The second book of the Empyrean trilogy of kids learning to be dragon riders at dragon school.
I've heard Amazon is making a TV series based on these books. It's going to be weird, when whenever protagonist Violet Sorrengail sees lover Xaden, they pause the action so that Violet can lovingly devour every inch of his body. It's a romance, after all, but after awhile it really starts interfering with the fantasy. I think Yarros realizes that, too, as the first half of the second book has Violet constantly fighting with him and being a real bitch. Hard to understand just what it is that Xaden sees in her, to be honest.
But, where he was a strong pillar of mysterious darkness in the first book, in this second book he follows Violet around like a whimpering puppy as Violet comes into her own and uses her twin powers of reading books and calling lightning to dominate any situation that arises.
The book is a page turner, especially since the repetitious sex scenes usually let me turn a few pages for free each chapter. I think it was mentioned in the first book that both men and women riders are given something to temporarily prevent pregnancy, lucky them.
The action picks up toward the end of the book as Yarros builds the action into an all-out war between the villainous Venin and the shaky alliance of dragon and griffon riders. The drastic implications of the outcome of the war are left to resolve in the next book.
Iron Flame suffers from middle book syndrome. Fourth Wing introduced us to Violet, Xaden and dragon school, a deadly, hostile place. Iron Flame resolves most of the situations in the first book just to bring in an entirely new set of complications. Onyx Storm, which came out just this year, should wrap up the plot in short order, as the books so far have followed Violet on her first and second year at dragon school. Onyx Storm should be the third year, and graduation, if the pattern follows.
If we were mapping these books to the Harry Potter series (and why wouldn't you?), Fourth Wing would map to Philosopher's Stone and Iron Flame to Order of the Phoenix. Onyx Storm almost has to concern itself with the surprise complication introduced in the last pages of Iron Flame, and I expect through that that we'll learn a lot more about the backstory of the bad guy venin. I wouldn't be shocked if Yarros changes the viewpoint character to one of the bad guys, but that would stop her from copy-pasting Victoria/Xaden hookups every few pages, and so she probably won't.
Which is too bad. There could be a little less Harry Potter and a little more Wheel of Time in these books, and I would be more than happy. But we'll see. I haven't read Onyx Flame. It could be Yarros does exactly that.
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