Hey everyone my name's Amanda and I'm the funsize reader and today I'm finally here to talk to you about iron Flame by Rebecca yaros which is book two in the imperion series yes I say finally because this book took me so freaking long to read so freaking long but we'll get into that in a second finally book two of fourth wi camarticlee've been waiting for this since I did fourth wi for my funsize book Club pick back in April when it came out we talked about reading this all together I hope I hope so many of you that Read Fourth wi with me for book club liked it enough to read iron flame I know this Article or my my fourth wi Article actually has brought so many new people to my channel so thank you all for being here because there are so many new people I just want to take this time to remind everyone how I do my reviews I know you saw the last one but I'm just going to reiterate that I will always give a star rating a spice rating and my review after giving a short synopsis I will tell you when there's spoilers coming so you don't have to worry about things being spoiled I usually try to make it one section however I also want to reiterate for everybody that is new to my channel and new to me I am honest I say what I feel about the book even if it's bad things I am not the kind of reader who loves everything that every author puts out no matter what and jumps on the hype of everything and everything is wonderful that's not me so if there are things which there are that bothered me or that I as a reader did not enjoy I say it so I'm just reminding everybody who has been with me since the beginning or uh jumped in the Journey of this YouTube along the way or everybody who is new that I will always be honest in my reviews even if the book is super super hyped and loved by everybody there's stuff about it that I don't love I'm going to tell you so be prepared cuz I'm going to tell you if you have not read fourth wi I recommend going back and watching my fourth wi Article there's a whole section about what the book's about and why I think you should read it before there are spoil spoilers because anything that I talk about in this Article even just the synopsis or short synopsis will be a spoiler for the first book so if you're looking to know if the series is still worth reading after the second one as of right now I would say yes but definitely go back and watch the fourth wi Article I will link it right up here iron flame picks up pretty much right where fourth wi left off we are still following Violet and Zaden and their time at Bez GTH immediately following finding out shocking news that Violet's brother is not dead that kind of Spurs their entire beginning of this year and this realization that there is a war coming and kind of preparing their side to fight it knowing that Navar and general singale and everybody that they once trusted has been lying to them forever that is kind kind of where this book is going sets us up for continuing the series really really well I think other than that I really have a hard time giving a synopsis it's kind of just generally what's happening in this book because there's a lot of that happens in this book because it's so long star rating I gave this book four stars I'm only going to talk about the star rating at this point because I struggled with the star rating on this book this was not a five star for me and I will go into why but it was not a five star I really for a lot of the book was teetering between three and four like I liked it but did I really like it and then Parts I really liked so I didn't feel like I could give it a three so I settled on a four I really liked it but there were elements that I thought could have pulled me down or not even just of the story but but just the whole whole the whole picture of the whole book and part of the series like everything all combined was just dragging me down it was like an entire reading experience parts of it that I didn't feel like lived up to the four and for sure didn't live up to the five because I gave the last book of five it was killer I loved it I loved everything about it I don't remember in my Article saying one bad thing or one thing that I didn't enjoy about that book and I can't say the same for this one spice reading is a three it's about on par with the last book maybe a little bit more like a couple more little scenes but it definitely is very much more plot driven with the spice sprinkled in it is still Roman toy so it is heavy in that romance yeah yeah for for the most part it's heavy in the romance just with the spice addition on top of it okay so my thoughts non-spoiler thoughts first just generally about my experience reading the book and things that I liked and things that I didn't like I really liked that the style was still the same I still felt like I really wanted to read it from opening the book I felt like anybody could read it and get that really huge fantasy world that sometimes is really really hard to grasp especially if you're not a seasoned fantasy reader like anybody could read this book and love it continues from fourth wi I think that that was amazing about it and I think that that will keep people reading this series I love that we pick up where we left off I love when books do that I don't like when books jump time and then spend time with you trying to figure out how relationships have changed or what things have happened or being told stories about things that happened in that time hop no it picks up literally right where it left off I freaking love when author do that and this did not disappoint in that way but this book took me forever to read I started reading it at midnight the night it came out on my Kindle and I literally just finished it late last night and it took way way too long I have some grievances about that okay the non-spoilery things first okay I'm going to talk about the spoilery ones in spoiler section but the non-spoilery things are the words are too small they're too small like literally they're smaller than the last book go compare them I did when I pick up a book that is of this size I have a certain expectation about how long it will take me as a seasoned fantasy reader as someone who reads a ton of books every year and has for many many years I know that this won't take me that long so why did it take me so long I felt that the book had tons and tons of content that was shrunken down and fit into a smaller book and I can't help but feel like that was done for profit reasons okay because as a reader I look at it and go well the font is so freaking small I can barely read it I would expect that in a mass Market paperback that's like really tiny and with tiny thin Pages like The Outlander that I read many years ago not in a a fantasy hardback big published book so to me as a reader that says they didn't want to add more pages because more pages cost more money and they knew everybody was going to be buying this book and they're going to sell a ton of copies with less pages and make more money per book if they just shrink the font down I'm sorry I said it I said it and people don't have to disagree with me but I said it if you're gonna Brandon Sanderson Own It Brandon Sanderson make the books ginormous your readers are going to read it anyways I notice it okay and it feels shitty as a reader knowing that I know it's a business and I know we're out to make money and all of that but like it just feels a little cheap that you're going to deceive me in making this giant ass book that doesn't look giant because you Shrunk the words down I don't like it I think if you're going to write a huge book be Brandon and own it your readers will follow you because we we loved the first one he says it I've heard him say it in his classes like you have to accept the buyin that you get from your readers like people are more willing to try shorter books when they don't know the author and they're more willing to take a risk on big huge honkin books when they love the author we already loved fourth wi I don't care if this one's bigger make it bigger make it so I can read the damn words so because of that it took me really really long because I was completely deceived I also know this has probably been all over your for you Pages timelines whatever with all of the errors in printing I know like that happens but sometimes I feel like when things are rushed and we're rushing to get the next book out within six months instead of taking our time a little bit and making sure that it's right you get a lot of printing errors and that sucks sucks especially for us as readers to have Pages missing in our books I don't even know if pages are missing in these books like I have two copies I have no idea if pages are missing because I didn't read it on here because I couldn't read the words I read it on my Kindle I don't know I could be missing words I know I'm missing the dragon on chapter 17 my map is a little wonky on both of my copies but my spine does say iron flame it does not say fourth wi so overall I got a a fine copy like my my copies are fine those are things that again when I'm looking at the whole experience of reading an amazing book and reading an amazing fantasy book as a reader like I notice those things and it just sucks so I know some of them are things you can't control but I do think that sometimes this happens when Publishers like to push things out too quickly I've seen it happen before and I will be really sad if it continues to happen with certain Publishers so those things definitely negatively affected my reading experience and was part of the reason why I couldn't bump it up to a five part of the reason why the next part I'm going to talk about does have spoilers because there are specific examples that I want to be able to give you guys that to tell you why I could not bump this book up to a five despite the the hype and all the five star reviews that I've seen so if you haven't read it or you don't want things to be spoiled at this point going forward everything that I'm going to talk about is content from the book fair warning spoilers ahead I felt like part one of this book and part two of this book were two completely different books kind of back to the things that I was talking about a moment ago with the publishing I do feel like part one of this book suffered from not enough editing that I have seen happen with other books if you've been on my channel if you followed me reading the Crave series I very much talked about it there where I felt like as the books got longer because they got more popular they got more pages they ended up having a lot of scenes that weren't necessary arguably in part one of this book I felt very similar there were a lot of scenes that I didn't think were necessary because that was one of the things that I loved about fourth wi I felt that every single scene mattered they mattered to the plot and that's why I loved it it was just such a good fantasy because everything mattered I felt that way more about part two than I did about part one part one I felt like had so many duplicates like how many times are we going to tell re that everything's fine everything like we had the same conversation in same scenes so many times we can continually had visitation scenes with Zaden where things didn't really happen or we missed a visitation and we just like kept having very similar scenes occur over and over and over again and it filled up space and it made the book really long but they didn't 100% matter and I feel like in editing those things can be cut down or combined or Rewritten to make it hit as hard as everything in fourth wi hit and hit as hard as pretty much all of part two of iron flame hit so like that was something as I was reading I was like why are we having this conversation again why are we doing this again like okay move on and that was something that I struggled with in the beginning of this book and I think what really slowed my progression because I was just like okay it's the same thing and it's I'm already like not making very much progress CU this book is just so huge like why did we need this scene that was one of the big reasons why I could not give it a five I felt like fourwing did not have that issue at all I felt like part two of this book didn't really have that issue however because part one did it could not be a five stars for me I really hope that that doesn't continue throughout the rest of the series I really I've seen it happen where the length just gets out of control and things like people talk about it with zodiac Academy I've seen it with zodiac Academy people talk about it with crave and that whole series and I've seen it happen that like I just don't want to be bored in sections of the book when I don't have to be just to make the content more make it this size make it normal normal words cut out the that doesn't matter okay so now let's talk about my reactions to some specific things first off I did still love Violet in this book okay I still loved her however I do feel like some of her character progression got a little wishy-washy in times and I think that goes back to what I was just talking about with like the scenes that don't matter part of me wonders if things were added in because sometimes when you're writing if you're trying to write a character like I struggle with this where I don't want my character's voice to seem different because I'm writing it in my my physical time like mine Amanda's physical time in a different headp space than I wrote the rest of it I worry about that happening sometimes I felt that that did happen in scenes of this book I was like why is she being like that like why is she reacting this way this doesn't seem like her it almost felt like this character Arc that we have of her like growing stronger and steadily like going up that hill and progressing was having dips and valleys and like yes I know that that happens in real life and people and whatever but it just didn't feel like it fit her it just didn't 100% sit well with me the one that I was thinking about specifically was like when she took off in the middle of the night to to fly off to get the um it's not Visionary but I can't remember what it's called right now but you know what I mean where she saw cat for the first time or second time which was a fun little thing adding cat in and having like that jealousy and the emotion control that was fun I really liked that and seeing their relationship change throughout the book that was cool I did think that there were some moments where Violet was not violent and she was very different I hinted at this in my I'm back Article where I talked about my initial impressions of iron flame where I was like 30% in and here's what I think so far the Trope that I was talking about I had some people message me and they were like oh my God I'm so worried about what Trope you're talking about it was not cheating okay um a lot of people wondered if it was me hating the cheating Trope it was not cheating it was separation I don't think I've really talked about my hatred for the separation Trope in books but I hate it okay I hate it it is the reason why I cannot watch the second season of Outlander my whole body physically hurts
and this comes from having a eight and a half year longdistance relationship with my husband so I loathe the separation Trope I can't handle it and so when the whole first part of this book was basically separation Trope oh I hated it I was like if this is what the whole book is going to be I will Riot I did not like it I know that often times with the separation Trope there is is a breakup at the end of it and so I was really hoping that that didn't happen and so I'm glad that it didn't and I understand why Rebecca put that in this book for she's writing this character from a lot of her personal experience right and her husband was in the military it's the military school that this book is about Zaden is inspired by her husband so obviously this man was deployed and she had separation like I get it I get it I just hate the Trope so bad so we really hope we don't do it again please there's three more books in this series don't do a separation Trope again I do not like it I can't handle it and I don't really know if a lot of people like that Trope so I'm just just saying don't do separation because it makes me feel like we spent the whole last book building up this romance and then all of a sudden it's separated and they're mad at each other and they hate each other and they're it's like all completely flat and then you're like okay well now we're building it back up again right like there's the are they or aren't they going to get back together that we just did all in the first book but it just I just don't like it sometimes and this this time was a little a little eh okay A little eh it ended up being fine but separation no go for Amanda I realized that this is a long freaking Article so if you are still here with me yay I still have things to talk about but I need a one of the other things that bothered me about like character progression I was yelling at the book I was yelling at the book in my head going like what what are you thinking okay we spent all of last year in the first book learning that we can't trust anyone the end of that book ended with we can't trust the person we're in love with the beginning of this book is again we can't trust anybody but Violet doesn't learn for three times not to take something to eat or drink from other people that drove me insane and I felt like that was such a big character hole or plot hole or just like act of convenience and it as a reader it drove me nuts like you are in this war College you're learning that you can't trust anyone that you only can look out for yourself and you're accepting food and drink that screwed you over once not once not tce twice but three times and you didn't learn like that drove me insane and I don't know if anybody else thought that but it drove me crazy I just wanted her to learn I thought it was very out of her character of like learning this whole time at this school yeah that was that was a little little detail flaw that I did not enjoy despite all these like things that drove me nuts the majority of them were in the first part of the book like I said before I really liked part two I think that the whole plot of this book is so good I was explaining it to my husband last night because as I was finishing the book he said he looked over and I just look shocked apparently I look shocked because I did not predict this ending the last book I did I if you go back and watch my other Article I did predict the end of the last book this one I didn't predict in the last 3% of the book I'm crying I'm shocked I'm sitting on my couch going what the just happened and so obviously he was like well why were you shocked so then I had to go explain everything that had happened in book one and now book two and the more I just sat on it because I didn't record this Article right after I finished it I recorded the next day because I needed to I needed to process okay I needed to process everything that I felt about it the more that I explained it to him and the more that I thought about it I was just like this world bu building and this plotting is just it's the stuff that you want to read and that's why I love the series and I really hope that it continues in the way of part two of this book and all of fourth wi because just the things that get thrown in and the way that things connect back and forth and the things that you expect the things that you don't expect just the whole War it's so well done it's so well done I love that part of it I love that the plot is still so engaging and exciting and I just want to keep reading it my sister started the book and she texted me she goes what crack does she put in this because I can't put it down and I was like I know like whatever she's doing she does it well because it makes me just want to keep reading the parts that I feel that way about specifically part two I don't know I haven't seen a lot of people talk about this okay I I've been kind of looking but I've also been kind of trying to stay away because I didn't want spoilers all over the internet I was happy that danne got a little Redemption we don't see that very often and we all hated him so much in the first book that I was kind of happy that she gave Violet's childhood friend like a little bit of a Redemption story in this book it just made it feel good people can wrong you people can do things they can make mistakes but they can turn around it's not like I'm going to say tampon because if you know you know it's not like tampon where like you just continue to hate him we actually got a little bit of of love and affection for DNE and doing the right thing because the scene where he came in when she was being tortured and he basically was trying to get her out without showing that he was trying to get her out I was like do the right thing do the right thing do the right thing do the right thing and I wasn't convinced that he was going to at first so I was really happy really really happy when he did and then to find out that Zaden has this power and so when he saw Dane in that moment he knew that his intentions were true and were good it just like makes me happy for him it makes me happy that they can at least be friends obviously like I don't want him to be endgame oh that's another thing I forgot about that Zaden used the word endgame in this book and m- no no this is a freaking dragonfield War College nobody should be using the word endgame in reference to a relationship like that's what we as readers use not in the book okay not in the book obviously still want Zaden to be endgame despite everything that happened to him at the very end I was happy that DNE got a little bit little bit of redemption so much happened at the end of this book so so much I felt like you know with Sarah J Mass we kind of get that last 20% where you know you just can't put it down for that last 20% I feel like for this that happened in the last 10% it was like I knew I could not start at 90% reading until I could sit down and just read the whole rest of it which is what I ended up doing because so much happened and I do definitely think that this book is in need of a reread probably closer to when the next one comes out because I do think there's a lot of details that were put in that were missed like I miss that I are probably going to be important in future books for example I have known since reading the first book that there's something going on with Violet's hair the way that her hair is I haven't picked up on what it could be yet but Rebecca did mention in uh one of her opening interviews like B like book release party interviews that there is reason for Violet's hair to be the way that it is it just hasn't revealed yet everybody gasped I was like no guys like she's mentioned it multiple times Taran calls her silver one like she's she's referenced the hair in both books like of course there's going to be something and of course we don't know yet like but that's coming like no Sherlock anyways so much has happened in the end of the book and I I do want to go back and like read and get more of the details when I'm going to read the next one but I cried okay I cried one of the things that I love about this book is the excerpts in the beginning of each of the chapters I read every single one of them I know they pertain to what's going to go on in the chapter and it hurts sometimes because like you get that foreshadowing you know what's coming the one that killed me was most of you know like I just had a baby right not that long ago so I'm still hormonal and I'm re in the scene where the mom sacrifices herself for her children and I'm just like in shock that this is happening and I finish the scene and I'm like okay I made it through and then I turn the page and the the excerpt is from an unsent document from General soring Gale saying that the only way she's going to die in battle is in protecting her children and I lost it I like started crying I just have tears streaming down my face and I was like trying to hide it from my husband because I didn't he was sitting over to the side and I didn't want him to judge me reading and I'm like sobbing silently on the couch reading that excerpt and I was like and then I went cried again and I explained the whole story to him later but yeah that killed me that I was not expecting a mother sacrifice it completely makes sense in the the story like I think that it was a great element of it I loved it even though it killed me there was something that she said though and I don't know if other people picked up on it I hope you guys did and let me know what you think about it but she said to Violet something along the lines of like you're everything we hoped you would be her specifically not Brennan not Meera Violet and so I think along with the hair the hair line there's something in Violet that her dad and her mom both knew about and they have been trying to like gear her to be or become a certain thing that we don't know what it is yet because why else would she spend her whole life working in as a scribe and training like her father and learning all of these things and being given this book that to find out all of this stuff and then all of a sudden her mom shift gears and she's like no you're going to bond a dragon and then the two two dragons that she bonded were like we chose you for a reason we chose like there's something more and I think both of her parents knew which is why her mom sacrificed herself when Violet was basically going to die giving all of her power to this thing she knew she was going to die and she couldn't die I think there's way more to that I don't know when we're going to find out what it is but it was that line from General s Gale that made me think that curious what everybody else thinks but I think there's more going on there and then the whole thing with endara like I could I was not expecting that I remember the moments where she said in the first book I'm the leader of my own Den I like she gave the hints the the breadcrumbs are being dropped they're there which is one of the reasons why I do love this series The breadcrumbs are there we just have to freaking find them now to know that she's her own breed she's the seventh she's her own thing wasn't expecting that was not expecting that at all I knew there was something up with her but it wasn't that and having that be the only way that they could reinstate the wards loved that detail however that does mean I'm sure that we are going to be spending more time back at bth uh back at the college because now Arisha can't be protected because we need andna and she's the only one that can do it so unless they're lying and unless one dragon can build more than one Ward uh with the ward Stones then maybe we can go other places but I think the rest of the series is probably going to spend more time where they got the ward Stones back up in basg that andna protected that was really cool I really liked that and then there's the end there's the end with what happens to Zaden I wasn't anticipating that at all I am devastated but at the same time I can't be too devastated because I do think that when things like this happen to the main character like the male main character the love interest the I can't live without you we're bonded like it's going to get fixed it's just a matter of when and how so it will be fixed so I can't hurt too badly but I will say I was shocked I will say I was not expecting it I was not expecting Jack to be a venin also and I was not expecting him to go back to Jack at the end and be like how do I fix this so I do think our next book is going to be how do we fix this again it's another thing that is going to throw a wrench in the relationship and give us more conflict which sucks and I hate I like happy end endings I want it to be a happy ending but I know we're only on book two we're not on book three or four or five so there could be a lot of rough road ahead there could be a lot of rough road ahead kind of like zodiac Academy where everything goes wrong and nobody's ever together and happy so um that's what I'm anticipating for this one is there's going to be a lot of Heartache ahead because it's like Game of Thrones where everybody dies or a bunch of people die and things that happen that you're not expecting and it's shocking and that's one of the things that makes it great despite the Grievances that I had with the book overall I still really did like it I still really love the plot the story the way she does breadcrumbs the way she incorporates so many things the shock Factor like there's so much of the book that I love but with this one specifically there was quite a bit that I was like I still feel good about giving it four stars now that I've talked through a lot of the things I there's so much that happened in this book I'm sure I missed things if there's something that you guys wanted to talk about specifically or you wanted to hear my views on specifically I can always do shorts um so leave me a comment below if there's something that I didn't touch on that you want to touch on and we can chat some more well friends the next book doesn't come out for a year so we are going to be waiting a long time for the next installment got to find something else to fill the void right we got to find something else to fill the void I'll be looking for things I'll keep an eye out if you have suggestions let me know because I will always read something that will fill the gaping hole that these books leave in my heart so let me know in the comments and hopefully we can find some great fantasy to if you're still around thanks for hanging out for this really really long Article um I was not anticipating to talk for this long but my kids are still sleeping so I got to thanks for reading along with me everybody who joined in new to my channel everyone who joined in that read with me for funsize book club can't wait to see what happens in the series next.
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