Musings on Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing / Iron Flame Series  

Books serve various purposes. Some leave us shattered to our core - they challenge our long-held values and beliefs. And then there are those books that get us out of a reading slump. Rebecca’s Fourth Wing/ Iron Flame series is an attempt at Epic Fantasy that will firmly establish itself as a page-turner that helps us get out of a literary stagnation - that is ever so common in a world of overwhelming stimulants. 

The overarching story follows a barely adult woman who’s thrown into an unexpected War School. Violet (our protagonist) is the narrator - she is the one to whom things happen, and it is through these events the world-building in this fantastical world is done. And a lot of things happen to her in immediate succession of one another. We get a picture of Rebecca’s world through events that further exposition and lead us directly into the midst of the action, which is why I call this a perfect antidote for reading slumps. 

Action is primarily driven by dragons and their riders. They share a delicate relationship - once bonded a rider and a drager cannot survive without the other. The conversations between Vilot and her dragon are some of the most entertaining bits of chatter in this series. 

A lot of times, narrators are notorious for being unreliable. It is always interesting to read an unreliable narrator narrating a story because we, as readers, do not know when to trust the voice and when not to. The characterisation of Violet is nowhere near as complex. It’s easy to see through her anger or frustration that colours what she reports to the readers. Her emotions are not layered to be peeled to get to the story, but rather a side plot that may very well be ignored. Perhaps at the hands of a different narrative choice, Violet could have been our unreliable eyes to the intricate world of Rebecca and misled us, betrayed us, but for the greater good of making the readers want to hunt for clues that lead us to the truth. 

Where this series finds itself falling into slower beats is when it comes to dealing with relationships. The relationship our protagonist, Violet, has with her mother, her sister, her best friend and her peers at the War School. These relationships are supposed to drive her choices or at times, take away her agency. But at the end of the day, Violet in this series is very much a one-person army. People and relationships affect her, but not at a profound level. Even her literal torture has very few callbacks or ramifications. 

A substantial chunk of the series is devoted to a very predictable enemies-to-lovers trope. Xaden, the other half of enemies the lovers trope, has a lot of secrets - he is the son of a traitor who was executed. As a form of punishment, Xaden is allowed to attend the War School and become a member of a selective group of dragon riders that parallel elite military appointments. 

I believe a slow-burn story arc where the secrets Xaden harbours would have been revealed throughout the series could have served the trope (enemies-to-lovers) more convincingly. Many a time, the conversations between Violet and Xaden serve as exposition or forms of relaying information about the ongoing war without being so. The fights between them get exhausting as we know these are in no way deal breakers. Towards the end of Iron Flame (the second book in the series), the relationship takes a turn because of a cliffhanger, which leaves the readers hopeful about the future complexities that may put an entertaining strain on the recurring trope of enemies-to-lovers. 

Vilot suffers from what we have started to understand as the main character syndrome. She is frail, yet the best rider of her generation. She can tolerate ungodly levels of pain without it affecting her conviction. She is self-sacrificing and caring. She can effectively compartmentalise and set aside all negative emotions for the good of others. Think of Elena from The Vampire Diaries. In no way this is a shortcoming that makes the world, the ongoing war less interesting, it just makes Viloet a predictable protagonist. 

Two books are out in the series. I believe three remain. Given the cliffhanger the second has ended in, I am sure we all would be queuing up for the next, which I am afraid will be a long wait.