Iron Flame (Chapter 59 & Chapter 60)

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, Xaden, and the riders and dragons they’ve rallied to them (including Andarna, for some reason) fly to Basgiath. They meet no resistance - since, after all, Melgren knew nothing bad could happen in the place with no rebel children, so all assets were moved to the Poromish border - and easily seize control of Basgiath. Faced with overwhelming force, General Sorrengail agrees to show them the wardstone so that they can secure it. However, when they arrive, they discover Jack Barlowe there. They are just in time to see him sacrifice his dragon in a blood ritual to destroy the wardstone.

Then comes the reveal: Jack Barlowe is a venin.

After spending multiple pages trying to justify this twist, Yarros transitions into prep for the final battle, including a Battle Brief scene. A thousand wyvern and their venin are coming to Basgiath, with a second wave behind them. Melgren and the riders with him at the border will not arrive in time to help. However, Brennan and the fliers and 1st-year riders left behind at Aretia arrive first. Violet asks Brennan what the limits of his mending Signet are. After he explicitly tells her limits that make it impossible for him to repair the wardstone, she tells him to repair the wardstone.

JACK BARLOWE IS A VENIN

This twist angers me - but not because it is a bad twist. Quite the opposite.

It Almost Worked

Out of all the twists rammed into this book in a bid to seem clever, out of all the arbitrary developments used to force the plot forward, and out of all general nonsense Yarros has tried to retcon into the story or otherwise gaslight the audience into believing, this is the one thing that comes closest to working.

Yarros made some effort to foreshadow that Jack was a venin. This is the payoff to Nolon’s “mending a soul” comment back in Chapter 18, which itself was subtly delivered. Jack begin a venin also somewhat explains how he survived having a mountain on him (though, as we touched upon back in Chapters 25 and 26, the fact he wasn’t electrocuted by Violet’s lighting is questionable. It’s especially problematic given the emphasis put on her lighting homing on magical energy signatures, as Jack was the only magical target on the tower when Violet firing a lighting blast in his direction). It also pays off Draconis’s line about riders influencing dragons - this was presented as something unnatural, and now Jack has been demonstrated as having unnatural powers. Even if Yarros did write this book in one draft, she did make a proper effort to integrate Jack’s status as a venin into Iron Flame. I don’t think he was a venin when she wrote Fourth Wing (as we will get to later), but that wouldn't be a problem if it didn’t contradict anything from that book (which, again we will get to later).

The destruction of the wardstone itself also makes sense. Yarros didn’t need to explain any complex mechanics. Blood sacrifice is often associated with evil, the sacrifice being a dragon aligns with the wardstone being fueled by the magic of dragons, and the fact that runes seem to be involved tracks with the venin using runes to create wyverns.

I’m not saying that this is the greatest twist of all time. It’s a bit cliché that the Violet Sociopath Classmate joined the faction of supernatural evil. Still, it is a functional twist that Yarros lay groundwork for. It would take active effort for Yarros to fuck this up.

…

So Yarros took active effort to fuck this up.

The Twist In Isolation

Yarros went out of her way to destroy the credibility of this twist through two wholly unnecessary elements: the pulverization of Jack’s character and her effort to explain the twist to the audience.

The Desecration of Jack Barlowe

Jack Barlowe in Fourth Wing was not a complicated character. He was a brute who Yarros pumped up as a threat whenever she needed Violet to be in danger and then made pathetic whenever she needed Violet to seem strong. By the time of his “death”, this flipflopping had robbed him of credibility. Yarros herself acknowledged this in Chapter 26 when she went directly from milking Jack for tension to having Violet brush off any possiblity of his challenging her.

Regardless … if Jack’s characterization had held steady from what it was in Fourth Wing, the reveal of him as a venin could have worked. Yarros wrote him to be pathetic and evil. Now he is allied with the villains for a reason that makes him sound pathetic (he is mad Tairn picked Violet instead of him). It ties together nicely.

…

Yarros instead destroyed this characterization by making Jack a nice guy. She had him save Violet’s life, with his presented reasons redeeming him at best and making an ally at worst. She had Draconis dismiss him as unreliable, disassociating him from the main antagonist of Part 1.

Okay, no need to panic. This is still workable. Maybe Jack could work his way to being a trusted ally or even a friend. That would make the reveal that he is a venin into a betrayal, adding an emotional gut pinch.

…

Yarros tossed aside this potential by having Jack fade out of the story. He does not appear after he saves Violet’s life in Chapter 31. Then, in Chapter 45, Violet blasts aside the possiblity of him being an ally.

By the time we get to Chapters 59 and 60, Jack has no defined characterization. He has no presence in the story. He actually has less characterization than the average Red Shirt. At least Yarros tries to shoot them up with a pale imitation of personality before she puts them down. Yarros has gone so far out of her way to hollow Jack out that having the venin infiltrator be some random rider cadet whom Violet had never seen before would have been a superior option. At least the, the lack of characterization would reflect a blank slate rather than a void.

Explaining the Twist

As mentioned above, this twist is not devoid of setups. Yarros could have kept her explanation to the groundwork she had laid. It would have been a case of providing new context for what came before.

She chose instead to ignore this groundwork and lie to the audience with completely separate retcons: one that is brand new information that is not supported by the text in any way, one that tears plot holes into Fourth Wing, and the last of which parasitizes an element from the RSC subplot.

Oh. Gods. His eyes have been bloodshot for so long. When did it happen? Before the fall. It had to have been before I wielded that first time. Back in the gym that day…

This retcon is the most cut-and-dry in terms of being a lie. At no point, in either book, have Jack’s eyes been described as “bloodshot”. I couldn't even find a point where blood was mentioned in reference to his eyes. Yarros is relying entirely on the audience blindly taking her at her word.

“When did you turn?” Xaden asks.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Jack fights the binding, but Xaden closes his fist and the shadows snap even tighter.

“I know you’re going to tell me.” Xaden walks forward. “Because I have nothing to lose by killing you. So tell me when. Earn yourself a little good will.”

“Before his challenge against me,” I answer when Jack refuses to. “He forced power into my body. I just didn’t recognize it for what it is.”

Yarros took Jack’s pain projection Signet (as it is referred to on the wiki for the Empyrean) and changed it to a venin ability. She did this both on the page and in her interview with Entertainment Weekly in November 2023.

Th reason why this retcon is a lie, versus just being terrible writing, is because it could not be more obvious that Jack was not a venin when she wrote Fourth Wing. As we will get to when we start on the plot holes down below, the scene in question does not work if Jack is a venin at that point in the story. Furthermore, neither the scene nor Fourth Wing in general work unless pain projection is a documented Signet that comes from his dragon. For Yarros to turn around and pretend like this was Rowling-level foreshadowing, and for her to do so both on the page and through a direct exercise of authorial authority, is blatantly dishonest.

Maybe if Yarros hadn’t lied to the audience so many times already, I’d be willing to extend the benefit of the doubt on this, but as we’ve documented pretty thoroughly thus far, she has exhausted that benefit.

We have to cut him off from his power. My gaze swings wide, and I see Nolon creeping up on the left. He’s kept [Jack] under control all these—

“The serum,” I tell Xaden. “He must be why they developed the signet-blocking serum.”

This is the only place where Yarros comes anywhere close to working with established groundwork … and it’s another case of parasitism.

Yes, the timeline does check out here. It makes sense that, if the serum was developed in response to Jack, then it would not have been available until this book. However, as we will get to in the plot holes, it does not make sense that a serum made for disabling venin would work to disable dragon magic, nor does it make sense that Navarre didn’t develop the serum until this point.

In terms of the parasitism, it fails as both additional context and as a solution to a mystery.

• What we had originally was that the serum developed for dragon riders specifically, and it’s mere coincidence that this happened the same year that Violet started RSC. This was clearly contrived so that Violet could be robbed of her magic during the RSC exercises, but it was still functional. No additional context was needed for this.

• The creation of the serum was not presented as a mystery to be solved, so this explanation doesn’t pay off anything.

As for the charge that this is a lie, it again comes down to benefit of the doubt. If Yarros had explained this twist with the groundwork she’s already established and then thrown in this specific retcon, I would still brand it as parasitism, but I wouldn’t conclude that she was being dishonest. However, in the context of the previous two points of dishonesty, this retcon comes across as another lie by Yarros to try to seem clever. At best, the parasitism is being used to reinforce her other two lies.

The Plot Holes

Oh, boy. So many issues here. While this is the twist that came closest to working, it suffers from the same problem as other twists, namely that Yarros didn’t think through either the lore surrounding it or the impact this would have on material she wrote before coming up with the twist.

“Oranges?”

Venin can only be killed by the venin-killing alloy (or by Signet powers, at Yarros's discretion). We are meant to believe that Jack was already a venin when Violet fought him in that sparring match where he used the pain projection Signet.

Why, then, did he go into anaphylactic shock when Violet exposed him to orange peels?

It’s not like the venin immortality is such that they suffer pain and injury without dying. Back in Chapter 36 of Fourth Wing, we saw one survive dragon fire without his clothes even being singed.

A few beats of his wings later, fire streams from his mouth, and he incinerates the clock tower on a flyby.

“Got him!” I turn in the saddle, watching as the wooden structure collapses in the blast. It’s only a mater of seconds before the venin walks out of the flames, though, and there isn’t a scratch on him. “Oh, fuck. He’s still there,” I call out as we cut back across the post to get to our assigned area, mentally kicking myself for thinking it could have been that simple. There’s a reason these creatures are what make up most Navarrians’ nightmare stories - and it isn’t because they’re easy to kill. We have to get close enough to get a dagger in him.

What’s more, Violet throws a normal dagger and hits Jack in Chapter 60, but he just pulls it out without any sign of pain, and no mention is made of him bleeding. If venin can shrug off these injuries, why would poison or an allergy affect them? Are we supposed to think that Jack fakes anaphylactic shock so perfectly that he not only tricked Violet and the other riders at the match but also the healers who would have treated his symptoms during the “four days” (as stated in Chapter 28 of Fourth Wing) he was in the infirmary?

In fact, given Jack’s characterization, why would he not ignore his restricted airway (since, if he survived under a mountain of rubble, he probably doesn’t need to breathe) and finish Violet off while she was at his mercy? He was desperate to kill her throughout Fourth Wing. What’s more, the explanation of the twist her in Chapter 60 doubles down on his motivation to harm her. Why would he prioritize faking an allergic reaction over killing her?

(No, it can’t be because the venin leader wants her alive. At that point in the story, the Sage had no reason to believe that Violet was valuable. Even if the Sage somehow did know and told Jack to let her live, it begs the question of why Jack was trying to hard to kill her during the sparring match.)

Pain Projection Signet

How did the rider leadership miss that Jack hadn’t manifested a Signet prior to his “death” during the War Games?

Originally, I wrote an analysis of all the ways in which Jack should have been found out for not having a Signet by the time of his “death”. However, when I was double-checking the sparring scene, I found this gem.

“He’s using his powers!” Ridoc roars, and from the corner of my decreasing vision, I see movement on both sides.

Everyone in attendance at the sparring test - which, given how these classes are described, could very easily be the entire student body - knows Jack used his pain projection powers. Since pain projection is not a lesser magic, they would all assume it is a Signet power. Given how well-documented Signet powers are, this should have led to some combination of the following outcomes:

• If Jack has another Signet power, he is flagged for having two Signets. The student body will immediately flag this, and rider leadership will know soon thereafter.

• When Carr realizes that Jack’s pain projection power is not in his records of Signet powers (which, remember, are so thorough that even a rare, god-tier Signet like Violet’s has past precedent that he can reference), Jack is flagged as having manifested a brand new Signet power.

• Upon realizing that pain projection is not in his records, Carr voices the concern that Jack isn’t getting this power from a dragon. This will immediately expose Jack as either a venin or a flier. Jack would be promptly removed from the student body for interrogation and experimentation. After all, consider how the rider leadership reacts to inntinnsics (not to mention to cadets using official channels to request documents they had no reason to believe were classified). They would never allow an obvious foreign infiltrator to wander freely.

Any of three outcomes would be massive news that should have been mentioned at least once between the first scene of Chapter 24 (when Violet is in the infirmary with Xaden right after the sparring match) and Chapter 28 (which is the next time Jack’s name is even mentioned, right as War Games are about to start). This is a period of four months in-story, with the sparring test occurring in January while the War Games occur in May. Within that time period, the first two outcomes would have been gossiped about and widely advertised in this school where dragons and Signet powers play such a huge role in the social hierarchy. The last would be something that Violet, the “rational woman” chosen by her dragon for her “intelligence”, should at least notice.

We get no mention of the first two comes. That leaves only the third. However, when Jack is brought up again in Chapter 28, Violet makes no mention of Jack having disappeared from the student body for any length of time. In fact, the way she describes him comes across as a constant presence throughout the four-month period.

Anything goes out there during War Games, and Jack Barlowe hasn’t forgotten that I put him in the infirmary for four days. He gave me a wider berth for weeks after Xaden executed Oren and the other kids who attacked me - and of course everyone stopped fucking with me after Amber Mavis. But still, I’d catch a look from him as we passed in the halls or in the cafeteria, pure hatred burning in the glacial depths of his blue eyes.

The only way for this to not be a gargantuan plot hole is if pain projection is a documented Signet that has absolutely nothing to do with Jack being a venin.

The Serum

The serum that blocks Signets was developed to suppress venin powers.

How and why does that work? The whole reason that the dragon wards work is that venin magic is distinct from dragon magic (and both are distinct from gryphon magic). A substance designed to suppress one should have no effect on any other form of magic.

The only way that this might make sense within the established worldbuilding is if we extrapolate what dragon wards do. Maybe gryphon magic can generate a ward that blocks dragon and venin magic. Maybe this serum is derived from gryphon magic.

Except … how would Navarre develop this? They don’t have fliers. The dragon ward should also inhibit anything made from flier magic, so even if a serum fueled by gryphon magic could be made within Navarre, it shouldn’t work.

If this serum isn’t magical - if it a mundane substance that somehow inhibits all magic use - then why did Navarre only develop it when they had a venin to work on? Why did they not develop it previously to control people with dangerous Signets (such as inntinnsics, so that Navarre can fulfill their desire to use inntinnsics as weapons) or simply to facilitate the RSC exercises? Also, given the previously established immunity to damage that venin possess, shouldn’t Jack’s system have brushed off a mundane serum that tried to inhibit his magic by attacking his flesh? At a bare minimum, wouldn’t any mundane serum strong enough to affect his physiology have lethal effects on riders?

Secrecy

Remember how the rider leadership executed a no-name rider for using official channels to request a report that he had no reason to believe was classified?

Why would the rider leadership ever allow Jack, a person they know to be the very thing they are trying to keep secret, to wander about freely? They know that he knows too much. They have zero reason to believe that they can trust or control him, a fact Draconis outright acknowledged when he dismissed the possibility of using him to interrogate Violet. They know he has venin immortality, so the next near-death experience could expose him even if he does keep his mouth shut. Why was Jack not kept caged in some black site while he was interrogated and experimented upon?

“Somehow, Palpatine Returned.”

Xaden’s brow furrows in concentration. “Jack’s turned venin. Somehow, he managed it within the wards.”

This is the entire explanation that we get for how Jack became a venin. “Somehow.”

Yarros will go on to explain that venin can still use magic inside the wards. This doesn’t answer the question of how venin are spawning within Navarre, but it does widen the plot hole.

“How? The wards -”

“Do not block all power like the dragons want you to think they do! We can still feed from the ground, still channel enough to survive. Enough to fool them. We might not be at full strength, capable of wielding greater magic under your protections, but make no mistake: we are already among you, and now we’re free.”

So. There are venin, plural, inside Navarre. They can enter Navarre without difficulty. They can spawn in Navarre without difficulty. Shortly after this, we get confirmation that they have been laying groundwork for an assault on Basgiath for months, if not years.

And just like that, Yarros fired yet another cyclonic torpedo into her entire setting.

There are so many follow-up questions, so many reasons that Navarre should either have been wiped out long before this story began or else be utterly unrecognizable. However, I am going to focus on just one scenario: the fact that the Riders Quadarant should be absolutely crawling with venin.

We have been shown that venin can survive massive falls and any weapon not made of the venin-killing alloy. The climax of Fourth Wing explicitly showed us that they can survived blasts of dragon fire that “incinerate” whole buildings. They can also glue themselves to dragons during complex aerial maneuvers, in utter defiance of physics. In other words, they are completely immune to 99% of the causes of death within the Riders Quadrant. The 1% remaining is accidental death due to being in the wrong place when someone’s Signet manifests (and even that assumes that my interpretation of any Signet being about to kill them is correct, versus special Signets like Violet’s).

Why haven’t the venin been building up an army of acolytes with the promise of guaranteed survival in the Riders Quadrant, training these acolytes to mask themselves from the dragons, and then sending a few into the Quadrant each year? Their recruiting pool would be teenagers who are already hyper-aggressive and seeking power and glory - not exactly a tough group to corrupt. Such an army of acolyte riders could have destroyed the wardstone at any previous point. At minimum, Jack should be part of a whole cohort of venin riders, any one of whom could have defected with the rebel children and then damned Aretia by destroying the wardstone there (such as, say, when an attacking force of hundreds of wyvern were inbound).

Jack’s Actions

Jack’s behavior in this book makes no sense if he is a venin.

Him saving Violet’s life is fine. As is the case with so many power fantasies featuring a Mary Sue, Violet is desired by the leader of the venin, and Jack has a line acknowledging this. He needed to save her back in Chapter 31 to appease his master.

What makes less sense is his shift in personality after his return to public life. According to Violet, he became a venin well before his “death”. He experienced no personality shift before then. Why did he suddenly change his personality after his return?

Also, why did Jack not join the defecting riders in Chapter 36? Unless there are rebel children at Basgiath to distort Melgren’s visions, Melgren will foresee any effort to destroy the wardstone. He had no value as an inside man at that point. Why did he not go to Aretia? At minimum, he could have been in position to help the venin conquer Aretia and drain the new hatching ground that would inevitably form from dragons relocating there. Better yet, he could coax rebel children into returning to Basgiath (for example, to do the very thing that Violet came here to do) so that they can be unwitting pawns to help him destroy the wardstone. Barring anything else, wouldn’t he want to be close to Violet so that he can jump on the chance to betray her and hand her over to his master?

Draconis Umbridge

I suspect that, at some point in the writing process, Yarros decided that Draconis was also a venin rider. His line back in Chapter 29 about some riders influencing their dragons is eerily similar to what Jack says between killing his dragon and Xaden figuring out that he’s a venin.

“That’s the thing,” Barlowe says, his blond hair covering his forehead as he falls forward onto a hand “I’m not [going to die because my dragon did]. They have us thinking we’re the inferior species, but did you see how easily I controlled her? How easily the energy she bonded us with is replaced?”

This would explain so much about Draconis’s behavior. It might also explain why Draconis was not killed for his obvious disrespect towards the Empyrean. If venin can conceal themselves from the dragons, if venin riders can control their dragons, and if a dragon can vouch for a rider, it follows that maybe Draconis was using Solas’s coerced support to shield him from reprisals by the Empyrean.

The reason I lump this in with the plot holes is that Yarros seems to have gone out of her way to set this up, only to do nothing with it. Not only did this setup not get any exploration, but Yarros had Xaden and Violet murder Draconis with a venin-killing dagger, so he should be properly dead even if he is a venin. If Yarros does change her mind and bring Draconis back (and she has two past precedents for that), then she will need to lie to the audience again to retcon away his death.

The Empyrean

The Empyrean were just … fine … with the rider leadership keeping a venin right next to the hatching ground? They were fine with said venin, who is also a rider, being allowed to walk free?

Ignore Jack’s dragon for a moment. Are we really supposed to believe that Nolon, Caroline, and every rider who knew about Jack being a venin was able to conceal that critical information from their dragons? Not one of their dragons had any questions about the bond being blocked or memories being withheld? Because if even one of their dragons knew, surely that dragon would have told the Empyrean, right?

Why this Twist Angers Me

I try to be a person who assumes ignorance or incompetence before malice. Additionally, for all the comments I have made about Yarros throughout this review, I still maintain that we should separate art from the artist. I am happy to accept that Yarros is an intelligent, morally upstanding individual who simply fails to translate her struggles into the text because she’s not properly prepared to work in this genre.

This twist, though … it brings a lot of ugliness into focus.

Throughout this book, Yarros has lied to and manipulated the audience. She has said whatever she had to in order to crowbar in her desired tone or tension, even when doing so blatantly contradicts things she has written before. It’s also uncanny how she repeatedly uses the gaslighting playbook that she spelled out for the audience.

Here, though, Yarros had a twist that could have worked without any of that. She could have argued that Jack being a venin explains how he survived the events of Fourth Wing, moving the time that he became a venin to right before the War Games. She could have continued to present Jack as a Violent Sociopath Classmate, thereby giving him a consistent characterization to support this twist. She could have at least had Jack mention Draconis as being the venin who inducted him into the ranks of the group, thereby paying off her setups from Part One and making her decision to have Draconis die by venin-killing dagger into a happy coincidence rather than a potential stumbling block. At that point, if she wanted to say the serum was created to control Jack, it would still be nonsensical, but it wouldn’t really be any worse than most other new elements she virus-bombs her worldbuilding with.

Yarros chose to ignore everything she had set up and earned, instead choosing to go out of her way to lie to her audience and force retcons down our throats.

I’ll have more to say about this behavior when we conclude this review. For now, I’ll just say that I can no longer write off this element of Yarros’s writing as ignorance or incompetence. This is deliberate. This is malice.

What Should Have Been

The easiest patch to this twist, which would have negated two of the plot holes and removed the opportunity for one of Yarros’s lies, would have been to simply move the point at which Jack became a venin. Have him turn sometime in the four-month period after Violet defeats him in the sparring test (and keep pain projection as a proper, dragon-derived Signet).

While this would be the easiest patch to implement, requiring changes to only a few paragraphs, it would not be a magic bullet solution. Too many elements of the plot and world simply don’t line up. Perhaps more importantly, there is the character issue. Any Red Shirt would have been a better choice for this venin reveal than Jack. Someone else should have been used here instead of him (and, preferably, he should have just been allowed to stay dead).

The list of better options is vast. Honorable mention goes to Xaden - if the reveal in Chapter 56 was that he was a venin, rather than an inntinnsic, then the revival of the Trust conflict would make a whole lot more sense. The prime candidate, though, goes to a character who is every bit as mishandled as Jack.

Brennan should have been the venin infiltrator.

• Much like Jack, Brennan seemingly died and was brought back. Unlike Jack, whose resurrection might technically be justified by venin immortality shielding him from death, Brennan’s resurrection is current founded upon Yarros lying to the audience.

• Brennan has an abrupt shift in allegiances that still has no explanation, only irrational pettiness. If it were revealed that he had become a venin, than such an abrupt shift in his allegiances would have new context.

• Brennan is actively involved in a resistance movement that actively endangers all of Navarre by undermining Navarre’s ability to sustain their wards and by making use of agents who distort the future sight of Navarre’s highest military leader.

Literally all that would be needed to explain this twist is to reveal that Brennan became a venin at the moment that Tairn’s former rider saved him. He was properly dead, but the siphoning Signet revived him just enough to make a deal with the devil and unlock venin immortality. Not only would this bandage the issue of Yarros lying to the audience about resurrection being impossible, but it would also shut down the venin proliferation issue: new venin cannot be created inside the wards and can normally be created only with the aid of another venin, but since Brenann was in Tyrrendor (which Yarros now wants us to think is outside of Basgiath’s wards) and was subjected to a magical effect not unlike a venin’s draining effect, he was able to manifest as a new venin.

This is not a perfect solution. It would require extensive rewrites to properly earn both the twist and all of the emotional impact that this betrayal by Brennan would demand. Still, even as a cut-and-paste replacement, swapping Brennan for Jack would be a vastly superior option. We would be taking a character without motive and a plot device without character and merge them into a functional entity.

PLOT

Great Job, Heroes!

Yarros makes a big deal about how Basgiath is undefended. Violet and her companions are effectively able to subjugate Navarre without resistance. They use the fact that it is undefended to argue that there is danger here.

All this really accomplishes is confirming that everything bad that follows is Violet’s fault. Melgren saw the future, saw that Basgiath was safe, and those reallocated forces to where they were needed. Then Violet, operating with full awareness of how Melgren’s powers worked, exercised her agency to ensure that Melgren was wrong.

Secret Doors

The wardstone access is hidden behind a secret door … in a dead end … at the bottom of a staircase.

At the base of the stairwell is … nothing. Just a circular room paved with the foundation stones.

This secret door is not locked and can be accessed by pushing a stone on the wall, which Dain identifies on his own with ease. The only guards are two men who are inside the secret door. Much like with the guards on the sublevel vault in the Archives, this means that either the guards are cycling into and out of the secret door, thereby exposing that it is a secret door, or else they have another access point, in which case the secret door is a pointless and gaping hole in the security.

Come to think of it, this secret door is even worse than the one in the Archives. For all of the problems caused by hiding the secret door in a classroom, at least the classroom itself is not suspicious. Yes, someone should have noticed the guards coming nd going, and the secret door could easily be discovered by a bored scribe browsing the shelves, but nothing about the classroom itself demands investigation. A stairway leading into a dead end, by contrast, is suspicious, and it does demand investigation. Anyone who walks down this staircase and seeing a dead end is going to assume that there is a secret door here. This isn’t some back stairwell, either - it’s “the spiral staircase” inside the “northwest turret” of the college. This is the main thoroughfare within a prominent feature of Basgiath. It would be incredibly illogical for a staircase like that to just descend to a dead end (not even a storage room or utility space, just a dead end). A secret door is the most likely explanation.

Yarros has the audacity to push this as intelligent security.

“Wouldn’t you find it suspicious if guards were stationed at the bottom of an empty stairwell?” [General Sorrengail] challenges. “Sometimes the best defense is a simple camouflage.”

Simple camouflage requires … you know … actually blending in. Not to mention that simple camouflage is no match for layered defenses so formidable that they discourage anyone from trying to get in. A massive, locked door guarded by dragons would have been the superior option here.

In fact, if camouflage was the goal, the better option would have been to seal off any and all tunnels. The wardstone chamber is open to the sky; if that became the only access point, then the a dedicated squad of dragons and riders could easily protect the wardstone from anyone trying to approach that entrance. The worst-case scenario is that someone spots these dragons hanging around the opening in the ground and questions what they are doing, but that’s no more suspicious that regular rotations of guards disappearing down and reappearing from a staircase that goes to a dead end.

The Lure of Lures

As hinted back in Chapter 29, there is this very weird, quickly abandoned plot threat in Chapter 60 (which continues into Chapter 61) about how Jack and his fellow venin planted lures all around Basgiath to lead the wyverns to Basgiath. Xaden makes this quip about how the venin will need to read a map to find Basgiath, and Jack begins bragging about lures. Background characters need to destroy the lures before the climax starts.

All I could think of was the fact that Navarre is circular, with Basgiath at the center. This is common knowledge. Even if it weren’t, there are probably maps in Poromiel that the venin were able to acquire and study in preparation for this attack. Even if that weren’t true, the events on the Cliffs of Dralor indicate that a hatching ground can be detected from multiple hours’ flight time away.. If the wyverns simply fly in the correct generation direction, they’ll detect the magic and be able to home in on Basgiath on their own.

This is one of those strange moments where it seems like Yarros may have actually written multiple drafts and then rammed them together with sloppy editing. I get the feeling that destroying the lures was a much bigger deal in a prior draft.

Undermined by Fourth Wing

During the Battle Brief scene, Yarros destroys the stakes for this climax by giving us math to work with.

How long did Resson last? One [hour]? And there were ten riders and several fliers against four venin.

Violet neglects to mention the “dozens and dozens” of wyvern, including “more wyvern than dragons exiting the valley to the south” (at a point when there were nine dragon still alive) and the “forty” that Xaden personally restrained when he activate he god mode. Let’s be generous and assume that there were only 50 at Resson.

So, a thousand wyverns is a factor of 20. That’s overwhelming, right?

Except … wait …

• Discounting the fliers (who contributed nothing to that battle anyway), Violet’s team had only two casualties.

• The defection to Aretia took half of Basgiath’s bonded dragons - which means the other half, about a hundred bonded dragons, are still there. Factoring in unbonded dragons (given the number of unbounded dragons the defected, we have precedent to assume that there is at least one unbonded, adult dragon for every bonded dragon), they probably have more than 20 times the dragons that were present at Resson. That’s before we count all the bonded dragons who came back with Violet.

• Xaden is present, and he still has his god-mode Signet

• Violet is more powerful and skilled with her own god-mode Signet than she was last time.

• General Sorrengail also has a god-mode Signet.

• The fliers are all armed with explosive crossbows, so now they are a credible threat to the wyvern and the venin.

• Everyone from Aretia should have access to runes.

• They now know from the start that killing venin kills all connected wyverns, rather than needing to waste time experimenting to discover that.

• Melgren is on the way with reinforcements.

It honestly sounds like Basgiath is in great shape. In Chapter 61, Yarros tries to retcon Xaden’s god mode moment, dismiss his power as him nearly burning out while exploiting advantageous terrain, but that’s just one variable dealt with. What’s left is still enough to balance out even the ridiculously scaled-up enemy army.

Now, obviously, military engagements are not simple numbers games. However, Yarros is the one who decided to make it a simple numbers game to drive up the stakes. When the math favors the protagonists, and when they have so many other variables in their favor, it really undermines the credibility of the antagonists to do any meaningful damage.

Your Powers Are Useless … and So Are Theirs

As touched upon in the Story, the riders decide to leave the fliers behind when they rush to Basgiath. This is primarily done because dragons can cover long distances more quickly than gryphons can. Fair enough. However, Violet makes sure to point out that the fliers won’t be able to channel magic if they go to Basgiath, making them vulnerable to the venin.

Shouldn’t the venin also be powerless? Is that not the point of the wards?

If the venin have powers, that means the wards have fallen, so shouldn’t the fliers also have magic?

Is Yarros admitting here that runes made by fliers won’t work inside the wards? Then why did she explicitly say before that Navarre was worried about fliers getting access to runes? (Yes, we’ve already covered that the secrecy of runes in nonsense. I’m mainly calling attention to Yarros contradicting herself.)

What makes this all the more strange is that the fliers show up at the end of Chapter 60 anyway. Given how much time elapsed, they would have had to depart while the wards were still up:

• Chapter 59 reiterates that it takes a dragon 18 hours to flight from Aretia to Basgiath.

• In Chapter 60, they are given no more than 10 hours between when the wardstone is destroyed and when the wyverns will arrive.

Why did Yarros bother writing that the fliers need to stay behind if she was just going to have them set out before they knew they were needed? Why not just say the fliers lagged behind because the gryphons couldn’t keep up with the dragons?

Also, a flier lends Violet a crossbow with maorsite arrows before she departs for Basgiath. This is fine as a means to explain why Violet has this weapon, but given that the fliers catch up anyway, it’s more than a little strange that this handoff couldn’t wait until Chapter 60 or later.

He Just Told You That He Can’t Do It

One of the balls that is going to get juggled during the climax is Brennan repairing the wardstone … which he can’t do.

I grab onto Brennan’s arms, and a spark of hope lights within my chest. “Have you ever encountered something you can’t mend?

“Magic,” he answers. “I can’t mend a relic or anything. Probably not a rune, either.”

If he can do it we’ll just have to hold on long enough to Codagh to arrive.

“What about a wardstone?”

Brennan’s eyebrows shoot up, and I glance past him to Rhiannon. “We have to guard the chamber, at least let him try.”

Violet, the “rational woman” chosen by Tairn for her “intelligence”, is explicitly told that Brennan cannot fix magical things. The wardstone is magical. He also doesn’t think he can repair a rune. The wardstone is covered in runes.

I’m sure Yarros meant this to show Violet finding inspiration in a darkest hour, but she just makes Violet look like a dumbass.

… she’s right, of course, but that’s because this story revolves around her. She could spontaenously decide that she can shoot a lasers from her eyes, and she would be right.

CHARACTER

Violet and Xaden

Yarros makes clear that, despite having mere hours before the venin arrive, Violet and Xaden expended precious energy and limited sleep time to have sex again. She also has them engaging in foreplay, getting so far as Xaden starting to use his fingers when they get interrupted.

I know that sex being triggered as a survival instinct after a near-death experience (the “Thank God we’re alive” sex) is a trope, but Xaden, at least, should be level-headed enough to realize that this is neither the time nor the place.

Violet and Andarna

Andarna’s Presence in the Climax (Heavy Spoilers)

A lot of time is wasted in Andarna being a petulant teenager who goes where she thinks she’s needed and on Violet accommodating her.

Having read to the end of this book, I know Andarna needs to be here for the rainbow dragon twist to take place (well, really, it’s the opposite, but let’s run with what Yarros wants us to think here). I can also rationalize Andarna wanting to be here, as she knows her destiny (yes, that’s how it is presented later) and thus would realize that she needs to be at Basgiath is the wardstone is in danger. The problem is that she does not explain any of this to Violet … and yet Violet agrees to let her come.

Violet agrees to let the adolescent, whose only combat experience is a one-on-one duel that she survived through sheer nonsense, come to a battle.

Violet agrees to let the disabled adolescent comes to a war zone.

Why?

… inclusion, I guess. At the risk of death to said disabled adolescent and anyone tasked with protecting her.

I’ll spare you to Elon quote this time. You all get the idea.

No Self-Awareness

Andarna needs to be carried back to Basgiath in the harness on the front of Tairn’s saddle. She is not thrilled about this. Violet mollfies her with this line.

“I get it. You don’t want to be carried. Sometimes I don’t want to fly in a saddle, but it’s what I need in order to ride. It’s your choice. You can come in the harness, or you can stay behind.”

The unmitigated gall of this entitled bitch.

She is getting handicap that no one else gets, which spares her from the consequences of her own decisions, which allows her to fulfill a role that she has not earned, which grants her benefits far in excess of those the riders without the handicap receive … and she talks about it as though the only matter worth considering is self-image.

People are dead because they don’t get saddles. Violet would be dead many times over because of this saddle. What’s more, she continues to milk perks from it time and again. In Chapter 61, for example, we get this (potentially life-saving) convenience.

Settling into the saddle, I buckle the strap across my thighs and check to be sure the quiver Maren gave me is securely fastened to the left side of the saddle, within easy reach. I don’t want to risk my shoulder slipping out by strapping it to my back.

To go back to what we covered back in Fourth Wing, Yarros did not think through how Violet’s disability actually interacts with her premise or her world. If this were, say, a scenario wherein a middle-aged Coloradoan housewife had to persuade one of her children to use crutches or a wheelchair, citing her own disability as a example of how sometimes people need to accept such things in their day to day life, fair enough. This would have been a sweet and sincere moment in that circumstance. However, Yarros herself has told us that this isn’t the luxurious environment of Midwest America. She’s told us that this is a war-ravaged fantasy setting where the culture is supposedly molded by the principle of Survival of the Fittest, which itself is necessary to oppose the existential threat of life-draining abominations. We are not talking about basic conveniences to make day-to-day life manageable for the disabled; we are talking life-or-death scenarios that Violet is allowed to avoid because she would otherwise be a massive liability (or, you know, dead hundreds of times over). That she should talk about her special privileges as if accepting them is somehow virtuous, after all the people we’ve seen die because they were denied those same privileges, is tone-deaf at best and appalling entitlement at worst.

Violet and Her PTSD

As Violet is going down to the wardstone chamber, there is a small moment that I rather like.

Mom leads us down the hallway and into the northwest turret, then descends the spiral staircase that reminds me so much of its southern counterpart that my breath catches at the scent of earth.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I hear the sound in my mind as clearly as if it were real, as if I were back in the interrogation chamber. Xaden’s hand takes mine, lacing his fingers through my own.

“You all right?” he asks, shadows wrapping around our joined hands, their touch as soft as velvet.

For a second, I debate playing it off, but I was the one who demanded full disclosure, so it only seems fair that I give it. “It smells like the interrogation chamber.”

Yarros has actually managed to acknowledge consequences for Violet here. She suffered a traumatic experience, and now PTSD is being triggered by sensory details. As payoffs go, it’s pretty basic, but it’s something.

Now, if only the “full disclosure” bit wasn’t undermined by the secrets Violet has already chosen to keep for self-righteous reasons and will keep shortly for more self-righteous reasons …

Nolon

Nolon is present at Basgiath when Violet and her cohort arrives. I’m not sure how much sense this makes, given that the riders reassign teachers to the front all the time and that a mender would be really useful at Samara is the venin do break through, but maybe he’s here to keep Jack on leash (though that again begs the question of why Jack would ever be trusted to roam free if he needs constant supervision).

What bothers me is the narrative purpose of him being here - that is to say, why Yarros has him appear on the page at this point in the narrative.

• He’s not here to deal with Jack. His contribution in the venin twist is to give Violet an excuse to deduce that the serum was made to control Jack, but given the other lies Yarros tells, that is unnecessary.

• He’s not here to repair the wardstone. Sole responsibility for that task is handed off to Brennan.

• He’s not here to heal any characters. In Chapter 62, Violet needs to bring a wounded rider to a mender, and she goes to Brennan, despite the fact that he is currently exhausting himself fixing the wardstone.

No, I suspect the entire reason that Nolon is here is so that Yarros could do this:

My shoulders dip in relief, but I keep my power at the ready as we climb the steps into the administration building, swallowing the knot of apprehension in my throat as we approach Nolon.

“Violet -” he starts.

Just the sound of his voice makes bile rise in my throat.

“Stay the fuck away from Violet, and I’ll consider letting you live, if only to mend riders if there’s a battle coming,” Xaden warns the mender as we pass him near the entryway.

This is oddly similar to the unrelenting vitriol aimed at Dain, isn’t it?

Had Dain not been so mercilessly, psychotically abused for this entire book, I might not find this worth commenting upon. Violet actually has a legitimate reason to be upset with Nolon. As it is, because Yarros would not let up on Dain, I feel like my reaction note from my first reading sums up my feelings quite nicely.

Does Yarros have a fetish for shaming men who disappoint her?

WORLDBUILDING

Most of the problems incurred in these chapters were already covered by the Jack twist. However, there is one line Jack says I want to highlight because it calls attention to an unresolved issue.

“They’re faster than you think they are. He’s coming with a horde of greens. They all are.”

We still have zero information as to what the different colors of wyvern (technically, the different colors of fire that they breathe) actually mean.

PROSE

A running detail that I have not been commenting upon is that Violet refers to the inner reaches of her mind as her “Archives”. She visualizes the act of shielding her mind or opening it, channeling power form her dragons or cutting that power off, as closing or opening doors. This is functional and true to her character.

However, Yarros did not think through the lexical ambiguities that would result when the physical location that is the Archives could also potentially be referenced, such as when Violet arrives at the Basgiath campus and throwing her weight around.

Officers stand in stunned silence against the walls, staring at me with blatant shock, and I open the Archives doors just a crack to fill my body with enough energy to wield just in case one of them decides to make a move.

It reads as though she drew magical powers from the physical Archives, doesn't it?

DOWN IN FLAMES

We are nearly to the end - but the absolute worst is yet to come.

Chapters 61 through 64 comprise the core of this book’s climax. They detail the battle against the wyvern horde. Amidst the sound and fury (which signify nothing), Yarros tries to ram home multiple payoffs that she didn't earn, executes another ass-pull plot twist that she then tries to gaslight the audience into accepting, and then finally pays off the General Sorrengail redemption in a manner that has me convinced that it was also an ass-pull. Top it all off, she sinks to new lows of lazy writing to set up the cliffhanger ending of the book.

These are the chapters that finally convinced me that this book deserved a 1/10. I was honestly hovering at a 2/10 up to this point. However, after beholding the tangled disasters of these four chapters, I finally accepted that this was too generous. Yarros has had plenty of chances to make a genuine effort and write something worthwhile. This climax confirms that she no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt, at least so far as quality of writing is concerned.

It's coming in hot on August 30th. I hope to see you all then. Have a good week.