Rebecca Yarros – nigeladamsbookworm

To start with I acknowledge that I am not the target audience for this book.

Last year I read the first two in the series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, as a challenge to myself to read a different genre, and I really enjoyed them.

This book, the third, has been really hyped over the two or three months prior to its publication, and I was one of the people really looking forward to seeing what happened after the cliff hanger at the end of Iron Flame .

Before I read it I saw some reviews where people were stating that they were struggling to catch up with the plot or make sense of where the story picked up immediately after the end of the last book.

Some even went as far as to say they had reread Iron Flame just to make sense of the start of this book.

The story told through the series is actually quite complex, with people of different families having different allegiances, dragons and other mythical monsters forming bonds with different people, all having their own intricacies.

So with Iron Flame finishing at the end of a vicious battle, which saw a whirlwind of death, injury, and changing sides, it’s easy to see why people were a bit bamboozled, I was over 100 pages in before I was comfortable with being caught up and on the right track.

Onyx Flame continues in the aftermath of a battle. Lines had been crossed and alliances tested, stretched and in some cases broken.

Spoiler alert if you haven’t read the first two books

Xaden is not all that he seems, he has bad blood running through him, poisoning his soul and it should be turning him to the dark side, but he’s fighting it.

Violet won’t accept that she’s losing him and sets out, with her friends from the Fourth Wing, to try and find a cure. This involves trying to locate the mythical seventh breed of dragon.

At the same time the Wyvern are attacking with towns and villages falling.

As Xaden tries to hide his changing bloodline he helps to battle the type of beings that he is turning into.

During the quest, and one of the ensuing battles Violet meets her ultimate enemy, the her of the enemy, and only one of them can be allowed to live, unless Violet crosses over.

Although the main gist of this story is the quest to find a cure, and the seventh breed, it’s also a story of war and politics, and as with the previous book’s loyalties

And of course the relationship between Violet and Xaden.

I put a warning on my blog about the first two books, that although they were classed as young adult, they contained some graphic spice scenes. I was amazed how many people replied thanking me because their young, thirteen and fourteen year old, teenagers had been asking for the books as presents. Well if anything the spice in this book is even more graphic.

So what did I really think of the book.

Would I have read it all the way through if I hadn’t read the first two. No, I read this because I became invested in the whole story.

If this was the first book would I have been as engaged. No, if this was the first book I would have given in after the first fifty or sixty pages.

Will I read the next instalment. Yes. I’m invested in the characters and as this book ends on an even bigger cliff hanger than the last one I feel compelled to read whatever comes next.

That’s the sign of a clever author. Like Ink Black Heart in the Strike books by Robert Galbraith, I might not have loved the book, but the ongoing story has me hooked, but if the next one is in the same vain as this one, it might be my last.

Publisher Piatkus. Pages 544. Audiobook length 23.54 hours. Narrator Jasmin Walker

At the beginning of the year I set myself a bit of a challenge. My staple reading is Crime Fiction and True Crime, and occasionally I’ll dip into spy and espionage thrillers.

The challenge was to read something different. Fantasy has been nibbling away at me for a while now. I was never a fan of Tolkien, although I’ve tried Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit they never grabbed me. Where as the Harry Potter series was one of my favourite reads.

The author Noelle Holten recently posted on social media that she had just read Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros.

This is the second book in a series so I read the gumph and reviews about that, as well as the first Fourth Wing, and thought I’d give the series a go.

Well to say it hooked me is an understatement.

Who would have thought that a book about a young girl doing her military training could be this good, especially being as part of her training is to hopefully bond with a dragon.

But to say just that, is to do it an injustice.

Violet Sorrengail is the third sibling to enter Basgaith War College, but she’s not going to the quadrant she has always thought she would.

A bookish, nerdy, fragile girl, she was the apple of her father’s eye, but he died. To her mother she is a weakling. Nothing like her brother, who died in battle, or her sister who is a legendary dragon flier.

Violet was meant to be a scribe, a scholar. But her destiny is actually to become a Rider.

Just getting into the college is a challenge that some people fail, and die. Not because they don’t have the academic grades, no because they fall from the parapet, a high uneven ledge that leads to the courtyard.

Much like Harry Potter each book covers a year, and in Fourth Wing Violets main focus is surviving the first year.

As well as making lifelong friendships she also falls for a second year student, but he shouldn’t be the right man for her for so many reasons..

It’s difficult to go into the timeline or stories within the series without giving away spoilers. However I will say I can very highly recommend it.

On Amazon it’s billed a Fantasy, Romantic Fantasy. Well romance might be stretching it a bit far, but full on spicy in places would definitely cover it.

This is a war story. If you take it at is basics. It’s the story of a young girl struggling to survive military training in a country where the general public are being given false information about the safety of the nation.

There are storm clouds on the horizon and she is not only going to have to battle some formidable foes but also the leaders of her army, college, and national. Unfortunately one of those leaders is her own mother.

I can honestly say that this series has let me scratch that itch of looking for something new. And like a good scratch it’s left me sitting here very satisfied.