Book Review: Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

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I came into Iron Flame hot off loving Fourth Wing — a book that converted me, a career dragon-skeptic, in about fifty pages. So believe me when I say I wanted this sequel to work.

The spoiler-free setup: Violet survived her first year at Basgiath War College, which is the good news. The bad news is everything she learned at the end of book one — and book two is about what surviving costs when the real enemy isn’t the curriculum. New commandant, new rules, higher stakes, same dragons (thankfully; the dragons remain the best characters).

What I Loved About Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

The propulsion is still here. Yarros writes chapters that end like trapdoors, and even at 600+ pages I moved through this book fast. The dragon relationships keep deepening in ways that pay off emotionally, Violet’s stubbornness stays the engine of the plot instead of a quirk, and there are individual set pieces in the middle stretch that are as good as anything in Fourth Wing.

What I Didn’t Love About Iron Flame

The ending. No spoilers — I’ll just say the book builds toward a twist that felt unnecessary to me, and not quite aligned with who these characters had spent two books becoming. Finishing it made me miss the feeling of reading ACOTAR for the first time: that trust that every escalation was structural, not just loud. This one had the promise and fumbled some of it.

Final Thoughts on Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

My final score: 3 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spice rating: 3 out of 5 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️

Do I recommend this book? 👍 Yes — if you loved Fourth Wing, you’re reading it anyway.

A fun, flawed middle book: worth reading for the world and the dragons, with an ending you’ll want to argue about (I did). The saga continues in my Onyx Storm review, and the whole shelf is at book reviews.

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