Iron Flame By Rebecca Yarros

 Spoilers for Fourth Wing

Iron Flame is the second book of The Empyreon series and the sequel to Fourth Wing, continuing Violet's story at the Basgiath war college into her second year as she deals with the revelations from the first book. Violet has to simultaneously try to continue with her somewhat normal life struggling to survive in the rider's quadrant and deal with the knowledge that wyverns are real, that the people in charge are doing nothing to help, and that she is being kept out of the rebellion she so desperately wants to help. A new vice commander joining the college who is determined to break Violet to get her to confess what she knows and give up the secrets of the rebellion makes the deadly war college even more dangerous than usual. 

I really liked this as a sequel to the fourth wing, I feel like it expanded on the consequences of the first book very realistically. The knowledge that Violet gains at the end of the last book shakes her to the core, loosing one of her best friends has her traumatized especially being unable to discuss it with her other friends, the secrets she has to keep along with not knowing who she can trust especially after the betrayal of dain in book 1 lead her to be paranoid and reclusive. An ongoing theme in this book is that everything is in shades of grey with no clear answers, it's clear that there is an enemy but every decision that the rebellion makes to protect the people that need it has both good and bad outcomes, no decision is made in a vacuum and everything has consequences, I really appreciated the reality of that, even the non-rebellion dragon riders have the best intentions to help their people even if it's not agreeable to the rest.

One of my favorite parts of this book was the development between Tairn and Violet, where Tairn started off as reluctantly respectful it has grown into full-on caring and protective, he looks out for her and is genuinely worried about her most of the time even putting her needs ahead of his need to be with his mate. 

Another bit of character development that I thought was done interestingly is the relationship between Violet and her mother, in the first book her mother was a mostly hidden figure who was mostly characterized as hard and detached, forcing her disabled daughter into a quadrant that could get her killed. But in this book, we get more of an explanation behind her decisions and get a real sense that she loves her kids. She tries to protect them in the only way she can even knowing that they will hate her for the decisions she makes. 

As far as criticisms for this book go I found the back and forth between Xaden and Violet could get slightly tiresome, on the one hand, I could understand the trust issues that developed between them after the last book but constantly having Violet complain that she couldn’t trust him while simultaneously not asking questions got frustrating, wishing they would just communicate. 

Also, I think this book spoke less about violets disability which I found disappointing, I really enjoyed that aspect of her character in the first book, especially as someone with chronic pain issues myself it was fun to read a character overcoming it, so when it doesn’t come up in this book I think it was meant to be part of her character development as something shes overcome but disability shouldn’t be something that part of a character to grow out of. 

In conclusion, this was a really good sequel and continuation of the first book, I was thoroughly entertained I loved the ongoing character development as well as the development of the plot, having Violet play a more integral role in the inciting incident of this book was definitely a good choice and makes the book more dynamic. I can't wait for the next book.