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A review by leahjanespeare
Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
adventurous
slow-paced
2.0
All right girlies buckle up. If you like this book you're gonna have to stop right now because I don't want to be responsible for your tears that my words will bring to your eyes.
This will be very spoilery, so shoo if you don't wanna know shit.
Quality: 1 star
Enjoyment: 2.5 stars (a whole star was for just the second half)
Okay I am not sure really where to start, so I will complain first, and maybe add some things I liked at the end.
Alternate titles that would have been as equally - if not more - fitting as Iron Flame:
- Iron Trash
- Flaming Trash
- Trash Flame
- "You didn't tell me!" "You didn't ask!" A Bad-Communication Romantasy
The romance: Violet and Xaden's romance started off okay in Fourth Wing, not my fav. Despite the fact that it was never even enemies-to-lovers...but I digress. Now it's become even more toxic and annoying. Mostly for the first half of the book her comments were insufferable. She was the only one in her way. Okay, you could argue that shadow zaddy should have told you about all these secrets....sure, if you didn't care about the security of your whole continent. Priorities I guess.
Tagging onto that, the sex scenes were horrible. They were weird, and not sexy and I don't know, I just didn't care for them at all. And the fact that Violet gets into a super bad sparring fistfight thing that precedes one of these intense furniture-smashing sex encounters...WITH A CHRONIC PAIN DISABILITY....just no. That is plain insensitive to any character-consistencies.
Might as well tackle the disability aspect while we're over here. Now, I do not have EDS. Yarros says she has EDS, and says that is what Violet has too, I think. I do have RA which is, from what I understand of EDS, a very different kind of chronic illness and associating chronic pain. And everyone's experience with a disability is different, even within the same disability. That is my disclaimer before these harsh opinions:
-If you are going to give your character a disability, please commit and actually make it happen, not just allude to it. Otherwise it's disability-baiting (like queerbaiting?) and it can seem like you just want it in there for attention.
-please preface the book acknowledging this disability and the range of experiences it can encompass
-I already ranted in my review of Fourth Wing. So my expansion to that is now, why did Violet barely seem to mention her pain, especially after a physically demanding encounter of any sort?
-WHY DID YOU WRITE A ROUGH SEX SCENE AFTER SHE GETS BEAT UP AND STILL HAVE HER NOT MENTION HER PAIN?????
-My stance on pain is still very much 'don't push through it, listen to your body's limits' while Violet's is 100% Push Through the Pain. And I personally think that is a very toxic way to think. I do not like that rhetoric.
-I'm sure responses to this disability rep are very varied, but I haven't seen a lot in general so I am not actually sure.
(A fantastic book that features a character with EDS is Fight + Flight by Jules Machias. Freaking love that book.)
Side Characters: -Dain: Suddenly he's not that horrible anymore? Okay? I'm all for a redemption arc, but not a random redemption flip. When he saved her from the interrogation (don't get me started on that) I was like huh okay. Weird. And then he continued to basically hang with the main crew for the rest of the book?? I can't deal with this character-motive inconsistency.
-Rhi: She was actually the least annoying character in the entire book and that was interesting. But it also felt like she was a different character than in the first. I'm not sure. But Violent should have started trusting her a long time ago....hang on do you see what I did there. hahaha.
-Cat: Becca, why why why do you feel the need to introduce a rival love interest/past interest. And Violent is all "I shouldn't care that she's so pretty and I'm not but I DOO '' and I just have no time for Violent's whiny ass. But also it's suddenly revealed that Cat and Xaden were betrothed and it was said so briefly and randomly I had to rewind to confirm I heard that right? Seems like a weird place to fit in very important information?? And then yet again, it faded to the background but I don't remember Violet getting over this newsflash.
-that's actually all of the side characters I remember hahahaha
Speaking of Violet, I feel like her character growth drastically backpedaled from the first book. Did she get more annoying? More whiny? More insecure? Why? How did this serve the plot? Oh wait, that's because there is no discernable plot.
The AMOUNT of times the word fuck was used was just as unhinged as the first book because like I've said countless time The. More. You. Use. It. Its. Efficacy. Is. Lost. The. More. You. Fucking. Use. It. Its. Fucking. Efficacy. Is. Fucking. Lost. (See? See how much worse that full-stop-filled sentence becomes when I put those in?) (Yarros also loves those but since I listened to the book this time I thankfully didn't get caught up in it again.) And while there is a time and a place for swearing (which is often, if you're me), it is not while comforting someone when their parent dies. That made me physically recoil: "I'm so fucking sorry." No, do not use that while she's grieving. ew. no.
The use of the word 'armoire' is too much: A reason we have copyeditors: they find things like this and tell the author, wow you are really attached to this word maybe you shouldn't use it 30 times [awaiting ebook copy so I can confirm how many times she used it]. It was 29 more times than she should have used it.
Now some more bigger real-world political aspects regarding the author herself cannot be ignored. A few of my favorite authors have gone the neutral/silent stance recently too so my own fandoms are affected, not just Yarros. And if you are a real hardcore fan it will probably break your heart in some capacity when these things happen. (most millenials can already relate to this loss if we idolized the Terfling's words growing up and now have to wish her a fiery death.)
But no Becca, you can't get annoyed at people asking your stance on the genocide happening, annoyed at their outrage, and then retract that with 'I care about all children's lives!" That's not enough these days. Oh and then turn comments off of that post to disallow discourse. No. I don't want to get too into it because I didn't see too much firsthand, but please do your research.
And then her appropriation of the Scottish Gaelic language. It's one thing to maybe slightly ignorantly copy stuff from a language for your fantasy book. But it's another to first: copy exact words and not change them at all, and to second: follow that up with digging your heels in, saying no I prefer to pronounce it THIS way, and not apologize for using a language ignorantly, that had been systemically stamped out by the British Empire. It is now considered 'definitely endangered' language by UNESCO since only about 1% of the population speaks it. I would have saved a modicum of respect for Becca if she learned from the outrage and didn't double down on her stance. But alas.
This book was 200 pages longer than it needed to be.
Okay things I liked? Oh hm I said I was gonna do that didn't I.
I liked the dragons, they're pretty cool.
This will be very spoilery, so shoo if you don't wanna know shit.
Quality: 1 star
Enjoyment: 2.5 stars (a whole star was for just the second half)
Okay I am not sure really where to start, so I will complain first, and maybe add some things I liked at the end.
Alternate titles that would have been as equally - if not more - fitting as Iron Flame:
- Iron Trash
- Flaming Trash
- Trash Flame
- "You didn't tell me!" "You didn't ask!" A Bad-Communication Romantasy
The romance: Violet and Xaden's romance started off okay in Fourth Wing, not my fav. Despite the fact that it was never even enemies-to-lovers...but I digress. Now it's become even more toxic and annoying. Mostly for the first half of the book her comments were insufferable. She was the only one in her way. Okay, you could argue that shadow zaddy should have told you about all these secrets....sure, if you didn't care about the security of your whole continent. Priorities I guess.
Tagging onto that, the sex scenes were horrible. They were weird, and not sexy and I don't know, I just didn't care for them at all. And the fact that Violet gets into a super bad sparring fistfight thing that precedes one of these intense furniture-smashing sex encounters...WITH A CHRONIC PAIN DISABILITY....just no. That is plain insensitive to any character-consistencies.
Might as well tackle the disability aspect while we're over here. Now, I do not have EDS. Yarros says she has EDS, and says that is what Violet has too, I think. I do have RA which is, from what I understand of EDS, a very different kind of chronic illness and associating chronic pain. And everyone's experience with a disability is different, even within the same disability. That is my disclaimer before these harsh opinions:
-If you are going to give your character a disability, please commit and actually make it happen, not just allude to it. Otherwise it's disability-baiting (like queerbaiting?) and it can seem like you just want it in there for attention.
-please preface the book acknowledging this disability and the range of experiences it can encompass
-I already ranted in my review of Fourth Wing. So my expansion to that is now, why did Violet barely seem to mention her pain, especially after a physically demanding encounter of any sort?
-WHY DID YOU WRITE A ROUGH SEX SCENE AFTER SHE GETS BEAT UP AND STILL HAVE HER NOT MENTION HER PAIN?????
-My stance on pain is still very much 'don't push through it, listen to your body's limits' while Violet's is 100% Push Through the Pain. And I personally think that is a very toxic way to think. I do not like that rhetoric.
-I'm sure responses to this disability rep are very varied, but I haven't seen a lot in general so I am not actually sure.
(A fantastic book that features a character with EDS is Fight + Flight by Jules Machias. Freaking love that book.)
Side Characters: -Dain: Suddenly he's not that horrible anymore? Okay? I'm all for a redemption arc, but not a random redemption flip. When he saved her from the interrogation (don't get me started on that) I was like huh okay. Weird. And then he continued to basically hang with the main crew for the rest of the book?? I can't deal with this character-motive inconsistency.
-Rhi: She was actually the least annoying character in the entire book and that was interesting. But it also felt like she was a different character than in the first. I'm not sure. But Violent should have started trusting her a long time ago....hang on do you see what I did there. hahaha.
-Cat: Becca, why why why do you feel the need to introduce a rival love interest/past interest. And Violent is all "I shouldn't care that she's so pretty and I'm not but I DOO '' and I just have no time for Violent's whiny ass. But also it's suddenly revealed that Cat and Xaden were betrothed and it was said so briefly and randomly I had to rewind to confirm I heard that right? Seems like a weird place to fit in very important information?? And then yet again, it faded to the background but I don't remember Violet getting over this newsflash.
-that's actually all of the side characters I remember hahahaha
Speaking of Violet, I feel like her character growth drastically backpedaled from the first book. Did she get more annoying? More whiny? More insecure? Why? How did this serve the plot? Oh wait, that's because there is no discernable plot.
The AMOUNT of times the word fuck was used was just as unhinged as the first book because like I've said countless time The. More. You. Use. It. Its. Efficacy. Is. Lost. The. More. You. Fucking. Use. It. Its. Fucking. Efficacy. Is. Fucking. Lost. (See? See how much worse that full-stop-filled sentence becomes when I put those in?) (Yarros also loves those but since I listened to the book this time I thankfully didn't get caught up in it again.) And while there is a time and a place for swearing (which is often, if you're me), it is not while comforting someone when their parent dies. That made me physically recoil: "I'm so fucking sorry." No, do not use that while she's grieving. ew. no.
The use of the word 'armoire' is too much: A reason we have copyeditors: they find things like this and tell the author, wow you are really attached to this word maybe you shouldn't use it 30 times [awaiting ebook copy so I can confirm how many times she used it]. It was 29 more times than she should have used it.
Now some more bigger real-world political aspects regarding the author herself cannot be ignored. A few of my favorite authors have gone the neutral/silent stance recently too so my own fandoms are affected, not just Yarros. And if you are a real hardcore fan it will probably break your heart in some capacity when these things happen. (most millenials can already relate to this loss if we idolized the Terfling's words growing up and now have to wish her a fiery death.)
But no Becca, you can't get annoyed at people asking your stance on the genocide happening, annoyed at their outrage, and then retract that with 'I care about all children's lives!" That's not enough these days. Oh and then turn comments off of that post to disallow discourse. No. I don't want to get too into it because I didn't see too much firsthand, but please do your research.
And then her appropriation of the Scottish Gaelic language. It's one thing to maybe slightly ignorantly copy stuff from a language for your fantasy book. But it's another to first: copy exact words and not change them at all, and to second: follow that up with digging your heels in, saying no I prefer to pronounce it THIS way, and not apologize for using a language ignorantly, that had been systemically stamped out by the British Empire. It is now considered 'definitely endangered' language by UNESCO since only about 1% of the population speaks it. I would have saved a modicum of respect for Becca if she learned from the outrage and didn't double down on her stance. But alas.
This book was 200 pages longer than it needed to be.
Okay things I liked? Oh hm I said I was gonna do that didn't I.
I liked the dragons, they're pretty cool.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: War, Ableism, and Violence