A fantastic story with masterful use of technique, an intricate plot, and fascinating characters!
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2024 | Rating: 5/5 | Best Sellers in Audible Books & Originals
iron flame the empyrean book 2 kindle editionby rebecca yarros author i blame anne mccaffrey for my love of dragons and their riders rebecca yarros violet xaden and their dragons had a lot to live up to in fact the entirety of pern and ms yarros does live up to ms mccaffreywhere at times the first book in the empyrean felt like a young adult book that had spice added in to move it from the young adult shelf iron flame is fully rooted in adult fantasy with just the right amount of spice and the perfect measure of angst and pathosthe relationship between violet and xaden sits in the center of the story but there is so much more we have siblings with a reason for vengeance a hidden royal heir jealous love rivals and a race for a magical solution its all in there all of the feels and all of the tension the only issue i had was that about ¼ of the book could have been shaved in the realm of fantasy and fantasy romance many authors seem to be in a race to see who can write the longest book yes sjm jla and now ms yarros i am looking at all of you apparently they are all racing to take the tile of the biggest book away from the giga codexthat said i am in love with the world that ms yarros has created it feels very concrete as if i could smell the dust on the trails that the dragons and the griffins climb the sweat under the flight leathers and the spice of the lust that seems to be in the air it is a real world tangible and fascinatingms yarros is the new queen of the shadow daddy if you dont know go look it up xaden is not morally grey so much as he is morally flexible he is willing to burn the world heck hed burn the universe for violet but he is also full of honor and strengthviolet is not the paragon of virtue or the slightly insane fantasy heroine we are used to she is very clearly a fighter – not only of her very real enemies but also the illness that she must overcome every day to be a riderone of the stand out part of iron flame is the dialogue ms yarros is a master of using dialogue to move the story along and to further character development effortlessly unless the reader takes a step back from the story which is as difficult as climbing everest barefoot it isnt easy to see the masterful techniques she utitlizesthe plotwhich at times as i said before is a bit overloaded moves along as fast is possible in this height of bookto be completely honest i received this book as a gift the hardback from the husband and also borrowed it from ku when it was available because i needed them both to finishif fourth wing lived up to the hype iron flame went beyond the hype into a completely different universecomplete with a masterful use of technique a beautifully built world and an intricate woven plot iron flame in fact the entire empyrean series is a modern classic that will go down in literary history with the lord of the rings the dragon riders of pern and the witchworld stories475 stars out of 5 a 25 deduction because some of the book could have been shaved rounded up to 4 stars out of 5