Iron Flame (Chapter 60 Addendum)
Merry Christmas to all.
Over the weekend, the always insightful KrimsonRogue posted his review to Iron Flame. He identified flaws and praiseworthy points that I’d missed, provided a different point of view on things I did catch, and consulted with people with EDS regarding how Violet’s condition was handled in the text. I highly recommend that you watch (or at least listen to) all six hours of his analysis for yourself.
In the course of this video, Krimson identified a key detail that I had missed while analyzing the twist in Chapter 60. It’s the sort of detail that would normally be understandable for a reviewer to skim over or forget. However, I chose to present this detail (or, to be more precise, the absence of this detail) as critical piece of evidence for my conclusions regarding both the quality of the twist and of Yarros’s personal character. I do not have the leeway to ignore this. I was wrong.
I don’t liking making substantial edits (anything more that minor proofreading corrections) to posts after they publish. It feels dishonest, like I’m burying the mistake rather than accepting accountability for it. Therefore, rather than change the analysis for Chapter 60 of Iron Flame, we will explore my mistake here. This will include both identifying the mistake in question and further research and elaboration to ensure that I get it right this time. We will also be revisiting the aforementioned conclusions to see how they are impacted by this correction.
Let’s get into it.
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 entirety of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, but not Onyx Storm (which does not release for another four weeks). I will also assume that you have read the Iron Flame review, and thus will be familiar with both my analysis of the twist from Chapter 60 of that book as well as my thoughts on Yarros as presented in the review series retrospective. None of these spoilers will be marked.
For those who haven’t read any or all of the above and don't care about spoilers, don't worry. I will be provided adequate recaps and references to ensure that you'll be able to understand this post.
WHERE I WAS WRONG
The Mistake
In Chapter 60 of Iron Flame, Yarros tried to explain the Jack twist to the audience. Here is how I opened the analysis of that 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.
The “brand new information that is not supported by the text in any way” was this quote from the book.
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…
To which I said:
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.
My failure was that I took the “bloodshot” bit too literally. I only searched for references to “blood” in connection to Jack’s eyes. However, Yarros did, in fact, establish that Jack’s eyes had adopted the reddish ring seen in venin initiates. From Chapter 23 of Fourth Wing, in the fight between Violet and Jack:
His sadistic grin and a red rim around his eyes are all I can see as he forces more and more power into my body, but his hands are occupied and he’s too obsessed with his victory to hear that I’ve stopped screaming, to see that I’m moving.
That bit about a “red rim around his eyes” links to the epigraph of Chapter 46 of Iron Flame.
Initiates have reddish rings to their eyes that come and go depending on how often they drain.
I can (and shortly will) criticize Yarros for lazy setup that gets buried in the noise of her bloated monstrosity of a book. However, to say that her setup was a lie was objectively wrong. I looked at this very section for text while explaining the plot hole opened by changing the pain projection Signet into a venin power. I don’t have any excuse for missing this.
Thorough Correction
Before I explain how this impacts my conclusions about the Jack twist and about Yarros, I want to be absolutely certain I have things right this time. Therefore, I have combed through both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame and extracted every passage I could find that referenced Jack’s eyes in any way prior to the explanation of the venin twist.
Fourth Wing
From Chapter 2, when Violet faces Jack down at the end of the Parapet:
Spinning, I rip a dagger from its sheath at my ribs just as Jack skids to a halt above me on the parapet, his breath choppy and his face ruddy. Murder is etched in his narrowed, glacial blue eyes as he glares down at me…and where the tip of my dagger now indents the fabric of his breeches—against his balls.
…
“Will you?” Jack vibrates with rage, his thick blond brows slashing down over arctic blue eyes, every line of his monstrous frame leaning my way. But he doesn’t take another step.
…
“And if I decide to snap her neck the second I step down?” Jack growls, and the look in his eyes says he’ll do it.
From Chapter 5, when Violet embarrasses Jack in Battle Brief:
A little bubble of confidence rises in my chest, which is promptly popped by Jack’s glare, telling me he hasn’t forgotten his promise to kill me.
From Chapter 8, in the scene where Kaori describes the available dragons to the cadets and Tairn is brought up:
“No, jackass,” Jack scoffs, his icy-blue gaze narrowing on the cadet. “Dragons only talk to their bonded riders, just like they only give their full name to their bonded rider. You should know that by now.”
…
“I bet he powers one hell of a signet. How do you approach him?” Jack asks, leaning forward in his seat. There’s pure avarice in his eyes, mirrored by his friend next to him.
…
“But just for curiosity’s sake.” Jack’s glacial-blue gaze doesn’t stray from the illusion of the unbonded black dragon still being projected. “What signet ability would this guy gift his rider?”
From Chapter 16, and Jack and Violet are being patched up at the flight field medical station after Threshing:
Jack hasn’t quit staring at Tairn across the field.
…
I look Jack straight in those evil eyes and smile. I’m done being scared of him. He ran back in that meadow.
…
Jack stares at me in disbelief. “You?”
“Me.” The throbbing in my ankle is down to a manageable, dull ache, even standing on it.
He shakes his head, and the look in his eyes transforms from shock, to envy, to fear as he pivots toward the professor. “I don’t know what she told you about what happened out there —”
From Chapter 18, as Violet talks to Jesinia about how she’s been doing in the Riders Quadrant:
“I’m really all right,” I promise her, leaving out the times I’ve caught Oren gripping a dagger in my presence or the way Jack seethes in my direction. “How about you? Is it everything you wanted?”
From Chapter 22, when we get the orange allergy setup:
“Simmer down, Mairi. I’m not going to attack your little charge. Not when I can just challenge her in a couple of weeks and accidentally snap her scrawny neck in front of an audience.” Jack folds his arms across his chest and watches me struggle with pure pleasure. “Tell me, though, you are getting tired of playing the nursemaid, aren’t you?” His friend from First Wing offers him something—a slice of the orange he’s eating—and Jack shoves his hand away at the wrist. “Get that noxious shit away from me. Do you want me to end up in the infirmary?”
…
I manage one breath, then two as Jack’s gaze rises from me to someone standing behind me. That look on his face, half envy, half shitting himself, means it has to be Xaden.
…
“We could just settle this now,” Jack says, sidestepping Liam to look me in the eyes. “If you’re done hiding behind the big, strong men.”
…
Jack flushes, his eyes nearly bugging out of his face.
Now Chapter 23, at the match between Jack and Violet:
Jack bounces like a kid who’s just been given a gift. “Anything she can hold in those puny hands of hers.” The look in his eyes sends a shiver of apprehension down my spine.
…
His sadistic grin and a red rim around his eyes are all I can see as he forces more and more power into my body, but his hands are occupied and he’s too obsessed with his victory to hear that I’ve stopped screaming, to see that I’m moving.
…
His eyes fly impossibly wide, and he drops his hands, clutching his own neck as his airway closes.
From Chapter 28, prior to War Games:
My stomach bottoms out. First Wing. Go figure they’d be our first opponent. 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 had 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 blue depths of his eyes.
Iron Flame
From Chapter 25, when Markham reintroduces Jack:
Glacial blue eyes meet mine. Any doubt I had dies a swift death. It’s him. My pounding heart jumps into my throat.
From Chapter 26, continuing the same scene:
A small, almost soft smile curves his mouth for an instant, and we fall silent as he nods at me then looks away quickly before he takes his seat.
…
“I have no idea.” It’s the first time since Parapet he’s looked at me with anything but pure malice.
From Chapter 31, when he saves Violet:
Blond hair and icy-blue eyes appear above me, and my heart plummets with the assassin’s body. Jack Barlowe.
…
“Look.” Jack shakes his head and peers over at Eya’s lifeless form. “I was on the dorm’s watch for First Wing and ran when I heard the screams. And…well…riders don’t die at the hands of infantry.”
From Chapter 59, when Jack is moments from destroying the wardstone:
“What I promised,” he answers, glee shining in his eyes.
From Chapter 60, as the explanation kicks off and Yarros presents the line that is the reason we have here today:
“There is no choice!” Jack shouts. “And if there was, I made mine the second I saw her” — he shoots a glare my way — “bond the most powerful dragon available at Threshing. Why should they determine our potential when we’re capable of reaching for fate all on our own?”
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…
Summary
By my count, Jacks eyes were referenced, either directly or indirectly, in thirteen scenes (a total of twenty-six times) across the entire series prior to the statement that “his eyes have been bloodshot for so long”. Yarros insists that he was a venin as of Chapter 23 of Fourth Wing, and she did include the line about a red rim in his eyes, so we only need to consider all the times she referenced his eyes from Chapter 24 onward.
That leaves six scenes (including five scenes in Iron Flame) where Yarros could have slipped in another mention of Jack’s eyes being bloodshot, indicated that they had a red rim to them, or in any other way utilized this detail that she insists justifies this twist.
She used none of them. She didn’t even describe his eyes as being bloodshot in the scene where Violet declares that “his eyes have been bloodshot for so long”. With how the scene is described, this reads like another of Violet’s irrational leaps in logic based upon no substantial evidence.
IMPACT ON MY CONCLUSIONS
I made an objectively incorrect statement when I stated that Yarros’s claim about Jack’s bloodshot eyes was an “outright lie” (to use my phrasing from the retrospective). I was wrong. I should have been more thorough in efforts to confirm whether this information was indeed in the text. To my readers, you have my most sincere apologies.
Unfortunately … that is the extent of the apology I can give.
I sincerely wish I could say that my being wrong on this point changes things. The Jack twist came so close to working. I also don’t enjoy stigmatizing Yarros as a compulsive liar with zero respect for the intelligence of her readers.
The simple fact of the matter is that this one detail does not affect the big picture. It barely affects the interpretation of the Jack twist. As for my interpretation of Yarros herself, this detail is not the entire basis for my belief that she is a dishonest person. It is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The Twist
The fact that Jack’s eyes were indeed bloodshot in some capacity in one scene does not close any of the plot holes that we previously discussed. As most, it shows how lazy Yarros is with her setups. We are meant to accept the twist on the basis of a single phrase of seven words buried in the noise of a scene in a previous book, linking it to exposition she plugged into the epigraph of a chapter where said exposition wasn't even relevant.
Something we’ll be getting into as the Goblet of Fire comparison series continues is that Yarros foreshadows things in such a manner as to minimize impact on the scene in which the foreshadowing appears. It feels like she doesn't care about making information memorable or tying it into the narrative; it’s like she just throws it on the page so that she can claim it is technically there before sweeps it under the rug and goes back to the immediate events she actually wants to write about. It’s as if she views foreshadowing as an obstacle and an obligation, rather than a meaningful aspect of her narrative.
What Yarros could have done - should have done - was reference Jack’s eyes being red at multiple points, most of which should have been in Iron Flame. This should have been a detail that, if not focused upon, could at least have been reinforced so that the audience could pick up on it as something important. This is something Yarros did successfully to set up the luminary. She didn’t mention it in one scene and then not bring it up again until Violet went to get it from Teclis; she had it brought up several times, in natural ways, so that we would have it firmly fixed in our minds when it finally became relevant.
Rowling Did This Better
As the Goblet of Fire analysis rolls onward in the new year, we’ll touch upon repetitive foreshadowing with regards to Rita Skeeter. Her appearances in beetle form get very little focus. However, because this is a repeated detail, keen-eyed audience members could pick up on it. When Hermione cracks the mystery, it feels earned, as we can remember all these moments for ourselves.
For a comparative example of foreshadowing done in earlier installments of a series, let's consider Snape's capabilities as a Legilimens. On two occasions prior to Order of the Phoenix, Harry comments in the narration that he feels like Snape can read minds. In Chapter 13 of Sorcerer’s Stone, we get this:
Harry didn’t know whether he was imagining it or not, but he seemed to keep running into Snape wherever he went. At times, he even wondered whether Snape was following him, trying to catch him on his own. Potions lessons were turning into a sort of weekly torture, Snape was so horrible to Harry. Could Snape possibly know they’d found out about the Sorcerer’s Stone? Harry didn’t see how he could — yet he sometimes had the horrible feeling that Snape could read minds.
Then, in Chapter 5 of Chamber of Secrets, we get this:
“Silence!” said Snape coldly. “What have you done with the car?”
Ron gulped. This wasn’t the first time Snape had given Harry the impression of being able to read minds. But a moment later, he understood, as Snape unrolled today’s issue of the Evening Prophet.
This was foreshadowing done years in advance, and it works because it is tied to Snape’s characterization. It is not just rammed into a scene so that Occlumency makes sense later. Rowling uses the information in a manner that fleshes out Snape in a memorable way. Audience members might not remember these specific lines when the reveal arrives, but because the idea was tied into Snape’s character, the reveal feels natural. Mind-reading magic exists, so of course the creepy guy whom Harry thought could read minds has access to it.
It is impossible to know for certain is Rowling always intended for Snape to literally read minds. Order of the Phoenix was published in 2003, while Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets were published in 1997 and 1998, respectively. That’s a lot of time for Rowling to change her mind about things or come up with new ideas that she needs to retcon into the text. There is every possibility that these lines about Snape being able to read minds were originally just meant to be figurative. However, what matters is that the finished product comes across as if it was always planned, despite the books being published so far apart that Rowling wouldn’t have had any power to change Stone or Chamber by the time she was working on Order. She put in the effort to convince us that it was pre-planned within the text itself.
What Yarros Probably Did
I still don’t think that Jack was a venin when Yarros wrote Fourth Wing.
At this point, the only point if evidence is a singular phrase buried in a place where it doesn't stand out. It has zero impact on the rest of the scene or anything else around Jack’s character in that book. It reads as if Yarros came up with Jack being a venin after the final edit of Fourth Wing was approved and simply asked to hop into the digital copy for two minutes before it went to the printers.
Yarros
If the bloodshot eyes claim was the only basis I had for calling Yarros a liar, I would happily retract my previous statements about her. As it is, this was merely my breaking point. If I had not snapped here, I would have when Yarros revealed that Andarna was a rainbow dragon, or when she virtue signaled about Xaden’s race while ignoring Rhiannon’s, or when I looked through her interviews and saw her conflicting statements about Romantasy versus Romance.
There is a mountain of evidence to attest to Yarros's fundamental dishonesty as a writer. I won't rehash all of it here; it’s all in the Iron Flame retrospective and the analysis of the Onyx Storm marketing materials. What I will reiterate here is that this mountain is beyond what can be rationalized by incompetence or inexperience alone. I’m still willing to give Yarros the benefit of the doubt about how her real life might relate to what’s reflected in her work, but that’s the only leeway I can give.
I was wrong to accuse Yarros of outright lying in this one specific detail. I am sorry for that.
However, honesty in a moment of minimal effort does not counterbalance an avalanche of gaslighting and deliberate deception.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’d like to be able to say that I’m not going to miss any other details in future book reviews. Unfortunately, that is not a promise I can reasonably make. I simply can’t guarantee that I won’t forget something.
Those of you following the comparative analysis of Goblet of Fire will no doubt notice a few details that I didn’t bring up in the Fourth Wing review. The same goes for those of you who watch Krimson’s Iron Flame review (or, for that matter, his Fourth Wing review). Some of these discrepancies are a simple matter of what I felt was relevant to mention, but others were things I genuinely forgot.
Still, I will do my best to be more careful about combing back through the text to confirm whether elements were previously established, at least if I intend to utilize those elements as part of an analysis or to speculate about why Yarros wrote things a certain way. The e-book makes this sort of research very easy. It's just a matter of taking time to check enough keywords.
In any case, I hope you all will give me another chance when Onyx Storm rolls around. The prelude for that is still due on March 28th, and we’ll go biweekly from there.
Thank you all for your continued patience. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.
