Iron Flame (Intermission)
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.
WHAT WE GOT
I wasn’t expected a dramatic improvement over Fourth Wing, not when this book must have been ready for print before the reactions to Fourth Wing started to roll in, yet I am shocked by just how terrible Part One is.
Part One is broken at a fundamental level. It could have been a slow-burning standalone book that delved deep into character dynamics and developed a sense of mystery and intrigue, allowing Violet to come to terms to whom she could actually trust and whether her feelings about certain people were valid. It could have been a fast-paced Act One the returned the audience to the familiar setting of Fourth Wing for long enough to bring Violet’s accessories, Jesinia, and other secondary and tertiary characters into the fold of the rebellion before leaving the familiar behind. Yarros instead chose to combine the length and pace of the standalone book with the amount of meaningful content that one would expect of an Act One. The result is painfully slow, dull, and shallow.
Plot
Pacing
Part One is 392 pages (as measured by the Barnes & Noble e-book version).
Chapters 1 through 12 of Iron Flame are 143 pages. They serve as a slow start that sets up elements for the rest of Part One.
Chapters 32 through 36 of Iron Flame are 58 pages. They are prolonged sequence of action and consequences that more or less pay off the setup from Chapters 1 through 12 and propel the story into Part 2.
That leaves Chapters 13 through 31 … 191 pages of spinning wheels, pointless tangents, and squandered opportunities for character development, where the only event of substance is an arbitrarily injected contrivance that could and should have happened in Chapter 13 instead of Chapter 29.
48.7% of Part One is filler. That is 26.3% of the entire book. When one contiguous quarter of your book is filler, then you are just wasting your audience’s time. It is imperative that such a massive waste be cut out prior to publication.
Venin Plot
Nothing meaningful happens for this plot in Part One. By itself, this is not a flaw. Violet is at Basgiath, far from the venin threat. Unfortunately, Yarros choose to repeatedly remind us about the threat so as to keep some sense of tension as we slog through filler. She is jabbing a big red Danger button without any danger in sight. It gets very tiring.
Rebellion Plot / Wardstone Subplot
I’m going to lump these two together because they are tightly entwined.
What happens within this aspect of the story might worked if Part One had credible antagonists and better pacing. The concept of Violet and her growing circle of co-conspirators need to sneak about under the noses of the rider leadership to smuggle weapons and to gather information is compelling. In execution, the antagonists should have won multiple times over, and yet even after robbing them of all credibility, Yarros continues to shove them in our faces as a threat Violet needs to overcome (and then has Violet overcome them with ease each time). Progress isn’t made until the arbitrary contrivance is injected. The result is that this plot / subplot is almost entirely filler.
Romance Subplot
This subplot started off the book at an enormous disadvantage. Yarros chose to end Fourth Wing with contrived romantic conflict for the sake of drama, and she chose to continue that conflict into Iron Flame.
Then things get worse. Yarros couldn’t seem to decide upon the exact nature of the conflict - whether it was about trust or about emotional vulnerability. Violet’s obsession with her own sexual gratification further poisoned the well. As I’ve said before, her sexual focus might have worked if we’d never been inside Xaden’s head, but we have been, so we know that Xaden’s love for Violet is far purer and less self-serving. The combination of these factors makes it nigh-impossible to back this romance. Violet comes across as an unhinged, abusive nymphomaniac, with Xaden being her victim.
Character
Much like with Fourth Wing as a whole, I feel like rehashing the terrible writing of individual characters would just be repeating myself for no meaningful gain. I’ve also already talked at length about gaslighting, retconning, and squandered opportunities. There is, however, a particular opportunity that was wasted and that I feel needs extra attention now: the chance to redeem Violet.
Part One of Iron Flame was the perfect opportunity to explore why Violet is the way that she is. It was a chance for us to better understand the people and relationships she cares about and to explore why she cares about them. It was a chance to test her convictions, to challenge her ideals, and to allow her to recognize flaws in herself and rise above them.
This isn’t a vague idea of what could have been, either. Violet spends most of Part One effectively trapped behind enemy lines, uncertain of who she could trust. Learning the truth about the venin cover-up should require her to reevaluate the friends and mentors whom she has spent years with, whom have, at least in theory, crafted the person she has become. What’s more, with the introduction of first-year cadets who are in the position she formerly occupied in Iron Flame, it was a chance for her to grow as a mentor and a leader, and thus to reevaluate her feelings towards Dain in the previous book (something she is, on paper, already doing, given his connection to the climax of Fourth Wing).
A well-written book, penned an author who cares about engaging character work, would have taken the scenarios that Yarros chose to include and woven them into a powerful character study. Even if the conclusion of that study was that Violet is deeply flawed, the honest acknowledgement of those flaws would have elevated her as a character. So many of my criticisms of her throughout Part One - and, indeed, many of my criticisms in Fourth Wing - would be address in whole or in part if Yarros had painted an unflinching portrait of a young woman who aspires for rationality but is ruled by her emotions, a person whose need to accommodate her physical fragility has twisted her into someone who builds a carefully curated emotional realty, one wherein anyone who does not cater to her every whim is designated as a threat and hammered with unrelenting hatred until they are driven away. It wouldn’t make her likeable. What it would do is make her relatable and interesting. We would be able to root for her because we understand why she is the way that she is and have the hope that she can grow.
Yarros instead chose to engage in a shallow power fantasy of emotional and moral validation, whilst simultaneously feeding us stream-of-consciousness inner monologue that makes it very hard to side with Violet.
What a tragic waste.
Worldbuilding
The worldbuilding in Part One is every bit as self-destructive as the worldbuilding in Fourth Wing. The only nice thing that I can really say about it is that it is not as obvious a problem as in Fourth Wing. That is a purely relative: the plot and character work are so terrible, even without the worldbuilding, that things like draconic agency and poorly designed RSC training and the presentation of trademarked dental alloy as a fantasy metal whilst still using the trademarked name don’t seem as horrific as they actually are.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
Up above, I said that Part One could have been either a standalone novel or Act One of a larger narrative. This wasn’t idle optimism. Over the past three months, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what Yarros was trying to convey and how she could have better met those goals. I have story treatments available for both scenarios.
Please note that the following assesses Part One in isolation. I will be doing a similar treatment after Part Two, both assessing Part Two as a separate book from Part One and assessing how it could have been modified.
Act One
It should come as no surprise that my recommendation here is to trim the fat:
Cut almost all of Chapters 13 and 31. Replace them with two chapters that incorporate all of the following elements:
The scene with the gryphon riders
Xaden’s arbitrary decision to give Violet a venin-killing dagger
Exposition about how wards work
The scene where the accessories are brought into the fold by keeping Draconis from finding the dagger
A new scene that consolidates all of Jesinia’s pre-heist scenes into one.
Cut everything about keeping Andarna secret.
Cut Sloane from the story entirely. I’m sure Yarros wanted to use Sloane to help Violet forgive herself for Liam’s death, but for all that Liam comes up in Part One, it never really feels like his death is an obstacle that Violet needs to move past. Removing Sloane therefore allows Violet to avoid glaring hypocrisy whilst losing nothing of value.
Cut Aaric from the story entirely, and remove everything about the royal wards from the heist.
Cut RSC. The introduction of the elixir can be saved for Chapter 35, where the unexpected loss of her connection to Tairn would heighten Violet’s sense of danger.
Cut all classroom scenes except for the Battle Brief in Chapter 9, as that is the bare minimum needed to establish Markham as a Bad Teacher and Devera as a Good Teacher.
Cut Draconis Umbridge from the story entirely. Have Commandant Panchek take over his role in the narrative. If Yarros still wants a dragon to immolate several cadets, Panchek’s dragon can do it, or else it can be the dragon of one of the wingleaders, acting on the orders of the Empyrean.
Cut Colonel Aetos from the story entirely (or, at least, return him to his role as a mob character). Pin blame for the climax of Fourth Wing on General Melgren, and assign blame for the assassins to Commandant Panchek.
Cut the conflict from the Romance subplot. Have Violet and Xaden rebuilding trust after the shocking reveals of both the rebellion and Brennan’s survival.
What I just described is the definition of a hatchet job. It doesn’t address the antagonist incompetence in Chapter 4, the generally shallow character work, or the question of draconic agency. More in-depth rewrites would be needed to correct these issues.
Said hatchet job would also dramatically improve the pacing by trimming out everything that doesn’t drive the story forward. Easily 50% of Part One would be carved away in this manner. That would still potentially result in an Act One that is nearly 200 pages long, but enough things would be happening to keep the story feeling lively.
This approach would also eliminate most of the scenes that would damage characters. The flawed elements that remain are also made more tolerable by the lack of overexposure. Violet’s hatred for Dain is a good example of this. Yes, things had already gone too far by Chapter 8, but the unnecessary comments about Dain during the RSC exercises, coupled with the disaster that was Chapter 21, made things orders of magnitude worse. If we go straight from Violet being spiteful towards Dain in Chapter 8 to Dain surprising her by saving her in Chapter 35, Violet doesn’t look nearly as bad as she does in the published version of the story.
The Standalone
This would require a more intensive rewrite, but I think that it would produce a very rewarding narrative.
The biggest aspect of the rewrite would be for character, per what was discussed up above. This would be the narrative’s chance to really get under Violet’s skin and give the audience a full portrait of who she is. Rather than the focus being on the existential threat of the venin or on cheap relationship drama, the narrative would instead be a thriller that focuses purely on the rebellion, with the wardstone research being presented as an extension of the rebellion’s efforts to help Poromiel rather than a matter of Aretia’s survival. Violet would need to feel out her friends and teachers, trying to gauge whom she can trust and whom she can’t, whilst trying to keep her activities under the radar.
Much of this can be accomplished through the scenes that are already provided. The RSC exercises are, at least on paper, a good way for Violet to feel out and bond with her accessories. Enlisting Jesinia for research help, only for Jesinia to figure out what Violet is up to, follows a logical through-line. The interactions with Dain are only a problem in the current version because of how unhinged Violet is regarding him. It’s the execution of these scenarios that needs to be reworked. Rather that introducing a flood of Red Shirts and then slaughtering them to pretend danger exists, rather than introducing obstacles (like riders being executed for using official channels to request documents that they couldn’t know were classified) and then immediately invalidating those obstacles, rather than wasting time on dialogue where people say things and are immediately validating, there needs to be a sense of focus and struggle.
For example, let’s take Violet’s treatment of Dain. In this version of events, he would be a great wingleader. Violet’s accessories would sing his praises; if any negative comparisons are drawn to Xaden, they would be acknowledged as minor quibbles or personal preferences. Violet herself, however, would not be singing the same tune. This wouldn’t be because she is blaming Dain for Xaden’s choices - rather, she assumes that Dain’s connection to the climax of Fourth Wing means that he’s already in on the cover-up, and thus is very critical and suspicious of him. Her accessories would be shocked. Sure, Dain was overly coddling last year, but he’s now proving that he’s not so bad, and he and Violet used to be friends - what’s Violet’s problem? When Violet refuses to tell her accessories the truth, this would build conflict between her and them. As they grow more and more supportive of Dain, a reaction to her inexplicable hostility, Violet begins to question whether they, too, have been told the truth and sided with Dain. When they eventually help protect her from Panchek (yes, Draconis would be cut from this version too, I’ll get to that in the moment), she will realize that they want to be on her side, and then could open up and confide in them.
This is but one example. The ultimate focus of the rewrite would be to take the ideas Yarros as laid out and expand upon them, using them to develop not only Violet but also everyone around her into nuanced characters with their own agency.
There are only four outright changes that I would recommend implementing:
As mentioned above, remove Draconis and Colonel Aetos, and fill their roles with Panchek and Melgren as necessary.
Rework the Romance subplot so that, from the start, the focus is on Xaden’s willingness to be emotionally vulnerable, rather than it being a trust issue.
Remove the draconic agency conflict entirely, including the perceived threat to Andarna. I think it’s worth telling a story that explores this idea, but it’s one thing too many to juggle here.
Rather than starting the story with scribes being identified as the bad guys, with Markham being demonized out the gate, have Violet insist that the scribes can be trusted, while Xaden advises caution. This faith in the scribes will be affirmed when, rather than the rider leadership failing in Chapter 4 due to incompetence, Markham intervenes on Violet’s behalf, vouching for her trustworthiness and using mind-bogglingly complicated Codex legalism to absolve the rebel children of wrongdoing. Violet, believing now that she can trust Markham, would go to him for the wardstone research, only to discover that it was a trap. The rider leadership has already written over Xaden and the other rebel children as guilty; the survivors from the climax of Fourth Wing have only been spared so that intelligence can be gathered as to what they’ve been hiding. When Violet spurns one of Markham’s efforts to dig for information, he could then become cold and hostile, having realized that she’d seen through the ruse. He could then transition into full villainy, with Violet turning to Jesinia in a bid to stay ahead of him while Devera begins to serve more and more as Markham’s foil in Battle Brief.
The long and short of it is that Yarros would have to delete or outright alter very little. Instead, she would need to build upon what she’s already started, working more efficiently to ensure maximum impact and depth.
WHAT’S COMING
At the time of writing this section (April 27th), I have already completed my second reading of the first few chapters of Part Two. Both the post for Chapters 37 and 38 and the post for Chapters 39 and 40 have been drafted. I am currently rereading Chapter 43, with the hope of consolidating Chapters 41 through 44 into a singular post. I already know that Chapter 45 will need to be a standalone, as that is where we will assess Yarros’s thunderously loud virtue signal about sign language.
The issues within these chapters are every bit as thick and destructive as Chapters 35 and 36 were. I could honestly write a detailed post of criticism for every individual chapter. However, we’ve reached a point where I am running out of new lessons to draw from these flaws. Much like with the recurring issues from Fourth Wing, it will be more productive to just focus on new issues or expansions upon previous issues than to keep reiterating the same points.
What is means is that, as bad as what I’m about to review may sound, what’s on the page is worse. I will be neglecting to mention an increasing number of issues. As I stated back in the prelude of this series, you can safely assume that any issue I stop talking about is still happening until I outright say that Yarros has addressed it.
That’s not coming until June, though. Until then, we can marvel at something different: A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark.
VACATION TIME
A Master of Djinn is a Historical Fantasy with a lot going for it. The premise is an engaging one, and the world is rich. There’s evidence that the author is very passionate about writing this book.
Unfortunately, passion is not a substitute for skill and experience, both of which Clark simply hadn’t earned by the time he published A Master of Djinn. For all the debut novels reviewed on this blog, this was the first that reads like someone’s first novel. There are foundational problems that run far deeper than the plot, characters, or worldbuilding, and a lot of these problems are incredibly basic mistakes that speak of amateurism, rather than incompetence or laziness. It makes what should have been an engaging read into another slog.
A Master of Djinn will be a three-part dissection, with the parts releasing on May 17th, May 24th, and May 31st. I hope to see you all then. Have a good week.
