Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros Book Club

Hi all!

With the re-launch of my good ol' book blog, I've been giving a lot of thought to the types of books coverage I want to host here. There are the classic, straightforward dedicated reviews—my bread and butter. The search engine bait of the listicle, brought to you by my experience in so-called service journalism, in which SEO is king.

In brainstorming, my web developer and I gave a lot of thought to little tricks and features we could build into Words Like Silver that would make it a joy to read and maintain, plus honor the way my brain works. I wanted it to feel like a scrapbook or notebook I scribbled in naturally, cranking out more content that matched my brain better. I tend to word-vomit on my Instagram stories, and this felt like an apt comparison: a sleek, elevated version of the discussions. What would make me take my thoughts here first rather than to social media? Enter: the spoiler tabs.

I want to be able to "book club" various books and spark conversation from those who have read the book I'm chatting about. Which meant I wanted a way to visually set aside spoilers from regular content. I suggested having a blacked out highlight that readers could click on to receive the spoiler, and then I thought about how funny it might be to host a "blackout and blackout" book club playing on the stereotype of book clubs being an excuse to just drink wine. (I don't drink heavily enough to reach that point, but let the name stand, y'all!)

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Enter: Blackout & Blackout, the format for the on-site book club. Essentially, for books I want to dissect rather than review, I'll just list out a whole bunch of spoilers blacked out in a review, then provide a cheeky wine or drink pairing. No date, no deadline, no anything. I may announce titles ahead of time, or I may just drop a post like this. I'd love you to discuss these with me.

Warning: Iron Flame is the sequel to Fourth Wing, so it will have spoilers for the first book. Proceed at your own risk.

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

“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

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.

Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.



Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.

But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.

Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.

My Overall Review

Admittedly, I loved Fourth Wing. I wouldn't consider myself a big "romantasy" person, as I have to be in the right mood for them and the fixtures of the genre tend to blur together for me; after a while, most romantasy books tend to feel very similar to me and run together, which is purely a facet of my personal taste and not a testament to their quality.

When I do read them, I read for escapism, so I was one of the many who read Fourth Wing and was absolutely swept away. I bought the sequel the day it came out, of course, feeling the collective, electric zing of being part of the masses all clamoring to discuss what would happen in the second book.

Admittedly, I thought the sequel was still great and fun, but had a lot of plot holes that made me feel like there was a significant dip in quality between books one and two. Still loved, still couldn't put it down until I finished!, but did think a lot of it either felt overly familiar from other books, circular, or even like it was overly stretched out. The publishers are capitalizing on its popularity in a planned five-book series, and I don't think anybody really expected the sheer mass of public obsession the first book sparked. I think Yarros said she drafted the sequel in a month? Which, all writers are different and fast-drafting is not necessarily bad, but I could tell this one wasn't as clean, tight, or engaging as the previous. Still, it was a good time. I'll read the third obviously, but hope it's given a bit more care.

Now for some specifics.

Read on for the book club specifics:

• Frankly, the ending is straight out of the Vampire Academy playbook. Xaden going dark was oh-so-predictable, but I do love that Yarros knows how to end on an absolute banger of a twist.
• I'm still confused as to why they'd let so many dragon kiddos die only to "work on" Jack to come back evil? Like, the motivation of that plotline made absolutely zero sense and was so convoluted.
• On that note: why would Jack save her from assassins? I felt like character motivation was totally thrown out the window in this sequel, with people doing things just because it was convenient for plot and not because they actually made sense.
• I'm sorry, but Andarna secretly being a rare purple dragon is so dumb.
• Similarly, all this emphasis on the evil leadership not seeing her because baby dragons are supposed to be secret, only for every single war college student to be perfectly fine being around her later with no mentioned problems? If you're going to make a secret "species-ending" important, keep the secrecy consistent.
• A lot of people hated that the conflict was always "Xaden keeps secrets" and then the two main characters banging until they're fine again, then getting frustrated by him keeping secrets? Wow, never seen that pattern before.

etc,. etc,.