Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
Series: The Empyrean #2
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Romantasy
Pages: 623
Published By: Piatkus on 7th November, 2023
Format: Hardcover
Add to Goodreads
Buy on Amazon (not affiliated)
Book Synopsis:
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet’s wondering how she’ll get through it. It’s not just that it’s gruelling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is—unless she betrays the man she loves.
Although Violet’s body is weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she has her wits—and a will of iron. Leadership forgets the most important lesson Basgiath taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules. But determination to survive won’t be enough this year, because Violet knows the secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
Book Review
I’m just going to say that a lot of my opinions regarding this book are similar to the ones I mentioned in my Fourth Wing review. Therefore this review will be brief (hopefully).
I will admit that the world building in this book was a little more confusing for me to follow at times in comparison to Fourth Wing but Yarros’s writing still continued to blow me away. Yarros described everything in all the right places—sometimes a bit too much—but my imagination ran wild, and I stayed fully immersed.
I like to think I’ve improved at name pronunciations and remembered all the characters from the first book, but the new additions in this story took me a while to track and pronounce.
Just like the first book, this is still very slow towards the start-probably a lot more slower. Again, once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down! At times it was a little repetitive and unnecessarily long but the pace of other parts in the story balanced it out for me.
I’m so emotionally invested in the story and characters that their struggles affect me. And yes—I’m still obsessed with Violet and Xaden! Yes. Yes I am! It was interesting to see how the dynamics and depth of their relationship developed in this book. I loved seeing the relationship Violet has with Tairn and Andarna develop as well. Safe to say that I want my own Tairn and Andarna…
I didn’t think the character development could get any better but it really did. I loved being able to dive into the more nitty gritty parts of the story. The dragons played a bigger role in this book, and the story answered all my lingering questions from the first with incredible detail.
She really did it again with the ending… another cliff-hanger that had me SHOOK. Just like the first book, Iron Flame gave me all the feels and was such a rollercoaster of a ride! I can’t wait to see what Onyx Storm has in store….
There are lots of mixed opinions/reviews for this book but I loved it just as much as the first and again… I bought a copy with sprayed edges from Storybound Edges.
Leave a Reply