Lauren Lanz's Reviews > Iron Flame

Crazy how this was published in the big year of 2023, yet Violet and Cat still found a way to fail the bechdel test. And a woman wrote this? Feminism is doomed 😭

I thought I was going to rip my hair out during their first few interactions because it was all "Xaden!" "I'm so jealous she knew Xaden first!” “Xaden doesn't even like you!" and then an actual physical fight over Xaden. Are we fucking forreal guys. The bitchy ex-girlfriend and jealous current-girlfriend stereotype is so physically painful to me it was a miracle I didn't DNF the book as soon as Cat was introduced.

Also crazy: we're more than 1000 pages deep, and not a single character besides our protagonist and her love interest have been given an ounce of good (if any!) characterization.

Serious question, HOW do we not know anything about any of Violet's closest friends by now? Rhiannon has been by Violet's side since the very beginning of this series, and I couldn't tell you a single thing about her life outside of the riders quadrant. Same goes for Sawyer. All we know is that he didn't bond to a dragon in first year. The entire supporting cast of The Empyrean is either a caricature of a villain, or someone reduced to witty dialogue and their involvement in a half-assed attempt at an emotional moment for Violet's character development. I genuinely couldn't make myself care about anything that happened in this book because zero proper written effort was put into the characters unless it centred around Violet or protecting Violet. EVERYONE exists to serve the protagonist, which makes for a really, really horribly written fantasy. A huge cast, and not an autonomous character in sight.

Violet was also near unrecognizable in this book. It was obvious that Yarros wanted to develop her into a battle-hardened warrior, but it felt straight up out of character for the girl who sobbed at everyone's death in the first book to turn to her friends this time around and say she's glad they died because if they didn't, she'd be a sucky rider. I felt so seen when everyone looked at her like she was insane after saying that because yeah! The supposed morally-driven protagonist saying she’s glad her friends died because it helped her battle skills felt like straight up character assassination.

To summarize: Violet pissed me off so bad this book. Thanks for listening to my TED talk. 😇

Next order of business: the plot. So many trees died for this unfathomably long abomination to fantasy. We were being spoon-fed the idea that their kingdom and the wards were in grave danger every other page, while it felt like nothing actually important took place until the end. 640 pages and all I recall is one unserious torture scene (see above: Violet is never actually in danger because the whole cast is her shield), some stupid dialogue (see above: Cat), Violet and Xaden having sex that doesn't hit like it did in book 1 because they lowkey should've broken up in Iron Flame, and a huge blur of action at the end.

I think I need to ban myself from reading any NA series that blows up online and gets labelled an "accessible fantasy". The term feels like a thinly veiled disguise for "badly written", since there's a billion incredible YA series intended for even younger audiences that are perfectly accessible to new readers, and don't get labelled as such. There are so many widely known YA series that feature genuinely inspiring protagonists, heartwarming romance, and actual well-developed meaning behind their world-building and plot, whereas books like these just don't. I'm begging new readers to pick up The Hunger Games, The Raven Cycle, Harry Potter, hell, even Sarah J Maas over this. Save yourself the brain cells.

If I read this physically, there's no way I would've finished it (god bless the graphic audiobook narrators). It's been a LONG time since I've rated a book one star, so I was starting to think I’ve been too lax. But every once in a while a book like Iron Flame comes around and reminds me that yeah, not a lot can be this distinctly terrible. And one stars should be reserved for those anomalies. I've been itching to write a rant review for ages, and it felt so good to get the fire back after wasting precious hours of my life reading this book. Cannot wait to palate cleanse and forget this ever happened.