Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - Iron Flame - Flammengeküsst

The first book was so much fun and well thought out. We all loved the theories and guesses about what was coming next. Iron Flame only delivered partially.

The story itself was engaging about a third of the way through. The first third was just excruciating watching our loved characters just be miserable.

The relationship conflicts were confusing and unnecessary, easily solved if given one rational conversation. These aren’t teens, so why are they acting so broody and immature? We expect better from them.

The ending felt more like an attention grabber than a plot twist. It just made me disengage from the story for how left field it was.

And lastly, the publisher really messed up on the delivery of this book. Not only did it have a slew of misprints, but there were dozens of typos and the grammar in some places was horrible. Not to mention the cheesy lines and nonsense derailments. They rushed this big time and the quality tanked because of it.

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skillyillian's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

spoilers ahead.

idk, y'all. i was so excited for this but i think i have just lost patience for violet, xaden, and their relationship. the side characters, specifically iron squad, were more fun and i enjoyed their scenes more than most of the violet + xaden ones. rhiannon and ridoc are my favorites. i wish sloane and jesinia got more time being present, but at the same time this book was long enough to begin with. other things took priority that i don't think needed to.

the longer the book went on the more annoying violet and xaden became. if you cut out all of the unnecessary drama and secrets the book would be like two hundred pages shorter.

like there's miscommunication trope and then there's whatever the fuck that mess was. every time they spoke to each other it was "i don't trust you" and then "you're not asking the right questions" like holy fuck dude you can't know what you don't know so just be honest if you want her to trust you ffs. don't be such a spiteful pissbaby about her not trusting you if you're not giving her reasons to believe anything you say. good god.

Also, what's the deal with their relationship being almost entirely physical???? either one of them walks in a room and they're both immediately drooling. violet only ever thinks about getting to know xaden when she realizes he's hiding things. i don't remember xaden literally ever, maybe even in fourth wing, asking violet a single thing about her. they're just being horny, but also still willing to risk the entire world for each other, to an irritating degree.

and what's up with violet being so dumb, for someone who is supposedly the smartest person at the whole school??

she sees the symbols in warrick's journal and is like "ah yes, the six and the one" but doesn't think about what that means at all and only does the initial wards with six dragons. and then when jesinia is like "yo, that's just a seven, you clown" she's completely mind blown and "how could i have missed this?" like yeah that's actually an excellent question. it's almost like she needed to not figure it out for like 200 pages so the solution at the end was more impactful.

not only this but all of the logical, analytical traits she was originally written with are just gone. she doesn't think anything through, she takes unnecessary risks that don't fit her character, and she can't find any control with her magic until the very end. it's one of those things where the MC struggles so badly until the very end and then they almost never miss, but if they do, it's by inches bc the enemy moved so through no fault of their own.

the MCs feel like yarros forgot who they are and rewrote them for the sake of finding ways to keep tension between them. and cat? jesus christ don't even get me started. i did NOT like that. that was so fucking ick. good god.

idk. there's a lot of other logic flaws that just didn't need to be included. this book felt too long and some of the pacing was kind of weird. things would be brought up and then forgotten for actual months of the story, despite seeming urgent when it first happens. i had moments where i was fist pumping, cheering, laughing, or crying, and then some moments where i didn't understand why we needed to know about what was happening, or what happened to the earlier stuff that seemed so important.

It also feels like yarros just took from the most popular romantasies and kinda plopped in a lot of those stereotypes. this book feels like it was written more to sell to market instead of to tell a story, if that makes sense. idk. a lot of hype for something that feels like it ended up falling flat in more ways than one. my score is the way it is ONLY for the moments i loved that were enough to bring it up. if it weren't for the rest of iron squad, i'd have probably only given it 3 stars.

i'll probably keep reading the series but i'm not as impressed as i was the first time i read fourth wing. (and i did a reread before the iron flame drop and i think i'll be changing my review)

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keelirae113's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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oldladysadie's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

What the fuck did I just read. I can’t wait to read it again. What a wild. Fucking. Ride.

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readwithria's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

HOLY SHIT

Iron Flame took the world that was established in Fourth Wing and fucking ran with it. I didn’t see this story coming, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

This is going to be plot spoiler free, but if you don’t like emotional spoilers you should stop reading here.

The character development not just of Violet, but if so many other characters was great. Second Squad, Flame Section, Fourth Wing is some good ass found family. I love them with my whole heart. And there were some other surprise characters that really stood out in this book for reasons I wasn’t expecting! Especially around the end of part one.

Speaking of, the transition from part one to part two was NOT on my bingo card. I had no clue that was coming! Definitely a good development for the series.

There were one or two twists that I saw coming, but in a good way! I felt like I was learning things as Violet did, which means that the information was laid out in a way that was realistic and didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. I love learning with the characters!

The end of this book hurt me so much, but it left me excited to see what comes next! 5 stars

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