”A dragon without its Rider is a tragedy, A Rider without its dragon is dead.”
A week ago, I wrote a review on the first book in the The Empyrean Series, Fourth Wing. You can check it out here
if you missed it.
Like I said in the previous review, I have heard alot of good reviews about this series so I decided to read it and I don't not regret my decision on reading this series. The only thing I wish I had done before reading this series is that I should have waited till the whole series was completely published, which is five books. I should have waited, I should have waited! Because right, I feel sad, empty, anxious to read what happens next now that I have finished reading the second. I am hungover from this series because I don't know what to read next and I don't know which book I should read to make me forget this series temporarily until the next book is released.
Well the damage has been done already. There is no going back, I wish I could regardless.
The Empyrean Series is my first book about dragons. After reading the two books in this series, I have come to the conclusion that I love books centered around dragon creatures. I will be reading more about dragon stories by different authors. I really need to explore this aspect of literature. It was interesting, intriguing, thrilling and superb. In the end, I might get addicted to this aspect of fantasy.
Series: The Empyrean
Book: Two
Title: Iron Flame
Pages: 624
Published: November 2023
Little About The Synopsis.
“The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.” —Xaden Riorson
Violent Sorrengail now has survived the first year in Basgiath college regardless of the odds against her. Now here comes the challenge, the second year which entails more training and series of tests to make riders become real dragons, have control over their bond with their dragons, and have control over the power bestowed on them from their dragons.
On the other hand, Violent now knows the secret that their superiors have hidden away from the citizens and riders for over six hundred years. Now, a great war is brewing and coming with its might. A war that will shatter their reality they have known all their lives. A war that will unveil secrets that have been buried for decades and unveil their true enemies. Violent knows that the war that is coming can not be won by fire or powers of the dragons except by one thing that remains hidden and lost in timeline. What is that thing? It is unknown, it is a power but unknown?
My Review And Rating.
Reading ’Fourth Wing’, the first book in the series, I experienced a thrilling, twisty, and unexpectedly heartfelt plot. The writing was simple, easy to understand though with lots of grammatical errors. The word building was amazing, I will give Yarros that, and the characters were well built. However, in the aspect of ’Iron Flame’, I thought there would be more improvement. Like in the aspect of more complexity added to the plot, better dialogues and a new dynamic storytelling.
Let's get into the review. The plot was well written, fully packed with mystery that are yet to unveil, lots of twists and turns. Iron Flame contains more action than fourth wing for me. The plot included a lot of problems that I feel were unnecessary just to further frustrated the readers and make the story longer. The romance aspect was written but it was still unbalanced. I feel this is a big problem authors have when writing enemies to lovers trope, they always fail in letting the relationship survive in peace, it has to be chaotic or toxic.
Tairn
The female character (Violent Sorrengail) was more annoying in this second book, I literally felt like pulling her out of the book to deal with her. She doesn't have her shit together, she takes a step forward and later takes ten steps back. From. Progress to regression. At one point, I was really exhausted with her.
Sgaeyl
My favorite character are the dragons(Tairn, Sgaeyl, Andarna), Ridoc (the comic relief), Liam (oh this character made literally cry), Sawyer, Rhiannon (Violent's best friend).
Andarna
In the plot, we get to read about the trust issue Violent and Xaden have between each other for about 500 pages or more. Xaden not opening up to Violet and her not trusting him. I wanted to throw my iPad across the room, but then I remembered how valuable my iPad is to me. Their relationship was chaotic, there was no peace, it was always one thing or the other. There were many days of fighting and little days of happy moments. I was feeling drained for both of them.
The storytelling was okay, but not impressive for me, I wished Xaden had more POV but the whole story was told from Violent’s silly POV, except for last chapter which was dedicated to Xaden.
The dialogues were cheesy, cliché and childish . Some popular slang words were included in the dialogues which defeats the timeline of the story which 600 AU. I feel the book was rushed to publish because Yarros wanted to capitalize on the fervor surrounding Fourth Wing. If the two books were published at the appropriate time, it would have been a masterpiece like the likes of Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings and the rest.
The ending was excellently written, the war, the cliffhanger was superb. Yarros did well at the end and left her reader with so many questions in their mind. Hence why I am hungover, I need to move on but I can't. The ending left me speechless and for minutes I was just staring at my ceiling with nothing to actually say.
Rating this book, I will give it 4 out of 5 stars. I prefer the Fourth Wing more to Iron Flame. I hope Yarros takes her time to write the third book well, edit well and also tie up the loose ends she left in the first and second book. I enjoyed this book regardless. If you haven't read this series I urge you to add it to your read list and wait for it to be complete to read or better still start reading immediately.
All images above are from my E-library
Other image created with Nightcafe AI using prompts from the book.
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