Iron Flame (Chapter 61 to Chapter 64)
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
The wyvern horde arrives at Basgiath, and the battle commences. What follows are two chapters worth of nonsensical spectacle, interconnected moments that are meant to be cool but lack any deeper meaning or substance, which stitched together with moments that are meant to pay off characters Yarros has already killed, buried, unearthed, violated, and put back into the ground.
At the non-cliffhanger between Chapter 62 and Chapter 63, Andarna kills a venin that was gunning for Violet, revealing in the process that she can change the color of her scales. Violet and Xaden are then summoned to a meeting of the senior officers - Melgren has arrived. Before Violet goes to him, we get Jesinia (who flew to Basgiath with the others in Chapter 60 to finish translating the journals during the battle, rather than translating them in Aretia and arriving at this point) telling Violet that the wardstone needs the breaths of seven dragon breeds to activate. It is at this point that Violet realizes that Andarn is a rainbow dragon, but Yarros doesn’t try to gaslight us into accepting this ass-pull just yet. That comes in Chapter 64.
At the meeting, Melgren advocates for abandoning Basigath and the wardstone and pulling back into the Vale. Violet insists that the wardstone can be restored and resorts to screaming at General Sorrengail for being a bad mother to get her way. General Sorrengail actually caves into this, despite simultaneously saying that the tactical situation does not support this plan. As Violet departs for the wardstone chamber, Xaden tells her that he will go fight the Sage, the leader of the venin. They have prearranged a duel between them (somehow, for some reason).
Violet goes to the wardstone chamber. Here is where Yarros tries to gaslight us into believing that the ass-pull of Andarna being a rainbow dragon makes sense, as Violet discusses how she figured out the twist with Andarna. Violet then tries to sacrfice her life to imbue the wardstone with enough magic to be activated. However, General Sorrengail stops her, sacrificing her own life instead. Andarna and the other representative dragons reactivate the wardstone, ending the battle.
BATTLE
While the battle is two chapters of meaningless spectacle, I don’t think that is a problem with a battle itself. Yarros did try to give it something resembling substance. If those aforementioned failed character payoffs in Chapters 61 and 62 had worked, I think they would have made the battle worthwhile. What’s more, at least this battle was built towards and earned through the looming existential threat of the venin and the wardstone subplot as a whole. It wasn’t just slammed in at the last second to generate some excitement at the end of the story.
Most of the other problems I could name with the battle are also not problems with the actual battle. We’ve already covered the issues with the maorsite and the fact that Yarros wants us to care about wyvern colors despite not explaining what the colors mean; we’ll touch upon venin rankings and the issue with Andarna killing a venin in a moment. Yarros not respecting physics that she previously exploited is an ongoing issue, as is the use of wonky prose that makes me wonder if she understands the meaning of certain words.
Overall, I think that if Yarros had done some proper setups and polished her writing more, this battle could have been incredibly satisfying.
WORLDBUILDING
Much like with Xaden being an inntinnsic, I think we need to cover these issues first to really explain why the two ass-pull twists of these chapters are indeed ass-pulls.
Plot Armor Failure
If anyone still believes that Yarros gives the tiniest of fucks about writing a coherent fantasy narrative and or that she respects her audience’s ability to notice basic details, then let this passage liberate you from that illusion.
I slip the conduit’s bracelet from my wrist, then wedge it between my thighs long enough to strip my flight jacket off and slide it under the strap of my saddle, leaving me six daggers short, but they’re in easy reach and the other two are the only ones the matter …
Why is this a problem?
Because Violet should have six daggers sheathed in her super-special suit of dragon scale body armor.
From Chapter 1 of Fourth Wing:
The combination of leather and a fabric I don’t recognize covers me from collarbone to just below my waist, wrapping over my breasts and crossing up and over my shoulders. I finger the hidden sheathes sewn diagonally along the ribcage.
From Chapter 25 of Fourth Wing:
“We can wield, right?” I stand, brushing my hands down my sides and the hilts of the six daggers sheathed there.
Violet is still wearing this armor. This was confirmed as late as Chapter 60 of Iron Flame.
Xaden kisses a path down my spine, hips lips brushing every inch of skin as he laces me into my armor over the cross-body wrap on my left shoulder that stabilizes the aching joint.
Violet has also not thrown a single dagger up to this point. Why, then, would removing her flight jacket deprive her of six daggers and only leave her two? Isn’t the flight jacket the garment that has two sheathes, given that it was mentioned somewhere previously that the venin-killing daggers won’t fit into the sheathes in her armor?
The long and short of this is, Yarros gives so few fucks for consistency that she will casually retcon one of the first things she ever established, a super special thing she handed to her self-insert Mary Sue to make said self-insert Mary Sue more super-special, at the drop of a hat. She thinks so little of the intelligence of her audience that she was bulldoze over basic facts that she has gone out of her way to set up.
Series-Wide Plot Failure
Remember how only the venin-killing alloy can … you know … kill venin? Remember that’s why the luminary was presented as such a big deal?
Remember how dragons can’t simply kill the venin on their own?
Not much focus has been put on the inability of dragons to kill venin. Yarros very succinctly and explicitly shut down that possiblity in Chapter 36 of Fourth Wing, when Tairn incinerates a building that a venin is in. Here is that passage again.
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.
Dragon fire does not work on venin - and that makes sense. After all, why would Navarre need to hide behind wards if dragon fire could kill venin?
And it’s not like a dragon’s teeth, claws, or tail could kill one, either. Not only is this never raised as an alternative to the venin-killing alloy (which implies that it is so obviously impossible that this dragon-based military won't even consider it), but by that logic, gryphons should also be able to kill venin with their claws and beaks. Poromiel would have never needed venin-killing alloy if magical creatures could just kill venin with brute force.
The refusal to just use brute force can’t be because dragons and gryphons want to avoid physical contact with the venin.
We only ever see venin do their ultimate death-wave move when they are touching the ground.
Venin pass up multiple chances to instant-kill dragons by touching them in both this book and the last one.
Dain even survives a few seconds of being drained by Jack while only suffering pain and survivable burns.
Living death machine should easily be able to shred multiple venin apiece without serious injury, even if the venin try to drain them while being torn apart.
Therefore, if Yarros gave even the slightest of fucks about consistency, if she had even a modicum of respect for the intelligence of her audience, she would not show us a dragon killing a venin with nothing but teeth and dragon fire, especially not if that dragon is smaller and weaker than Tairn.
…
So Yarros has Andarna kill a venin with teeth and dragon fire.
The dark wielder turns, but he isn’t fast enough.
Andarna lands directly in front of him, then opens her mouth and breathes fire down upon him, roasting the dark wielder before she snaps her jaws down and rips his head straught off his body.
I fall into the melting slush at the same time his corpse does, and she spits out the decapitated, smoking head, then huffs a hot breath of sulfur-laced steam.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Yes, Ms. Yarros. What. The. Actual. Fuck.
There is only one thing that could salvage this situation: Andarna is a rainbow dragon. Perhaps, by virtue of being the Chosen One, she alone can kill venin directly. Sure, that would be very hand-wavy, but it would preserve internal consistency.
…
So Yarros doubles down by making it clear that Andarna being a rainbow dragon has nothing to do with her ability to kill venin. Violet does not register Andarna killing the venin as anything remarkable. She is awed that her little dragon has unlocked fire breath and is amazed by the camouflaging power that Andarna used to sneak up on the venin. Then Tairn shows up, shows his approval for Andarna killing the venin, and expresses pride in her breathing fire, meaning that he also finds nothing strange about a dragon killing a venin.
Yarros wants us to accept this as the new norm . . . except it can’t be a new norm. The entire premise of this book, the entire foundation of Xaden’s smuggling operation, and very nature of this entire book series is only possible because, as Yarros has gone out of her way to point out, ONLY THE VENIN-KILLING ALLOY CAN KILL VENIN. All these conflicts can only exist because the living weapons of mass destruction cannot serve as a substitute for the alloy.
Yarros is now actively going out of her way to grind up the rubble of her dead series into powder.
Rainbow Dragons
Rainbow dragons are defined by their ability change the colors of their scales. This goes beyond merely changing color on a whim - it’s active camouflage that can, say, allow Andarna to disguise herself as a boulder to sneak up on a venin.
Andarna managed to use this to make everyone think she was a black dragon for months.
Yeah, I have to call bullshit on this as well.
As touched upon previously, Yarros added a few second-draft additions to “foreshadow” Andarna being able to camouflage. Only two of these moments came before Chapter 61, both of which were heavy-handed instances where Violet misunderstood what color Andarna was and wrote it of as a property of adolescence.
Do you know who was once an adolescent black dragon and should therefore notice that something odd is happening with Andarna in both instances?
Tairn.
What really exposes the bullshit is a moment in Chapter 61. This is the third time that Andarna’s camouflage is hinted at (before being revealed properly in Chapter 63). Violet is trying to tell Andarna to stay out of trouble - and Tairn is there with her. We then get this:
“Promise me you’ll stay hidden.”
“I can hide.” She backs up a step, and I blink… It’s almost as if she’s faded straight into the darkness.
“Benefits of being a black dragon,” Tairn chuffs. “We’re born for the night.”
Setting aside the fact that dragon scales shimmer, and thus a black dragon’s ability to blend into darkness would probably be worse than that of a freshly waxed black car … How is Tairn fooled by this? Are we really supposed to think that he finds nothing strange about Andarna vanishing after backing up one step?
Remember back in Fourth Wing, when Yarros took time to establish that black dragons are “the smartest and most discerning”?
Yarros hopes that you don’t.
Hatching Precisely When She Means To
In the Inheritance Cycle, dragons have the magical ability to control when they hatch. This is mentioned to be a natural adaptation that allows them to sense food shortages and thus avoid hatching until there are resources to support them. (There is the biological question of how they don’t starve to death while they wait, but this setting has established rules for life-force transference and has shown that the process can be a replacement for food, so it’s inferred that the unborn dragons could just be siphoning off magic from their environment.) Dragon eggs given to the Riders have a spell cast upon them that modifies this ability, keeping the unborn dragon dormant until their destined Rider touches the egg.
No such mechanism or magic has been established in The Empyrean, but Yarros chose to rip off this element anyway.
“I waited six hundred and fifty years to hatch. Waited until your eighteen summer, when I heard our elders talk about the weakling daughter of their general, the girl forecasted to become the head of the scribes, and I know. You would have the mind of a scribe and the heart of a rider. You would be mine.”
How did Andarna remain in the egg this long? Do all dragons time their hatchings? Did no dragon notice or care about this egg that was taking an absurd amount of time to hatch?
How is it possible that she heard the elders talking? Can all dragons eavesdrop on one another’s telepathic conversations, even while in the egg? Do the dragons not have any concern about waking up the babies at the wrong time by saying the wrong thing around the eggs?
What purpose did Andarna have for staying in her egg this long, instead of hatching, growing to adulthood, and then propagating her bloodline centuries ago? That would have been the far more prudent option to ensure that a rainbow dragon would be around in the future to reactivate the wards in an emergency (which is implied to be Andarna's reason for waiting).
This wouldn’t be a problem if Yarros had actually explored the dragons as a species and a culture and taken time to flesh out the rules for their eggs. She chose not to do this. As a result, when she rips off this element, it is less an explanation and more of a transparent attempt to add messianic overtones to the rainbow dragon twist.
Imbuing
An element that we haven’t touched on is that, between the first attempt to activate the Aretia wardstone in Chapter 39 and the second attempt in Chapter 56, said wardstone was imbued with magic by Violet, Dain, and Xaden over the course of many weeks The mechanics of this is never explained. However, given how many other elements this series lifts form the Inheritance Cycle, it seems reasonable to assume that Yarros is also copying the gemstone storage mechanic. A person pours a quantity of magical power into a vessel, and then that power can be extracted and harnessed.
This is fine. The idea that this is the pretext for a heroic sacrifice is also fine. What is not fine is that, despite treating this as a quantifiable thing, Yarros never actually explains quantities.
We have no real understanding of how much a person can safely channel or how that relates to the amount of power the wardstone needs. When Violet, Xaden, and Dain were imbuing power over all those weeks, were they pushing themselves to the brink of death? Were they doing the equivalent of filling an Olympic swimming pool by spitting in it once per day? Are these two extremes actually the same situation? We don’t know. It thus feels incredibly convenient that sacrificing one human life will immediately get the wardstone to fill charge.
But that's okay. A convenience is not a plot hole. Now, if it were a contradiction, that would be another mat -
My power feels so insignificant to a stone this size. It would take all of Tairn’s power—his very life—and I won’t give that. But I can give enough that the riders who make it can finish the job.
Violet tells us that one person burning out (or maybe it’s giving up her own life force -either way, the end product is the same) is “insignificant”.
And then General Sorrengail … takes her place … and burns out … and that allows the wardstone to activate.
General Sorrengail uses Sloane’s siphoning Signet to do this … so this same amount of energy is flowing through the body of someone with far less experience with, and thus tolerance for, channeling magic … and Sloane doesn't burn out … despite Tairn’s previous rider burning out when using his own siphoning Signet to channel too much energy.
Yeah, Yarros has zero fucks to give about consistency or the intelligence of her audience.
Types of Venin
Much like with the wyverns, Yarros has established different varieties of venin. While she has assigned values to these varieties, it is something that very much exists only in author notes. It has not had any bearing on the story.
Chapter 47 has a clump of these notes dumped into the epigraph.
Defeating a dark wielder begins with knowing where they rank in age and experience. Initiates have reddish rings to their eyes that come and go depending on how often they drain. Asims’ eyes fluctuate in degrees of red, and their veins distend when riled. Sages’—those responsible for initiates—eyes are permanently red, their veins perpetually distended toward their temples, expanding with age. Mavens—their generals—have never been captured for examination.
- Venin, A Compendium by Captain Drake Cordella, the Nightwing Drift
This information is not used or even referenced until Chapter 61, where the word “asim” is used for the second time in the book (the third time being a throwaway line).
The venin grabs a horn and holds on, his eerie, red-rimmed eyes never leaving mineduring the maneuver or the seconds after when we fall into a rapid descent, the wyvern’s weight pulling us downward. No spiderwebbed veins—he’s just an asim, and I can handle him.
I can believe that Violet knows the word “asim”, given that she could have read the document in the Chapter 47 epigraph, but we the audience have no context of how powerful the asims are, outside of them being below the Sages … and that’s a problem. The Sage that shows up for this battle is treated as the final boss. That means that the lower two ranks are the bulk of the venin forces. These lower ranks are the exthreat Yarros has used to drive the stakes, not the rare Sages. For Violet to so confidently dismiss an asim as a threat undermines the whole faction.
Don’t Talk to the Dragons
A rule that has existed throughout The Empyrean is that the only humans whom dragons will communicate with, or permit to talk to them, are their bonded riders (with exceptions being the mated binds and, judging by the fact Violet was not killed in Chapter 12 of Fourth Wing, Presentation).
I am convinced that this mechanic exists because Yarros does not perceive her dragons as characters. They are pets that occasionally serve a purpose in her narrative. Therefore, to reduce the number of dragons to whom she had to lend the facimile of characterization, she wrote the rules such that only the dragons that needed dialogue were the ones who accessorize her self-insert Mary Sue and the Bad Boy Love Interest.
I’m not against this. The purpose is artificial (and very lazy), but it is functional on execution. The rule is established and consistently applied, allowing it to fade into the background and exist as a natural part of the setting rather than calling attention to itself.
Then Yarros decided that she wanted Violet to break this rule for the sake of a dramatic moment, so she suddenly decided to call attention to it.
First, we get this in Chapter 62.
He lets loose a skull-shaking roar as the wyvern takes another snap at Sawyer, swinging his tail with no effect.
“Hurry, Vi!” Ridoc yells.
“Sliseag!” I shout, breaking the cardinal rule of all riders. “Let me help him!”
The red swivels its head toward me, pinning me with furious golden eyes, and I nod, praying to Dunne he understands, that he holds still, and then leap from the wyvern’s neck, my feet kicking for distance.
Note how Yarros not only makes a big deal out of this rule but also takes time to remind the audience that it is a rule. She is forcing us to notice the fact that this is important, rather than trusting us to remember it based on past setup.
We then get this in Chapter 63.
“I breathe fire.” She preens, flaring her wings.
“Did you just eat him?” Cat stands but keeps her distance.
“You do not speak to dragons you do not ride, human.” Andarna snaps her teeth in Cat’s direction.
Yarros really wants us to know this is critically important, despite not treating it as important for so long.
All of this is to milk emotion from this moment when Violet decides to talk to Melgren’s dragon, Codagh, confronting him about Andarna being a rainbow dragon.
I nod, then slip my hand from [Xaden’s] and pivot, facing down the biggest dragon on the Continent. “I need to talk to you.”
“Holy fuck, Violet.” Xaden turns, putting himself at my side as Codagh slowly lowers his head, tilting toward the end to glare at me with narrowed golden eyes, because even level, I won’t come past his nostrils. “You know what you’re doing?”
“If I don’t, we’re all dead.”
The artificiality of the rule against talking to dragons was fine. What Yarros has done to milk this particular moment is not fine. It is painfully forced. The hand of the author should not be this obvious.
PLOT
Ass-Pull 1 - Rainbow Dragons
Over the last few months, we have touched upon many of the contradictions and issues with the rainbow dragon twist. It could not be more clear that Yarros made this up at the last moment to justify Andarna’s continued involvement in the plot and then rammed in throwaway lines so that she could pretend the moment is earned. If you previously skipped my commentary on the subject in the reviews for Chapter 39 & Chapter 40, for Chapter 57 & Chapter 58, and for Chapter 59 & Chapter 60, I highly encourage going back and reading through those (the heavy spoilers they cover are no longer an issue). Now that the twist itself has arrived, I want to focus on Yarros gaslighting the audience and the damage she does to her world and … well, not characters … pets in the process.
Gaslighting
The gaslighting actually starts in Chapter 63, before the twist is even revealed. Violet has just seen Andarna ambush the venin, and Jesinia has just told her that “the six and the one” should actually be “the seven”.
But there aren’t seven breeds of dragon—
I stumble, catching myself with a hand along the stone wall, while my brain trips down the path that makes the only sense. Even if that path is ludicrous.
You see, dear readers? Andarna being a rainbow dragon is “the path that makes the only sense.” Yes, it is “ludicrous”, but it is the only rational answer, so can’t we just go with it?
The answer is “no.” The actual “path that makes the only sense” is that Jesinia flubbed the translation, that “the six and the one” really did refer to six dragon breeds and an additional X factor, and Violet’s eyes were playing tricks on her when she saw Andarna camouflage. That Andarna is a rainbow dragon only makes sense in that reality warps to ensure that any conclusion Violet jumps to is correct.
Chapter 64 properly reveals the twist, and it is where Yarros really gets into gaslighting the audience and parasitizing past elements of her story. The explanation is long enough that I don’t want to put in the whole thing at once. We’ll need to go through this line by line.
[Andarna] lands, sticking to the shadows the morning light doesn’t yet touch.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her golden eyes blink in the darkness. “Tell you what?”
“I know.” I shake my head at her. “I should have known earlier. The second I saw you after Resson, I knew something was different about the sheen of your scales, but I figured I’d never been around an adolescent, so what would I know?”
This almost works as an explanation to give new context to a past event. It’s just that Andarna’s adolescence as been a background detail. At most, it's been an excuse to keep her out of the story. There’s nothing here to recontexualize. As a result, when Yarros makes a big deal out of this, she only ends up exposing the fact that the moment in question was second-act “foreshadowing” that she inserted just so that she could change its context later. It likewise doesn't work as the payoff to the mystery, as the moment didn't leave any questions to be explored.
“Different.” She cocks her head to the side and steps out of the darkness, her scales shifting from midnight black to a shimmering deep purple. “That’s exactly how I’ve always felt.”
“It’s why you feel like you don’t fit in with the other adolescents,” I note, my hand shaking as I hold the power steady, giving the stone what I can until others arrive to help. “It’s why you were allowed to bond. Gods, you told me yourself, but I thought you were just being…”
“An adolescent?” she challenges, flaring her nostrils.
Nodding, I try to ignore the sounds of battle high above so I can concentrate on saving us, even as anger barrels down the bond from Tairn, and fury… I can’t think about what Xaden’s doing. “I should have listened when you said you were the head of your own den. That’s why no one could fight your Right of Benefaction last year. Why the Empyrean allowed a juvenile to bond.”
Andarna not getting along with adolescents was because she bonded to a rider and because she was prematurely forced through magical puberty. There is nothing to recontexualize and no mystery to solve.
The bit about Andarna being the leader of her own den directly contradicts established lore. Yarros has explained almost nothing about how dens works, but it is made clear that these are not the same things as colors, breeds, family lines, or whatever other term Yarros is using to name the different kinds of dragons without developing proper rules to distinguish between them. Tairn and Codagh - the only two established black dragons - are explicitly not part of the same den, as Andarna uses the fact that she is in Codagh’s den instead of Tairn's to talk back to Tairn. Andarna being a rainbow dragon should therefore have no bearing on her leading her own den.
I will save my comments of the Empyrean allowing her to bond for later.
“Say it. Don’t just guess,” she demands.
Even a slow breath won’t calm my racing heart. “Your scales aren’t really black.”
“No.” Even now, her scales are changing, taking on the grayish hue of the stone around us. “But he is, and I so badly want to be just like him.”
“Tairn.” It’s not hard to guess.
“He doesn’t know. Only the elders do.” She lowers her head, resting it on the ground in front of me. “They revere him. He is strong, and loyal, and fierce.”
“You are all those things, too.” I wobble under the strain of wielding but keep my balance, keep the power flowing into the stone. “You didn’t have to hide. You could have told me.”
Yarros here calls attention to Tairn not knowing. Maybe the rainbow dragon twist might have held up if Tairn was also in on the secret, as then he would be using his credibility as a black dragon to cover any oddities that Andarna expresses, but he’s supposed to be unware. As discussed up in Worldbuilding, it is not believable that Tairn would be fooled by this child playing dress-up for a period of several months.
“If you didn’t figure it out, you weren’t worthy of knowing.” She huffs. “I waited six hundred and fifty years to hatch. Waited until your eighteenth summer, when I heard our elders talk of the weakling daughter of their general, the girl forecasted to become the head of the scribes, and I knew. You would have the mind of a scribe and the heart of a rider. You would be mine.” She leans into my hand. “You are as unique as I am. We want the same things.”
“You couldn’t have known I would be a rider.”
“And yet, here we are.”
I find this act of parasitism particularly hilarious. Yarros is trying to pump life into this nonsense by feeding off the specialness of her own self-insert Mary Sue. Violet is perfect and flawless and special, so it is only natural that one of her dragons is a messiah figure, right?
A thousand questions go through my head, none of which we have the time for,
Translation: “I know that what I’ve written is such bullshit that I can't even begin to address all the holes it opens, so please stop asking questions just go with it.”
so I give her exactly what I wanted—to be seen for who and what she is.
Now Yarros is appealing to emotion. It’s a shame that, as covered since Fourth Wing, the slightest reflection on reality destroys this idea. Violet was not so eager to be seen for who and what she was when Dain pointed out that she needed help staying on Tairn.
“You are not a black dragon, or any of the six that we know of. You’re a seventh breed.”
“Yes.” Her eyes widen in excitement.
I suck in a quick, steadying breath. “I want you to tell me everything, but our friends are dying, so I need to ask if you are willing to breathe fire for the stone.” Sweat pops on my forehead as my temperature rises, and yet I pull more and more power, my arm trembling with the effort to keep it leashed, keep it trickling instead of striking.
“It is why I was left behind.” She cocks her head to the other side. “At least from what I remember. It has been centuries.”
Here, Yarros is parasitizing the plot as a whole, trying to make Andarna out to be a Chosen One. The wardstone needs to be activated with a rainbow dragon. Look, here is a rainbow dragons. Can't we just go with it?
This one might have worked, except for one problem: mere paragraphs ago, we were explicitly told that Andarna chose this moment to hatch and bond because Violet is a self-insert Mary Sue, not to save the wardstone. Given Andarna’s past ability to stop time and Violet’s prophecy dreams, it would have been easy to just say that Andarna could see the future or was acting on some prophecy. Instead, Yarros has told us that Andarna hatched because Violet is special and then immediately switched gears to Andarna hatching because the plot demanded it. I can’t tell if this is another lie or terrible editing.
Plus, I must ask again: why did Andarna not hatch earlier, grow to adulthood, and then breed potentially generations worth of rainbow dragons to safeguard the future of the wardstone?
The Empyrean
So … Codagh and the other elder dragons were the only ones who knew about Andarna.
They told no other dragons that their messiah had come, meaning that doom was upon them. Why did they not tell any other dragons? Why did they not tell Tairn and Sgaeyl, who were her foster parents?
Why does this mean that they would allow Andarna to bond? She didn’t need to be bonded to a rider for this to work. If she did, then there would be a historical reference to the previous rainbow dragon’s rider, or at least a reference to said rider in either of the two journals.
There is also the question of why rider leadership was not informed that their messiah had come. Yarros knows this is an issue. That’s why she has Violet talk to Codagh.
“If I don’t, we’re all dead.” And I’d better be quick, because Tairn is almost here.
I can feel him dismantling my shields. No rider can keep their dragon out for long if they want in.
Codagh’s nostrils flare, and his lip curls above very sharp, very long, very close teeth.
“You know.” It comes out like the accusation it is. “And you didn’t tell your rider because dragonkind protects dragonkind.”
Protect dragonkind from WHAT, Ms. Yarros? Are dragons in charge or not? Are they victims or not? Also, unlike with the juveniles and their pre-Signet power, you have not established a reason why anyone would want to engage in harmful exploitation of rainbow dragons. Why would the rider leadership not given every consideration and protection to the only dragon who can save them from impending doom?
Why She Lied to Us
Yarros usually lies to and gaslights the audience to force her plot in arbitrary directions. In this case, I suspect a different motive: Yarros is struggling to keep Andarna involved in the story.
That’s why Andarna spends Part One in the Dreamless Sleep. It’s why she has no involvement in Part Two until she is brought to Basgiath for no reason that makes sense within the narrative. Yarros could have written a story where Andarna mattered to events, or at least one where Andarna was an actually character - but that’s not the story she wanted to write. She wanted Violet to do things elsewhere, without Andarna. She chose to phase Andarna out, and now she is scrambling to recover.
In other words, Yarros rammed in this twist, further radiating the ground-up dust of her story, to justify the existence of a character whom she has no functional use for.
Of course, now that Andarna has activated the Basgiath wardstone, her relevance has once again been expended. I’m sure Yarros will either ass-pull something new for Andarna in Onyx Storm and/or make up an excuse for her to once again fade into the background.
Ass-Pull 2 - General Sorrengail’s Sacrifice
Here we reach the payoff to Yarros’s retcons of General Sorrengail’s character in order to force a redemption. It is not at all earned.
Now, given how much we have talked about this twist, it may not seem like an ass-pull. After all, we have brought in up in Chapter 2, Chapter 4, Chapter 8, Chapter 18, and Chapter 36 (plus any other minor references that I forgot to mention). Surely this is, at worst, the same as the twist of Jack being a venin, right? It was part of the plan but trips over continuity?
I did consider this, but there is a key difference between this twist and the Jack twist: the circumstances under which it occurs. The scenario in which the Jack twist is revealed is the destruction of the wardstone. Only two variables need to fall into place for this to happen, both of which Yarros addresses.
Melgren has to not see this coming. This is easily satisfied by Violet chosing evil and doing the one thing that would block Melgren’s vision.
Jack has to be able to get into the wardstone chamber. The heist in Chapters 32 through 34 firmly established that Yarros has no concept of how a military could best secure their secrets, and the security we see in Chapter 59 is just as terrible.
The Jack twist is awful, but at least the situation in which is occurs is not contrived. This is a scenario that builds on past precedent.
The situation in which General Sorrengail sacrifices herself is contrived. Ignoring for a moment all of the previously covered worldbuilding contradictions, this scenario requires three variables to work. One was rammed in as second-draft “foreshadowing”. The other two are further contradictions of not only the worldbuildimg but also of character.
Sloane had to have a siphoning Signet for this to work. This is a second-draft “foreshadowing” line that was tossed into Chapter 54 so casually that it is easily overlooked, and then referenced one other time in throwaway dialogue. The lack of relevance to anything else on the story betrays the utilitarian setup.
Violet had to conclude that killing herself with the logical course of action and would not set of a chain reaction of death through Tairn, Sgaeyl, and finally Xaden. Given that the risk of the chain reaction has previously been used to ramp up stakes and tension, this makes no sense. Violet firmly believes that this cannot be avoided. Yet now, for some reason, she thinks she can just tell Tairn that he needs to live on without her. Even if it were in-character for Violet to believe this, she must realize that her death would at least distract Tairn while he is in the middle of a battle (a fact that, as pointed out in the Chapter 62 epigraph, is commonly known to be a means to kill dragons), which would get him killed and trigger the chain reaction anyway.
There are multiple first-year riders present. They were guarding Brennan as he mended the wardstone. General Sorrengail - the cold-hearted bitch who is among the highest-ranking officers in the land - has to conclude that it is better to throw away her own life, the life of one of Navarre’s top military officers, than to tell Sloane to transfer power from multiple people into the wardstone, thereby ensuring that no one dies.
At best, Yarros wanted General Sorrengail to sacrifice herself, but couldn’t figure out a way to do it, so she made up this scenario on the spot. That makes this scene in particular the ass-pull.
What I believe to be the far more likely scenario is that the entire redemption was the ass-pull. Yarros made up a scenario where Violet demonstrates her virtue through attempted martyrdom, only to realize that she didn’t actually want her self-insert Mary Sue to die. General Sorrengail was a convenient sacrificial lamb. This would explain why the retcon of General Sorrengail’s character, along with the transformation of Colonel Aetos into a scapegoat, feels so jarring and inconsistent. Yarros originally wrote General Sorrengail consistently with Fourth Wing, only to double back and do second-draft “foreshadowing” to pretend this moment makes sense (without bothering to check every mention of General Sorrengail and change those moments to reflect the new characterization). It’s more effort than most of her twists yet, but it is still poor work.
Sophie’s Choice
Because Andarna is the only rainbow dragon left, only one wardstone can be salvaged. Either the wardstone at Basgiath can be reactivated, or the wardstone at Aretia can be reinforced. Chapter 64 features a brief moment where Violet dithers over which to save and asks Xaden which he would save if he could.
This is a really dumb conflict with no weight to it. Of course Violet is going to save Basgiath. The entirety of Navarre will be destroyed if she doesn't do this. Given the wyverns and venin currently swarming Basgiath, it’s quite possible that the few people whose lives (or, at least, opinions) she values will also die, either unable to escape Basgiath or else run down by the wyvern horde as they try to flee to Aretia. The wards at Aretia may be failing, but they are holding for now. There is time to save Navarre now and evacuate the people of Aretia later.
Also, this is the Aretia wardstone all over again. Violet is risking - actually, given the battle currently taking place, allowing - people to die so that she can look virtuous by considering Xaden’s feelings.
I Know Their Names
As Violet runs to the wardstone, we get this.
I run because I couldn’t save Liam, couldn’t save Soleil, but I can save the rest of them. I can save him. And if I give myself even a moment to linger on the possibilities of what he might be facing, I’ll turn around and run straight back to Xaden.
Taking the spiral steps at breakneck speed has me dizzy when I reach the bottom ofthe southwest tower, and I don’t waste my gasped breaths on our first-years standing guard at the doorway as I sprint through, into the tunnel that smells like Varrish and pain.
“Move!” I shout at Lynx and Baylor. Because I remember their names. Avalynn. Sloane. Aaric. Kai, the flier. I know all the first-years’ names.
This is meant to be a payoff to all of Violet’s whining about not wanting to feel bad about her fellow soldiers dying. It is pathetic. This was not earned. Violet did not grow. Nothing changed her mind. She learned nothing. She flipped from saying, “Oh, I want to shut people out because them dying makes me feel bad,” to, “I am doing this heroic deed to save all these people I totally care about!”
I’ll have more to say on this in Characters, particularly since it is tagged on to Liam’s death in Fourth Wing.
I Challenge You to a D-D-Duel!!!
Chapter 63 ends with Xaden announcing that he will go to duel the venin leader. This is what he is doing during Chapter 64 while Violet is reactivating the wardstone.
I am going to hold off on analyzing this until the next part. The cliffhanger ending of this book hinges on this ridiculous duel. It’s best to analyze everything all at once.
CHARACTERS
Unearthing Liam’s Corpse
Yarros tried to give substance to the spectacle of this battle by giving Violet a series of character moments with her squad:
Violet and her squad fly out to engage a trio of venin, and a full page is dedicated to describing how in-sync she is with her squad.
Rhiannon leaps onto Tairn’s back to help Violet fend off a venin who’d also jumped onto Tairn.
Violet leaps onto the back of Sawyer’s dragon to help save him from a wyvern, which then tears his leg off (because apparently Saywer’s grip on his dragon was that much stronger than both the neck and jaws of the wyvern and the tensile strength of his flesh, muscle, and joints).
Throughout this book, I’ve talked about how there is zero substance to Violet’s relationship with her squad in general and with her accessories in particular. She had one small moment of genuine character interaction with her accessories in the RSC interrogation exercise, and that’s it. However, it was during this battle scene that I was finally about to articulate why and how Yarros failed so significantly with these characters and their dynamic with Violet.
During both the moment with Rhiannon and the moment with Sawyer, Yarros invokes Violet’s trauma over Liam’s death - and I felt something.
It wasn’t investment in Rhiannon or in Sawyer, though. They still mean nothing to me. No, I felt something because Liam was an actual character. Yarros parasitized audience investment in him to try to shore up these moments.
And … it almost works.
Something Yarros did for Liam was that she made him into an actual character. He had personality, a voice, motives. He stands up to Violet, at least in so far as telling her to respect his decisions to follow Xaden’s orders. I’m not saying Liam was particularly deep or interesting, but because Yarros took time to actually make him someone with a sense of life and being beyond merely his association with Violet, this was still enough to get me genuinely invested in his well-being.
The accessories and Red Shirts are not characterized anywhere near that well. Frankly, the only reason I don’t outright say that they aren’t characters is that doing so would leave no lower level of non-characterization for the dragons. These people are an amorphous blob of superficial quirks and unceasing validation for Violet, with external motivation or will. Their lines are so interchangeable that only Ridoc had anything resembling his own voice, and that’s only because his superficial trait is that he is quirky, quippy comic relief. We can assume that any given joke or quip in a scene where he is present will be delivered by him - but none of those jokes are unique to him, and thus they could be spouted by anyone else whom Yarros arbitrarily decides is the comic relief of the scene
Which brings us to …
Melgren is Inconsistent
“What are you doing here?” Mom asks me as my gaze drifts upward to the line of wyvern hovering in the distance. Up until now, we’ve been wounded, but they’re undeniably the kill shot, and in the center of their line rests a gaping hole, as if they’re waiting for someone.
“She’s never far from him,” Melgren quips.
Melgren has not been characterized as someone who engages in quips. Him doing so in such a die situation is therefore jarring. I can’t tell whether Yarros forgot how she’d characterized him or simply didn't think through her choice of dialogue tag. Either way, this is unnecessarily sloppy. The line itself serves no greater purpose and so does not need to exist.
Team-Up
The end of Chapter 62 sees Violet and Cat team up to fight a venin. This should have been a meaningful payoff, but Yarros didn’t earn this.
Let's ignore all the previously established flaws in the execution of Cat as a romantic rival. Our starting point is that she and Violet are enemies. This team-up should have completed their transformation into allies by having them unite and compliment each other's abilities as they combat a threat neither could handle alone.
The thing is, for this arc to work, the two characters need to either make a conscious decision to set aside their differences in a crisis or else gradually evolve to respect one another over time. Yarros has denied us both opportunities.
Violet and Cat never made a conscious decision about working together. The venin just jumped them, and they defaulted to their training and magic as they did their best to survive. Further undermining the situation is that this is not the first time Violet and Cat have been dropped into this situation and acted together without any conscious decision. They went through this same thing when Solas attacked back in Chapter 54.
Violet and Cat haven’t developed respect for one another. The valdiation power fantasy has simply taken over. From Chapter 53 to now, Violet has acknowledged that Cat has some useful skills, but she hasn’t gained any respect for Cat as a person (as Dain has demonstrated, she is quite happy to use people she hates). Cat, meanwhile, has dissolved into the mob of validating Red Shirts, now acknowledging Violet’s amazingness at every opportunity.
I feel like we’re repeating the RSC land navigation exercise from Chapters 14 and 15. This time, we were given chapters worths of time for the relationship dynamic to evolve naturally. Despite that extra time, Yarros did nothing with it.
PROSE
There are many questionable lines in the battle scene, yet this stood out to me the most.
“Twelve!” Tairn shouts, and I whip my head toward the plains to see another wave of wyvern soaring over my mother’s sector, dangerously close to the clouds but not in them, leaving me unable to strike, given who’s under them.
My heart stutters as they pass my mother without stopping, then barrel through thenext without engaging.
Flying on top of the battle has given me the needed vantage point to wield, but it’s also made us an undeniable target, and they’re coming for us. I shove my hand through the strap of the bracelet so I don’t lose the conduit. “We should lead them away—”
“We will follow the plan.” Tairn dives, and my weight lifts against the straps of the saddle as we plunge toward my squad. The Second Squad dragons turn their heads toward the oncoming threat, all of us rising or falling into formation. “Prepare.”
There are three venin on this assassination mission, their blue tunics standing out in stark contrast to the gray, bleary-eyed wyvern they ride.
I see Yarros does not understand the meaning or application of the word “assassination”. As for July 20th, 2024, Merriam-Webster defines this word as:
murder by sudden or secret attack, often for political reasons
This is not a murder. It is combat in wartime. If this is murder, then ever time Violet kills a venin is also murder.
This is not a sudden attack. It is part of the overall battle that everyone is prepared for.
It is not a secret attack. Everyone can see these wyvern and venin breaking through the front line and rushing towards Violet.
While the political part is not mandatory, it’s also worth pointing out that the venin are not pursuing Violet for a political objective. She is an active threat on the battlefield. They are prioritizing her elimination as a military objective in the midst of combat.
I don’t expect Yarros to be an expert on military terminology, but she is the one who chose to write a story where the main character is a member of the military, was educated as a scholar at a military institution, and now actively participates in military conflicts. She should at least try to understand what she is talking about so that Violet sounds like she understands what she's talking about.
THE FINAL ASS-PULL
We are nearly free. Only two chapters remain: Chapters 65 and 66.
These chapters should be a time for falling action. The story is over. It is time for a resolution to put a neat bow on things. This is also an opportunity to give some indication as to where the story will progress for the sequel.
I want to be fair to Yarros: she does technically accomplish these objectives. Her resolution feels a bit lazy and rushed, as if she was just eager to be done with the book, but I think its functional. In doing so, she at least primes the audience for where the characters will be when Onyx Storm opens.
The problem is that, in the course of setting up where the series will go from here, Yarros decides to pull one final twist out of her ass for the sake of a cliffhanger at the end of Chapter 65. It’s not a remarkable twist. When your story has already been virus bombed, cyclonic torpedoed, and then had the rubble pulverized for a good measure, it’s really hard to outdo oneself in terms of incompetence, nonsensicality, and unnecessary stupidity - but I do think it is the laziest one thus far. True to form, her efforts to explain the twist merely serve to worsen the situation.
Once more into the breach, my friends. Then we can do a final retrospective and take a much-needed vacation before Onyx Storm. I hope to see you all on September 6th. Have a good week.
