Iron Flame

TO DO A QUICK SUM UP – I think I liked Fourth Wing better, but I still very much enjoyed Iron Flame.

The world feels much BIGGER in Iron Flame, and I think that might be one of the reasons the book suffers. There's just so much going on, and so QUICKLY that it's a tiny bit hard to keep track of where characters are, and what they're doing. I loved the world building, but I do wish the book had slowed down JUST A LITTLE so we could SAVOR these new places. Instead, we're ripping along at a lightning pace to get to where we need to be.

Violet and Xaden's relationship suffers a little bit due to lack of trust, and while I still love them to pieces...I really wanted to grab Violet by the shoulders and shake her silly. Actually, scratch that, I wanted to shake them both. What silly miscommunications they had. Why couldn't they SIT DOWN AND TALK it out much earlier? Xaden, I'm talking to you, buddy. Why are you making Violet jump through hoops. JUST TELL HER. Hell, if they had taken even ten minutes to actually talk, half the problems in their relationship would have been solved like...10 pages into the book. Instead, we're left watching them argue and nitpick at one another for like half the book. THEY DO FIGURE IT OUT, and the sex scenes are delightful, but c'mon. Very much a YA style relationship here. That sort of thing worked better in Fourth Wing when they were still in school.

The dragons are, of course, a huge highlight of the book. I loved seeing Andarna come into her own. I LOVE the reveal – what a cool COOL thing. I hope we get even more dragons in the next book. (This seems a given, but who knows.) I hope we get to TALK to other dragons in the next book. I'd love to see more of Tairn and Sgaeyl's relationship, or at least get to know her a little better.

The ending of the book was a massive, huge, confusing as hell battle. I, like many other reviews, agree that this part of the book could have used a heavy editor's pen. I think there are some great scenes, but I think it needs to be reworked into something MUCH CLEARER. I know battles are confusing, I know things move SO QUICKLY, but c'mon. Pull back a little and make it easier to understand what was going on.

I'm not sure how I feel about the very end. I really don't. I know I'll be right there waiting for the next book to see how things work out. The VERY end of the book has me torn. I'm hoping Yarros has a good way to make this all right in the end, because I need things to be all right. I really do.