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Reviewed by: Lisa Rice, Middle School Librarian Title: Iron Flame Author: Rebecca Yarros Series: Book 2 in the Empyrean series Publisher: Entangled Publishing
Year: 2023 Good for Grades: 11-12, Adult Genre/Type of Book: YA romantic fantasy, adventure
Content Warnings, or things that other School Librarians should be aware of: drinking, language, torture, violence, open door sex scenes
Recommended for a school library: No Reason(s) for choosing the book: I read Fourth Wing and was interested to see how the story continued.
If you were tasked by the publisher with writing a short quote for the back cover of this book, what would it be:
"Secrets die with the people who keep them." page 87
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Review:
This highly rated book is long. And a lot, of everything! Sometimes I got lost in the many places, people, fights, but that may be more on me. Oftentimes, I had to go back and reread to see if I really knew what was going on. There are some charts and maps in the front of the book to help keep track of people and places, but nothing to help with the many tangents and rabbit holes that Yarros takes us down. I would have liked some editing and paring down, by at least a quarter of the book. However, Yarros does great world building, with descriptive paragraphs, and takes it to the next level. I am not surprised that there is a TV series in development with Amazon Studios.
The book picks up where Fourth Wing ends. Beginning her second year, Violet is carrying information worth being tortured over. Throughout the book, Violet struggles with who she can trust- her mother? Xaden? Dain? All have given her reasons in the past to trust them, and also not to trust them. What's a girl to do? If you read Fourth Wing, I am sure you will pick up Iron Flame, and also the third book in the series, Onyx Storm, coming out in January 2025.
I love the characters of the talking, sassy dragons the best. I would love to see full colored drawings of them, and all the different colors of dragons that Yarros has created. The producers of the television show will have their hands full!
While I would not recommend this book for my middle school library, others may consider it for a high school library. In my district, I am not sure I would recommend it for a high school library. There are detailed torture and sex scenes.
This book will appeal to those that read the first book, and like fantasy novels, romantic love interests, talking dragons, battle scenes and torture chambers! Yarros gives us some compelling reasons to put Onyx Storm on preorder for January!
Number of party hats:
For more information about this book, see the author's website.