After I read Iron Flame, I spent some time trying to unpack my thoughts about it and deciding what I wanted to say about it. I started by trying to write a quick summary of the plot so I could talk about all of the things I thought were kind of stupid. Unfortunately, what I ended up writing wasn't a quick summary at all. It's actually over 2000 words.
Anyway, here's my plot summary of Iron Flame. There are a lot of spoilers, but if you don't want to read Iron Flame and do want to know what happens in it, I humbly think reading this summary will be more fun for you than subjecting yourself to the book. I'm planning to write a proper review with more actual analysis soon, but I'm not sure when. So consider this supplementary reading for the review, whenever I actually finish it.
Here we go!
We open with Violet dealing with the revelations she received at the end of Fourth Wing, and also eating some cookies with milk. Brennan is alive! Wyverns and venin are real! Xaden is allied with Poromiel gryphon riders – sorry, gryphon fliers – and leading a secret rebellion! Andarna had a big growth spurt! What’s the result of all of this? Uh, Violet goes back to school for another year of murder college.
No, really! That’s what happens! Everyone in the rebel base agrees that it is Really Important for Xaden and Violet and everyone else who survived the final battle to go back to murder college. Allegedly this is to let the weapon smuggling continue, but I feel like it was to preserve the murder college status quo.
Anyway, they go back to Basgiath murder college and bluff their way back in. Xaden accuses Dain’s dad of sending them into a gryphon ambush, and Dain’s dad doesn’t know how to contradict this without saying “No, I sent them into a WYVERN ambush,” which he can’t do because wyverns are a Big Secret, so instead he just kind of stands there angrily and says nothing. Violet's mom gets mad on behalf of her daughter, because this is the book where she's kind of decided to give a shit about Violet's life, and Dain's dad is reassigned somewhere far far away, where he will become almost, but not entirely, irrelevant.
Xaden graduates, Violet becomes a second year, Dain becomes wing leader (but we are frequently reminded that he will always be the beta male to Xaden’s alpha), Rhiannon becomes squad leader, and everyone parties! Xaden and Violet get alternating weekends off and they have to use these weekends to visit each other so that Tairn and Sgaeyl can see each other, because if Tairn and Sgaeyl don’t have sex at least once a week, they will die, and then Violet and Xaden will die, and the book suggests that this would be a bad outcome. Am I convinced? No.
Thus begins the first half of the book, which is mostly concerned with repeating plot beats from Fourth Wing and showing us Violet and Xaden have the same argument over and over. Oh, you want to know what the argument is? Sure. Violet says she can’t trust Xaden unless he stops keeping secrets, he says she can’t handle full disclosure, she says it’s not up to him to decide what she can handle, he says he needs to keep secrets for the good of the rebellion, Violet pouts. Xaden says he wants Violet to say “those three little words,” AKA “I love you.” Violet refuses. Secretly, she DOES love Xaden, but she doesn't want to admit that until she feels like she can trust him. They angstily make out intead of having sex because Xaden refuses to have sex again until Violet admits she loves him. Why are they making out? As a cover story, sometimes, but mostly because they're still very horny for each other.
There! You’re caught up.
When I say we repeat the same plot points from Fourth Wing, I am so for real and serious. Here's an example: In Fourth Wing, a girl shows up to the parapet. She recognizes one of the students keeping track of names as the person she blames for her brother’s death. However, this person actually has a vested interest in keeping her alive, even though she hates them. In Fourth Wing, this was Violet and Xaden. In Iron Flame, it’s Liam’s younger sister Sloane and Violet. And for the record, even though Violet is supposed to be upholding her promise to Liam to look out for Sloane, she offloads most of the work onto other people. Her biggest contribution is poisoning someone Sloane fights, because that’s her one move (Don't ask me why Sloane sucks at fighting, I think it's stupid that she's bad at it) and bullying her into agreeing to train with Imogen by threatening to withold Liam’s letters to her. Great job, Violet!
Violet is often considered to be a caring and compassionate main character, by the way. I'm telling you this because I don't think you'd realize otherwise.
Mixed in with the repeated stuff is random new stuff that we’re supposed to pretend has always been there, despite the fact that it…hasn’t. Another new character we meet at the parapet is Aaric, AKA Cam, AKA the youngest son of the king. You know, the king, who was barely in the first book? For some reason Aaric/Cam and Violet are childhood friends, or at least childhood acquaintances. Furthermore, Violet recognizes him instantly, but all the professors who should also know who he is don’t, because he avoids making eye contact with them. Flawless disguise.
The most insulting thing about Aaric is that Rebecca Yarros had the audacity to write a secret prince into this book and then do NOTHING with him. Aaric is literally only plot-relevant once. The rest of the time, he’s such a background character that I initially couldn't even tell if he was in Violet's squad. I’m sure there are big plans for Aaric in book 3, or 4, or 5, or in a spin off novella or something, but I think if he’s going to be in book 2, he should actually be in book 2. Am I crazy?
I guess it’s also worth mentioning that Violet is fending off assassination attempts from Dain’s dad during the first half of the book, but frankly who cares. It's a goofy plot line that feels thrown in to make the first half of the book feel less pointless. The only thing I want to mention is that during the first assassination attempt, Violet stabs the would-be assassin through BOTH forearms with her knives, and somehow he just pulls the knives out and manages to participate in a full fight scene after that. That’s not how forearms work!
One of the new silly goofy classes second years have to pass is something called the Rider Survival Course, where riders learn to survive in scenarios where they’ve been separated from their dragons. For some reason this involves professors kidnapping them, like, a lot, so that they can be forced to read maps or interrogated by random riders. It also leads us into the recurring problem of Violet drinking stuff people give her. Three times out of four, she will drink any beverage anyone hands her without hesitation. Four times out of four, that beverage will be drugged.
We’re supposed to think she’s SMART.
Oh, I do also need to mention Jack Barlowe. I guess. In Fourth Wing, Jack Barlowe was an asshole who kept trying to kill Violet because he thought she was too weak to live, and then she disproved this theory by burying him under a landslide. Unfortunately, for some reason the idiot professors at Basgiath decided that it would be a super great idea to expend a ton of time and resources on basically resurrecting Jack from almost-but-not-quite dying. This means their only mender (magical healer) is overworking himself for months and struggling to keep up with his normal work load, but it's a good idea because...science!
There is eventually another reason why Jack was resurrected outside of "Because we could," but I personally think it is still stupid. Apparently in Jack's dying moments, he channeled from the source and became venin, and this made the professors want to resurrect him so they could figure out if someone can come back from turning venin. How they determined that he had 1) survived 2) turned venin from UNDERNEATH A LANDSLIDE, I have no idea. But I'm sure that in the next book we'll find out that some character we've never heard of has a signet that lets them detect venin or something.
Anyway, after Jack re-enters the story, he does almost nothing. But don't forget that he exists, because he'll eventually do one (1) plot-relevant thing.
Moving on! Violet is also researching wards. We learned in Fourth Wing that Navarre has special wards that suppress all non-dragon magic and protect Navarre from gryphons and dragons. Tragically, the method to create new wards has been lost! But coincidentally, the rebel base in Aretia has an inactive wardstone! It sure would be convenient if Violet could figure out how to create new wards...if only the knowledge hadn't been lost for 600 years...
So Jesinia is helping Violet research wards, and Violet is going for fun little runs with Imogen and angsting over having to distance herself from her friends and not being able to tell them about the ongoing wyvern/rebellion situation. I liked Imogen a lot in this part of the book because Violet kind of tries to confide in her and Imogen is like “Stop it. We’re not friends. Go confide in your actual friends. I don’t actually like you.” Slay for Imogen. I like that she's not villainized for not liking Violet. I don’t particularly like Violet either.
Violet is also trying to train up her shielding abilities so that she'll be able to protect herself from Dain's memory-reading, but don't worry too much about this plot line, because it totally fizzles out and is mostly only important as a way for Xaden and Violet to have a bunch of conversations about how her shields are down, she needs to improve her shields, blah blah blah.
All this leads to a heist where everybody breaks into the royal archives to steal two journals written by the earliest dragon riders, so that Violet can keep researching wards. (She ended up telling her friends about the ongoing wyvern/rebellion situation, and Xaden got mad about it). This marks the one time Aaric is plot-relevant, if you were curious! He's the only one who can get them into the royal archives because he's part of the royal family. Sure, why not.
Unfortunately, his one plot-relevant scene also reveals that his personality is kind of insufferable. But I'm holding out hope that he might be interesting later, so I'll blame this on the fact that he was pissy about having to be around Xaden. You see, Xaden killed Aaric's older brother. Whenever Rebecca wants characters to have interpersonal conflict, she makes someone blame someone else for the death of their brother. Someday, we will have to do a headcount of how many brothers are killed in these books.
Anyway, the heist is a success, but alas! Violet is caught with one of the journals, and gets interrogated! How is she caught, you ask? Someone hands her a drink, and she drinks it. I'm not kidding when I say that literally every drink someone hands her in this book is drugged.
Next comes a torture sequence. I haven't mentioned the character of Varrish before this, because I find him annoying and kind of irrelevant, but he spearheads the "torture Violet" effort. By the way, Violet is "hallucinating" seeing Liam during the torture sequence. I don't even know why I'm mentioning this, because it's definitely irrelevant. :) I'm sure it's not foreshadowing, or some kind of hint towards Violet's second signet. :) It's just a silly little coincidence that Liam said he was sent by the god of death to hang out with Violet. :)
Anyway, Dain finds out about the wyvern situation (Violet bravely decides to show him her memories from the last book instead of trying to shield him out) and decides to defect. But he can't have all the glory, or really any of it, so immediately after this Xaden shows up to save the day. And then Violet's mom also shows up and says some BS about how no one understands what she, as a mother, would do to protect her children, and everything she's done was actually to prevent Violet from getting killed in Scribe college for knowing to much. I personally find this to be kind of a weak excuse for forcing your disabled daughter to attend a super ableist murder college with only six months of training, but who cares what I think, am I right?
Oh, and then they call a formation and for some reason half of the riders’ quadrant and several professors decide to defect and join the rebellion, and they all go to the rebel base at Aretia together, except for Violet's mom. Why? Just because. Xaden made a little speechy-speech! It was apparently very convincing!
Also, all of this was made possible by Xaden distracting the entire military leadership by dropping off a bunch of wyvern carcasses at outposts to make it harder for them to cover up the existence of wyverns. I don't know why the rebellion hasn't tried that before, if it worked so well this time. Don't ask questions.
This is where part 2 begins. Yeah, sorry, that was only half of this stupid book. Part 2 is still about wards (remember the wards???!), but it’s also about gryphon fliers and a new, only slightly evolved type of conflict between Xaden and Violet. Violet has conceded that she loves Xaden, and Xaden has conceded that he should share some information, and they have conceded that they will have a lot of sex from now on. But Xaden also insists on Violet “asking the right questions” before he will tell her anything, instead of him volunteering literally any information. Violet points out several times that this is unfair, because he has all the info and she’s expected to Just Know how to ask about things that she doesn’t even know exist. But don't worry. Xaden says that she’s smart enough the right questions to ask, and if she won't ask them, it's because deep down, she's holding HERSELF back! Now that's what I call a communication king.
Anyway, if you’re wondering what life is like at Aretia, the answer is that it’s a lot like Basgiath. Exactly like Basgiath. Except there’s like, slightly less death. They have Battle Brief (the only class we ever get to see, much to my dismay and irritation) they have a death roll, they have physics class…It’s the same. Admittedly, there are also more gryphons than at Basgiath, because Violet goes to Poromiel (gryphon country) to get a luminary (which I for real thought was a person but is actually just a big metal arch thing) that they need in order to make more weapons, and she comes back with 100 gyphon fliers (this was part of the luminary deal). And hey, one of them is Xaden’s evil, evil ex, Catriona!
Okay, so Catriona isn’t technically evil. But My God. The only reason she’s in this book is to taunt Violet over her past relationship with Xaden and try to win Xaden back from Violet. Catriona does things like showing up to Xaden's room in skimpy transparent outfits or messing with Violet's head to try and make Violet insane with jealousy while they spar. But then, after literally asking Violet if it bothers her that she (Catriona) knows how Xaden tastes, when Violet claps back by saying that Xaden loves her and not Catriona, Catriona clarifies that she actually doesn’t love Xaden. No, no, she only wants his CROWN. Xaden is technically sort of kind of the heir to the dukedom of Tyrrendor, and Catriona was betrothed to him at one point, so actually, this isn’t two women fighting over a man! It’s one woman wanting power! It’s not catty, it’s not girl hate, and if you think Catriona is a shallowly-written character who exists to fight with Violet over Xaden, YOU’RE actually the unfeminist one. So keep that in mind.
Anyway, after this Xaden eats out Violet on a throne and refuses to get off himself (even though it apparently and concerningly physically pains him not to do so) to "prove" that he doesn't just want her for her body. If you ask me, Xaden demonstrating that he likes Violet for Literally Anything about her personality would be a better way to demonstrate this point, but no, instead we have to sit through a sex scene where we are jumpscared by Xaden accidentally sending his horny thoughts about eating out Violet TO Violet during it all. It was...unfun.
Dain also gets a minute redemption arc. I say minute because I'm not sure it ever actually lasts for more than one scene in a row. He turns on the establishment and helps save Violet from torture at Basgiath, but whenever Xaden's around, we're sure to point out how lame and un-charismatic Dain is in comparison. He and Violet have a little heart-to-heart during journal translation (the journals for figuring out the wards, you will recall) and he apologizes for being controlling during the events of Fourth Wing instead of realizing she had changed. But then in the very next scene, she decides she can’t tell him about her journal translation breakthrough because he’s a RULE-FOLLOWER who never considers ethics. So he didn't consider ethics over rules when he decided to help her instead of going along with torture, Violet?
In summary, Dain is whatever the story needs him to be in any given scene. If we need someone to make fun of, we will mock his rule following tendencies. But if we need him to betray Navarre or reconcile with Violet, he will also do those things. Who cares! It’s Dain! That lame-o rule-follower! I find myself in the unfortunate position of being obliged to like Dain because Rebecca Yarros puts such transparent effort into making me dislike him.
Anyway, we thought he was Tamlin, but he’s actually more of a Chaol/Lucien, so if you need SJM analogues to understand the dynamics here, that’s what we’re working with.
We also eventually find out that Xaden, big spoiler, has a second signet. How does that happen? Well, a side character (I think it's Sloane) casually mentions that dragons aren't allowed to bond with riders who are directly descended from their previous riders, because they'll either go crazy (for some reason) or develop two signets (for some reason). Violet gasps, thinks That can't be! But that would mean... and goes to confront Xaden about it. I forgot about this, but apparently Xaden's grandfather was bonded to Sgaeyl before he was, and he's not insane, so he must have a second signet. Next, we're treated to a truly cringy guessing game where she tries to figure out his second signet. It's giving "How long have you been seventeen?"
Oh, and his second signet? That’s right, it’s mind reading. Or intention reading, because that’s…different…somehow. We don't know how, but it is apparently different. He’s not beating the Rhysand knock-off allegations any time soon, I fear. Anyway, remember all the times in the first book when Violet’s scalp tingled in response to Xaden’s presence? That was him reading her intentions. It was all foreshadowing, you guys.
Speaking of, I went back and looked through all the instances of scalp tingles in Fourth Wing, and I honestly don't feel like all of them make sense as moments when Xaden is reading Violet's intentions. Most of the time, it reads more like Violet has some weird supernatural to sense Xaden's presence via scalp tingles. Also, Xaden claims in this book that after a certain point, he never read Violet's intentions again on purpose. I guess this is to cover a couple of bases. One, this makes it so that Xaden definitely isn't the same as Dain and totally was not violating the sanctity of Violet's private thoughts and feelings. Second, this allows us to handwave all scalp tingles that occur AFTER the point when Xaden supposedly stopped reading Violet as accidental reads that aren't his fault or responsibility. How convenient!
Xaden having mind reading abilities makes his “ask me the right questions and I’ll tell you the answers” stance arguably even more manipulative, since he has even MORE information than we’re lead to believe. Plus, Xaden's arguments that Violet should trust him despite the amount of knowledge he constantly withholds feel even more empty. It also makes the double standard between him and Dain even more apparent, since when Dain read Violet's memories, she feels super violated and talks about it in terms of Dain stealing from her. But learning that Xaden used his signet to read her intentions a ton of times just makes Violet go "Omg...so you knew I wanted to kiss you that one time?!!" which really downplays the severity of it all. When Xaden is being controlling and Violet is annoyed about it, she'll tell him he's acting like Dain, but then Xaden justifies it by saying it's because he loves her and he's given a lot more grace than Dain ever is for the exact same controlling behavoir. But whatever. He ate Violet out on a throne one time, so he’s a total dreamboat.
Remember the wards? Yeah, me neither. So after poring over the super old journal for many, many chapters, Violet comes to the brilliant conclusion that they can create new wards at Aretia by having one dragon of each of the six different colors breathe fire at the Aretia wardstone. This is not correct, but it’s almost correct, and the resulting wards are in fact semi-functional and do kill/incapacitate wyvern.
I find this wild. Six hundred years, and no one tried having six dragons breathe fire at a wardstone to see if it would make new wards? Surely even partially functional wards are better than nothing? How dumb are these people?
Anyway, in the lead-up to the final battle with a bazillion wyverns (we all saw it coming), Violet's mother gives the second journal back to Violet (the one that was taken away when Violet got tortured) and Jesinia begins translating it. Unfortunately, immediately before the battle begins, we are faced with a huge and irreconcilable difference between the two ward journals. That’s right, one of them says “the six and the one” and one of them says “the seven.” How can this be? It’s impossible! It’s not as if six plus one equals seven!
Okay, fine, the real reason Violet is shocked and appalled by the whole seven thing is that there are supposedly only 6 breeds of dragons, so where are they supposed to get a seventh kind of dragon from? It’s too bad she’s not a super special chosen one who’s already bonded to a super special dragon who represents the seventh species…oh, wait!
Yeah, Andarna is the seventh kind of dragon, and she can change colors at will. Like an octopus or something. This reveal comes on the heels of hundreds of pages of Violet noticing things like “Wow, Andarna’s black scales have sort of a greenish shimmer to them…I’m sure it’s just the light, though” or “Andarna’s scales still look a little bit gold. I’m sure that’ll fade soon, though.” To say that it was kind of incredibly obvious is, well, an understatement.
We now must talk about Jack Barlowe again. This is his big moment to be plot-relevant, because the final battle requires everyone to go back to Basgiath, where Navarre's singular functioning wardstone is, and also where Jack Barlowe is, because he did not defect to Aretia. He shows up, reveals that he has been venin this whole time, kills his own dragon, and breaks the wardstone. By the way, they don't re-kill him after this, for some reason. He just gets sedated. I can only assume he's plot-relevant in the next book and needed to be preserved.
After Violet figures out that Andarna is the seventh kind of dragon, they still need to re-prime the wardstone with channeling, so Violet nearly kills herself trying to prime it solo. Why does she do this? For drama, and because she's stupid. Before she can literally kill herself trying to be all heroic, her mom spin-kicks her away from the wardstone and orders Sloane to help her (Violet's mom) sacrifice herself instead. I didn't mention it, because I couldn't be bothered, but Sloane's signet is siphoning, which means she can suck power out of Violet's mom and put it in the wardstone. Before you ask why Violet's mom can't just channel the power into the ward stone herself, I don't know. I guess it's more dramatic this way because Violet's mom convinces Sloane to do it by reminding her that she's responsible for the deaths of Sloane's parents.
So with the help of Andarna and Violet's totally heroic and non-evil mom (RIP the fan theories), the wards are restored, the wyvern are defeated, and, what’s that? Xaden turned venin because the head venin manipulated him into channeling from the source while he thought Violet was dying? He's going to Jack's prison cell to ask how he can go un-venin, but there's no going back?? Gosh, I guess we'd better read the next book to see how that all turns out!
Just kidding. Don't read the next book. I probably will, but you shouldn't. I'll tell you all about it, I promise, but you shouldn't read it.
Wow. This book was really long. It felt like two long, meandering books stapled together to make an even longer and more meandering mess. But I did read it for the discourse, and oh boy are we discoursing.
Thanks for making it this far, if you did, and please do not read Iron Flame. Please. I tried so hard to make this summary painless in comparison. You do not need to read it.
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