BookLife Dual Review by Carol O’Day: Fourth Wing and Iron Flame (Rebecca Yarros, author)
Fantasy series, alternate world, dragons, warriors, healers, scribes, infantry, young female heroine, steamy love story, sexually explicit, graphic violence, torture, rivalry, betrayal, family secrets
As an avid reader and reviewer of books, I try to stretch and read books outside of the genres which most often draw my attention. Fantasy is an unusual choice for me. In Fourth Wing, and its sequel Iron Flame, Rebecca Yarros imagines an entirely different world, neither pre-modern nor post-modern but fantastically alternate. To embrace these books fully, hang your attachment to reality on a hook by the door and hunker down for riding on dragons, defending borders, swords and daggers, and lots and lots of death, violence and sex.
We enter the world of Navarre and Basgiath War College through our heroine, Violet Sorrengail. Violet is the third and youngest child of General Sorrengail, one of the leaders of the realm. Basgiath is the hub of the realm and the training ground for its universe. Entrants volunteer for a Quadrant-Riders (warriors who ride dragons), Scribes (librarian/historians), Healers or Infantry. Violet is petite, frail and bookish. Her deceased father was a head Scribe and she has studied her whole life to follow in her footsteps. Her mother, General Sorrengail, has other ideas and directs her to the Rider Quadrant. Most volunteers to the Rider Quadrant do not survive training. If they do survive, they have the chance to bond with a dragon (dragon’s choice) and ride them in Navarre’s defense. Violet’s older sister, Mira, is a Rider and her brother, Brennan was a Rider with mending (healing) powers, who died in an earlier battle.
There is a complex series of trainings that Riders must complete, and survive, to qualify for further training-a deathly walk across a narrow parapet, hand-to-hand combat challenges, demonstrations of weakness that are cause for death by dragon fire, and death by Gauntlet, falling from the treacherous mountainside obstacle course. Rider training death rate is greater than 50%. Violet astonishes everyone at the college and survives. She also bonds with not one but two powerful dragons. In the course of her training, she catches the eye of Xaden, the third-year wingleader Rider. Xaden is the son of one of the former leaders of the rebellion. He and 107 progeny of the rebels are marked with tattoos and survived the rebellion by forced conscription to the Rider quadrant. The rebellion parents were all executed, at the hand of General Sorrengail, so they have axes to grind with Violet. Violet and Xaden’s is a case of intense mutual attraction, despite the animosity.
Violet rises in the esteem of others as she becomes more proficient at her skills and with her dragons. She forms strong bonds with her squad members. Xaden becomes her protector, despite her protests. Their relationship is steamy and sexually explicit, bordering on smutty. Violet is a student of the realm’s history and over time learns uncovers anomalies and evil lurking within Navarre’s hierarchy and finds herself aligning with the rebels.
Iron Flame is more of the same. Violet, Xaden and eventually Violet’s inner circle continue their quest for justice on behalf of civilians in far-flung territories not currently protected by the realm, including civilians in the land of the rebels. The sequel takes the reader outside Basgiath College into the hinterlands, into battle with more fantastical creatures, gryphons (half lion, half eagle), wyvern (less powerful two-legged dragons) and venin (evil dark wielders of ill-gotten magic). The existence of these creatures and realms were previously hidden from the cadets at Basgiath in a Hobbesian calculation of utility, doing the best possible for the most possible and accepting that some innocents will go unprotected. Violet, Xaden and their colleagues are dissatisfied with this philosophy and extend the rebellion to save more innocents.
Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are fun, albeit graphic, reads. They are not for the faint of heart. They ooze with violence, some random and sudden, some in a good vs. evil context portrayed as justified, as well as torture, and all fairly graphic. The novels also rely heavily, perhaps too much so, on the explicit and fiery sexual relationship between Violet and Xaden, which by the middle of the second novel becomes a bit tedious and repetitive. The second novel introduces new versions of evil creatures, and an entire cadre of new characters-- the fliers of the gryphons. The fliers are the outer territories’ version of Riders, though less powerful. They are not bonded to the all-powerful dragons, but to the less powerful gryphons.. Nonetheless, the introduction of the fliers in the territories presents a new source of competition and tension for the novel’s storyline. It includes a flier, Catriona, who has a past romantic interest in Xaden, and therefore, a special hatred of Violet.
As an infrequent reader of fantasy novels, I was pleasantly surprised by how engaged I was in Fourth Wing. Yarros’ creativity is immense. Admittedly, the novel has some echoes of Harry Potter and Hogwarts, but on a young-ish adult or twenty-something level. The made-up and magical world of Basgiath, the eye-popping hazards Riders must overcome to survive, the dripping sexual attraction and tension and the anthropomorphized, sentient dragons with whom the Riders can communicate telepathically weave a fantastical world in which a reader can get lost for a few hundred pages. Yarros second installment, Iron Flame, is mostly more of the same. With a now-established passionate affair and life-bond between Violet and Xaden, and their dragons, the author seems to artificially create relationship conflicts that seem a bit artificial and designed for plot movement alone. In addition, there is less novelty in the second book, despite the new creatures and lesser rider/fliers introduced. Fans of fantasy fiction will no doubt devour these books and will leap to Onyx Storm, the third in the series, when they turn the final page of Iron Flame. This series of books would make a great holiday gift for fans of Dungeons and Dragons or (sophisticated) young adults or twenty-somethings who enjoy fantasy fiction. While I may not make that leap, I am glad I took this flight of fantasy and met a dragon or two.
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