even if it’s classified, I won’t withhold any information that affects your agency.”
Hey, Xaden. Buddy. Quick question.
How will you know if information affects Violet’s agency unless you run it by her first?
Won’t you need to tell her everything just so she can tell you if it affects her agency?
Won’t you be having this fight again the second you misjudge whether something affects her agency?
Plus, “agency” was never the issue. How did the knowledge of either smuggling operations or Brennan being alive affect Violet’s agency, given how she wasn't able to do anything about either until the mated bond forced Xaden to drag her into those affairs? How did the knowledge of Xaden being an inntinnsic affect her agency, given that she already transmitted information to him via the mated bond? The only things I can think of is that he denied Violet the power to have him killed for treason at a moment’s notice, but as far as she knows, that would kill her, too. She has no agency in this situation even if she knows the truth.
This is very clearly a fake resolution so that Yarros can arbitrarily reactivate this conflict when it suits her. It’s just so pathetic.
Also, a running thread throughout the Trust conflict is that Xaden will happily tell Violet anything if she asks him about it. He won’t just gush information like a ruptured hydrant, but he will not lie to her or deny her information. She has expressed how sick she was of needing to ask questions to get information. She repeats that in this very scene.
So as soon as she accepts his surrender, she starts asking questions.
“Want to know about my father? My grand father and Sgaeyl? The rebellion?”
Maybe something easier. “Where’s your mother?”
What was the point of making a big deal about how Xaden was in the wrong for making her ask questions if she is going to immediately shift to extracting information by asking questions?
Call Me … Important NPC
Those of you familiar with The Legend of Korra will know how studio interference derailed the show’s potential for long story arcs. Each season had to tell a self-contained narrative that, at most, reacted to the fallout of previous seasons. Setting up characters prior to the season where they became relevant was incredibly risky, as there was a legitimate chance that any setup would not get a payoff.
Enter into this mess Kuvira, the main antagonist from Season 4. Kuvira is introduced in Season 3 as a mob character. Only a few of the scenes in which she appeared even gave her lines, and the majority of those lines conveyed neither characterization nor the sense that she was at all important. She wasn’t even named. Then, suddenly, in her final scene, she introduces herself to Korra’s father, with the camera lingering her on a way that screams, “HEY! THIS CHARACTER IS IMPORTANT!”
I relay this anecdote because Yarros is doing the same thing how with Xaden’s mother.
Maybe something easier. “Where’s your mother?”
He startles but quickly masks the reflex.
“No one talks about her,” I continue. “There are no paintings, no references to her being at the Calldyr executions. Nothing. It’s like you were hatched and not born.”
The moment stretches between us.
“She left when I was young. Their marriage contract said an heir had to survive to the age of ten, and then she was free to go, which is what she did. I haven’t seenor heard from her since.” His voice sounds like he dragged it across broken glass.
“Oh.” My hand splays wide on his chest. “I’m sorry.” Now I feel like shit for asking.
“I’m not.” He shrugs. “What else do you want to know?”
There’s a reason that Yarros has Violet exposit about the lack of record on Xaden's mother: this is all brand new information. The absence of Xaden's mother matters as much to this story as the absence of any anecdotes about my stepsisters matters to this review series. Yarros cramming this in here is a very blatant and sloppy way to set up that Xaden's mother will be important later in this series, and since Yarros didn’t decide upon this element until she hit this point in the first draft, all of the setup needs to be delivered as a sledgehammer to the face.
Yarros’s Signature Move
Once Violet starts asking questions, Yarros doubles down on the sheer idiocy of Xaden being an inntinnsic.
“When did it manifest?” I slide my hand up to his neck. “The signet?”
“About a month after the shadows did. I’d already seen Carr kill another first-year for reading minds, so when it hit, I held my shit together and went to Sgaeyl, and when Carr asked if I’d had any other strange abilities emerge, since they knew Sgaeyl had bonded one of my relatives, I lied my ass off. And when my ability to control shadows seemed stronger than they’d expected, they had no reason to dig deeper.” A corner of his mouth tilts upward. “It helps that rider of record was thought to be a great uncle, not my grandfather.”
“She’s really the only one who knows?”
“She’s it. She made me promise not to tell anyone. She thinks anyone who knows will have me killed—or use me as a weapon.”
No, Ms. Yarros.
No.
This is not how you told us that this literary hellscape you’ve spawned works.
First, you are directly acknowledging the fact that the rider leadership should have figured out that Xaden is an inntinnsic. At best you are not fixing it; at worst, you are filling in a plot hole by once again undermining your antagonists. The rider leadership should not have dropped the matter just because Xaden has a powerful shadow Signet. The absolute rule that your established through your self-insert Mary Sue is that a descendant rider must either go mad or manifest two Signets. When Xaden did not go mad, the rider leadership (which, as you showed us, are so paranoid that they will execute a rider for requesting a document he couldn’t know was classified via official channels) should have either tortured him until his second Signet was revealed or executed him to play things safe.
Saying that he “held his [shit] together” does not fix this. The on-the-spot execution of inntinnsics is public knowledge. Xaden cannot possibly be the first inntinnsic to realize what was happening when his Signet manifested and control his reaction. Either you are telling us that that are many secret inntinnsics running around, or the rider leadership should have some sort of screening process to identify these secret inntinnsics and therefore should have caught Xaden.
Saying that he manifested a stronger shadow Signet does not fix this. If it did, Violet (whom you want us to think is a “rational woman”) would have also come to this same conclusion s the rider leadership, rather than jumping to the two Signets conclusion.
Saying that they wrote off his ancestry as a clerical error does this fix this. You have made it very clear how accurate the records of the scribes are. The only things that are wrong are the things they themselves have redacted or tampered with. Something as straightforward as the recent family tree of a high-ranking noble is not something they should screw up. Even if that were possible, this is is the son of a man who led a revolt against Navarre mere years earlier (less than 4 years, at that point). The rider leadership would not take chances.
Second, you have put the use of innstinnsics as weapons on the table. The reasoning you have given throughout this series for innstinnsics being killed is that they are too dangerous to be allowed to live. Their usefulness isn’t even acknowledged. If the rider leadership would be willing to use Xaden - the son of a man who led a rebellion against the regime, and therefore someone they cannot trust - as a weapon, then either the benefit of this Signet outweighs any and all risks, or else they have a reliable means to shield against and control inntinnsics … so why would they execute inntinnsics on the spot?
CHARACTERS
Violet
Violet knows she can’t read the journal the her mother handed over to her. Jesinia has to do it. As she acknowledges when her mother gives her the journal:
Translating this one will be all on Jesinia. Morainian is one of the dead languages I can’t read.
And again at the end of the chapter:
And I don’t even know Morrainian. I’ll have to rely fully on Jesinia to translate and compare the two.
Violet knows the wards are flawed. The venin and wyverns are on their doorsteps. The lives of everyone in Aretia are at stake. In fact, since Violet believes that the riders of Aretia are Navarre’s only hope, the lives of everyone in Navarre are also at stake, at least as far as Violet is concerned.
Which is why she puts her ego first and tries to translate the journal herself, only handing it over to Jesinia after she got frsutrated.
It only took one frustrating day trying to translate and failing before I handed it over to Jesinia.
I’m so grateful for that Elon Musk quote. He’s saving me so much time.
"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.”
Melgren
Despite the immense importance placed upon him and his Signet, Melgren has barely been a character within this series.
In Fourth Wing, he only appeared in two scenes, neither of which told is anything meaningful about him.
He was present during the ceremonies after Threshing, being name-dropped in Chapter 15 and then having two lines of dialogue in Chapter 16 to announce that Violet could remain bonded to two dragons. The dialogue is so devoid of personality that any Red Shirt (or, for that matter, General Sorrengail, who steps up to speak immediately after Melgren delivers the announcement) could have delivered it.
He is present at the Reunification Day celebration in Chapter 31, circulating around the party with General Sorrengail and the king. He is presented as a one-note villain who radiates cold menace, with Violet directly characterizing him in the narrative with, “Melgren may be brilliant, but he’s also unnerving as fuck to be around.”
This limited exposure, coupled with him being synonymous with the rider leadership, is enough to understand his motivations, but not much else. In fact, the idea that he is at all “brilliant” or menacing has been relentlessly ground away, starting from the moment Violet figured out that the weapons smuggling operation exploits a blind spot in his future sight that he knows about. This is a man who has repeated failed to take even the simplest of logical precautions, whose intelligence seems wholly based on a magical power that he knows is flawed but won’t correct, who is represented by utter buffons.
(The magic power point is particularly noteworthy because it’s a far more exaggerated example of the problem of attributing Xaden’s fighting skills to him being an inntinnsic. At least Xaden’s case is associating his Signet with competence; Melgren is somehow incompetent with a far greater power.)
As a result of this, Melgren’s arrival at the meeting is hollow.
Melgren walks at the center, his beady eyes shifting down our line of Aretian riders. I don’t need Cat’s gift to heighten his anger. He wears rage like it’s a part of his uniform.
That’s all we get to reestablish the type of person Melgren is and build anticipation for the scene ahead. Maybe this would have worked if Yarros hadn't destroyed any credibility of the rider leadership as antagonists. As it is, all I can do is shrug and say, “Okay? So what if he’s mad? How does that make him at all threatening?”
The Sorrengail Family
The meeting with Melgren frames the arrival of Brennan as this shocking moment that unbalances General Sorrengail.
Bootsteps sound behind me, but I can’t tear my gaze away from the emotions crossing Mom’s face in rapid succession long enough to look to see who it is, and honestly, I don’t need to.
“We rule by committee,” Brennan announces, his arm brushing mine as he stops between Mira and me. “And I think I’m safe in speaking for the quorum when I say that we do not defend kingdoms who sacrifice neighboring civilians”—his head turns toward Mom, and her eyes bulge—“let alone their own children so they can hide safely behind their wards. You will not escape the suffering you’ve forced the rest of the Continent to endure.”
“Brennan?” Mom whispers, and the urge to cross the line and hold her upright is almost too strong to fight.
“For fuck’s sake, Brennan,” Mira whispers.
“When all three of your children stand against you, perhaps the time has come forself-reflection. This meeting is officially over,” Brennan states, his gaze locked on our mother.
I’m okay with the interaction for the most part. General Sorrengail’s reaction makes sense. The only issue I have with Brennan’s behavior is that it is built atop his defection, and as we covered several weeks back, this aspect of his character is still unexplained.
What bothers me is the accusation that General Sorrengail sacrificed her children for the sake of the conspiracy. This is something that popped up back in Chapter 41, too, but it’s given a lot more emphasis here.
Outside of her sending Violet to die in the Riders Quadrant for the sake of her own ego (which Yarros wants to retcon out of existence, so it can’t be used to support this line), when did General Sorrengail ever sacrifice ANY of her children for any reason, let alone for the conspiracy?
The only way I could possibly break logic to make this work is that General Sorrengail was involved in the suppression of the Tyrrendor rebellion, so Brennan was under her authority, and thus his “death” was on her hands. For this to work, we have to ignore that:
The rebellion’s connection to helping Poromiel is hollow rhetoric. All evidence indicates that Xaden’s father either kept the information to himself (remember, Fourth Wing stated that he needed to be interrogated to reveal it) or else only told his inner circle of officers. Otherwise, all of Tyrrendor (and probably all of Navarre) would already know. With this in mind, suppressing the rebellion was about bringing taxpayers to heel, not concealing the truth.
We have been given absolutely nothing to indicate that General Sorrengail made any decisions in that conflict that contributed, directly or indirectly, to Brennan’s death. No suicide missions have been mentioned, nor has any friendly fire delivered to conceal the truth. Brennan did his duty, and it just happened to kill him.
Brennan should know this. General Sorrengail should know this. It therefore feels immensely childish for Brennan to hurl around the accusation that he does.
I could see Mira doing this. In fact, she does do this at the start of the private conversation with their mother.
“She sacrificed you, too, Violet,” Mira reminds me. “Maybe she put in into the Riders Quadrant to save you from being killed as a scribe once you learned the truth, or maybe she did it to kill you before you could learn the truth and tear her precious war college to the ground ” - she glances sideways at me. - “which you did, if you remember.”
Regardless, the main reason General Sorrengail is here is to further set up her redemption. She tries to help Violet and Mira protect Aretia by handing over the journal. Her final line of the scene is this:
“You don’t have to understand my choices. You simply have to survive. I love you enough to bear the weight of your disappointment.”
This forced redemption continues to be very frustrating. Yarros isn’t really doing anything to earn it. She’s not actually having us explore General Sorrengail’s perspective. General Sorrengail is still a cold-hearted bitch whom Yarros tried to retcon into being a loving mother and then reverted back to being a cold-hearted bitch whose every maternal gesture is canceled about by her children ree-ing about how evil she is. For this redemption to be earned, we would need to present General Sorrengail’s actions in a sympathetic light. That’s something we’re just never going to get: it runs counter to Violet’s flawlessness, plus it would also add depth to a theme Yarros wants to keep shallow.
WORLDBUILDING
Runes
As mentioned in the Chapter 45 analysis, wyvern are fueled by runes.
The venin have runes.
“The stones used to create them were nothing but cold, marked rocks.”
Stones? Do dark wielders have runes?
Yes, Violet. I’m has dumbfounded as you.
How, exactly, did the information about runes get from Tyrrendor to the venin? This tears apart the established lore on runes no matter how one slices it.
If venin had runes before Navarre suppressed the knowledge, then that means the information was already out in the world. How was it determined that suppressing the information within Navarre’s borders would offer any benefit?
If the venin got runes after the information was suppressed, then that means that this information was somehow smuggled directly to the venin without somehow also getting to the Poromish.
If the venin discovered runes independently, how did the Poromish not figure it out on their own, too?
The Venin Forces
I study the map for a heartbeat. “I’d have pulled every dagger from the coastal outposts to reinforce and boost the power supplies at the border outposts. They’re powerless once they cross the wards. Wyvern die. Venin can’t channel. That leaves them with hand-to-hand combat—”
“Or artillery,” Cat adds.
“Exactly.” I glance at her and nod. “As long as the Navarrian forces can physically repel the dark wielders and keep them from scattering the power supply in the armory, then there’s no real danger of incursion.”
Why is this even a topic of discussion? Yarros has strong implied by 17 venin are a full quarter of their military strength. Even if the entire force goes after one of Navarre’s outposts, that’s less than 100 people against a castle and multiple dragons. Forget physically repelling them - they won’t even reach the outer walls.
Also, Yarros is putting emphasis on artillery again. What artillery exists in this world? It can’t be maorsite-based, or else the fliers would already be familiar with maorsite. No other explosives have been identified. Are we really supposed to think that the venin are supposed to lug ballistae or trebuchets to the forts, without magic or wyvern muscle, and expect to get set up and finish aiming the things before dragon fire carbonizes them?
(To be clear, when I say “carbonizes them”, I am referring to the artillery. Fourth Wing explicitly showed us that the venin are immune to dragon fire. That said, if Yarros were to … oh, I don’t know … flagrantly violate this rule in the opening pages of Chapter 63, then yes, this would also refer to the venin. I sure do hope Yarros doesn’t do anything that absurd.)
PROSE
Huh?
There is a quarter-page of text in Chapter 57 that I genuinely cannot make head or tails of.
“You’ll be better than me,” she counters, then looks over the top of my head to talk to Xaden. “By the way, you couldn’t convince him to stay in Aretia?”
“I don’t wield emotions, and members of the Assembly don’t take well to being tied down and restrained.” He reaches back over his shoulder and draws one of the swords strapped to his back with his left hand, leaving his right free to wield. “If you’re looking to influence mindwork, find a flier.”
Who is Mira talking about here? The only person I could think of it being is Brennan, but his arrival later is presented as something unexpected, so this only makes sense if Yarros is playing a pronoun game for something that isn’t even a mystery or a reveal.
Why would Xaden respond this way? Why even bring up that he does not have a mindwork Signet when we just learned how desperately he needs to keep a mindwork Signet hidden?
Tone Killer
It’s the start of the meeting with Melgren. Riders from both sides are striding towards each other across a field, like it’s the finale of Breaking Dawn. We are at least supposed to think this is a moment of danger and extreme tension.
So Yarros decided to destroy the tone with a random joke.
Tairn steps forward and lifts his head to hover over mine, a menacing rumble working its way up his throat.
“Don’t drool on me,” I joke, but it falls flat.
I guess the dog that Tairn is based upon had a drooling problem.
DEEP BREATH BEFORE THE PLUNGE
On August 23rd, we begin the charge through the climax of Iron Flame with Chapters 59 and 60, with a long alluded-to twist finally being revealed.
First, though … let’s take a quick break and read something good.
As stated back on July 4th, I have acquired Malleus, the second book in the Eisenhorn Trilogy of Warhammer 40,000. It’s an interesting book for a couple of reasons. While I’m still not a huge fan of the style, and I think it is far from flawless, I feel that it is far more effective as a sequel than Iron Flame, despite it having far less to do with its predecessor than Iron Flame does with Fourth Wing.
We’ll get into this on August 16th. I hope to see you all then. Have a good week.
