Book Review: Iron Flame

Well, what to say about this sequel. Let’s start with the obvious. This review of Iron Flame will have spoilers for the first book, Fourth Wing, since it’s hard to discuss a sequel without discussing its predecessor. Check out my review on Fourth Wing here.

Like Fourth Wing, Iron Flame was entertaining and exciting if a little predictable. There was lots of action. The world expanded from what we saw in the first book. And the dragons are still cool.

That said, this book dragged for me, especially compared with how addictive Fourth Wing was. Everything took forever. I even stopped reading for like a week when I had about a hundred pages left—arguably the part of the book that I should have read the fastest since it was near the end.

Let’s dive into the details of my Iron Flame review.

My Iron Flame Review Breakdown

Characters: 3.5 Stars

Violet was a compelling character in the first book. I loved seeing her find ways to survive the deadly war college even when it should have been impossible for her because of her body’s condition.

But she lost that in this book. In fact, it seems like her disability, while still present, was kind of brushed under the rug in the latter half of this book. Yes, she became much stronger through her training in book 1, but I’m not sure that means she wouldn’t struggle with it still (obviously, I don’t have the same condition that Violet has, so I don’t know all the intricacies of living with something like that).

But I found her personality less compelling as well. She had an inner strength in book 1 that turned into something kind of annoying in this book, especially regarding her relationship with Xaden.

Speaking of Xaden, most of the time he was either absent or being annoying too, and the twists regarding his character were fairly predictable. But I’ll get into all this more in the spoiler section.

The rest of the characters felt a bit lackluster for me. I wanted to learn more about Rhiannon, Ridoc, and Sawyer, and we did get some of that in the first half of this book, but they kind of disappeared in the second half. Similarly, Mira, Brennan, and the first years who were introduced in the first half of the book were also overlooked.

Spoilers

Anyway, let’s talk about the spoilers.

Click here to reveal them.

Violet and Xaden both acted extremely stubborn in this book. Their miscommunication issues felt childish and dumb.

I just wanted to yell, “Yes, Violet, Xaden gets to keep some secrets from you. He is the heir of Tyrrendor and head of the Assembly that rules over Tyrrendor. Of course, he can’t tell you everything. And no, Xaden, Violet doesn’t have to ask you very specific questions for you to share things with her. Part of being in a relationship is opening up and sharing, and she shouldn’t have to constantly ask you to do that.”

There, problem solved. Moving on.

I guessed that Xaden was an inntinnsic, but it is a pretty cool power and was well set up. I also guessed that he would turn venin, but I am excited to see how that plays out because it is a much better way to add conflict than the game of secrets he and Violet were playing.

Andarna was asleep for like half of this book—disappointing. She’s one of my favorite characters, and I missed her and Tairn’s interactions. It took forever for her to finally wake up. It’s cool that she’s a seventh breed of dragon, but I wish she had been in the book more.

One thing that I think jilted some of the side characters was the introduction of the gryphon fliers. I liked some of these characters, but they simultaneously took attention away from Violet’s squad and yet didn’t have enough page time for me to really grow to love them. Not to mention, Violet’s conflict with Catriona was a bit cliché at times.

I liked Dain’s redemption in this book, and I really liked seeing Violet interact with him and try to forgive him.

Plot: 3 Stars

The plot had a good amount of action, which should have been exciting and was a lot of the time, but like I said before, the book dragged. I felt like I was always waiting for something to happen.

Yarros could have potentially split this book into two. There’s a very distinct divide between the first and the second half, and I think, had it been split there, we could have had further time to develop the antagonist, side characters, and the world.

Spoilers

I don’t think I can say much more without spoiling anything, so let’s get into the spoilers.

Click here to reveal them.

As I mentioned, I felt like I was always waiting for something. Waiting for Andarna to wake up, waiting for Xaden to come back or Violet to visit him, waiting for Violet and Xaden to stop fighting, waiting to learn Xaden’s secrets, waiting for Violet to learn how to get the wards up. You get the point.

Jack Barlowe’s return was a big reveal, but by the end, I wondered why he returned at all. With this being one book, his and Varrish’s characters could have been combined into one because they filled similar roles, but Varrish was set up to be the main villain for this book.

If it had been split into two books, I think that Varrish could have been given more focus as a villain for one book, and then in the second one, we could have focused more on Barlowe and fleshed out his return.

Perhaps his return would have worked better if it had happened at a different time. For example, the first time we saw him could have been when Violet was captured by Varrish at the midpoint. The twist could have had a better impact there as it would have set him up as another antagonist (I don’t think anyone really believed he had changed into a good person anyway).

Prose: 3.5 Stars

As with Fourth Wing, the prose was straightforward, making the story easily accessible to a wide audience. But it also didn’t have anything really special going for it, save for a few nice lines.

Worldbuilding/Setting: 3 Stars

The world expanded in some nice ways in this book. I enjoyed learning about Navarre’s history and the history of the rest of the world too. I’m very curious about the Empyrean and everything related to dragons, and I hope we get to see more of that as the series continues.

That said, a lot of the worldbuilding still feels underdeveloped. Every time they refer to the months with the same names we use for ours, it pulls me out of the story. Our months only have the names they do because of our history and culture. Many months are named after Roman gods and goddesses and July and August were named after two Roman leaders, so when this world has their own gods, leaders, and culture, it doesn’t make sense that they would have the same names for their months.

Speaking of their gods, they too feel underdeveloped. I understand that Violet isn’t very religious. However, with how many characters there are, a few are bound to be more religious, but that’s not the case; none of the characters are very religious. It doesn’t seem realistic and feels almost like an excuse to not need to dive deeper into their religion.

Spoilers

Click here to reveal spoilers.

The worldbuilding did develop more in Iron Flame than in Fourth Wing. With the time spent in Aretia and Poromiel, we get to see what the world is like outside of Basgiath. We even learn a little bit about the Isles too, and I would be very interested to see what things are like there.

It was nice to see a lot of the plot revolve around the history that was covered up. I liked that Violet got to use her scribe knowledge to uncover things like how to raise the wards—even if it took her forever to figure out how to do it.

I liked seeing how the Empyrean and the dragons in general are willing to keep secrets and do whatever they want. It was great when half of the dragons and their riders at Basgiath went with Violet and the others to Aretia. I’m very curious about how the Empyrean actually works, but I’m not sure we’ll ever get to see that since humans aren’t allowed to know.

There’s a lot of potential for some cool worldbuilding so I would love to see the series lean into that more.

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Overall, this series is entertaining, and I will continue reading it. I hope the next book can learn from this one and deliver a thrilling and addictive book like the first one.

Thanks for reading my review of Iron Flame. You can read more of my reviews here. If you’ve read this book, let me know what you think of it in the comments.