Great Reads for Great Readers

 

Iron Flame, by Rebecca Yarros.

 

     
     Well, here I went again (nothing wrong with my grammar!), into the amazing fantasy of the Empyrean, Ms Yarros’s five-book series about Dragonkind and the Riders they choose to bond with them.  To be honest, I didn’t think she could keep up the same level of suspense, horror and mile-a-minute adventure plotting, but what do I know:  Yarros has done so with ease and one hand tied behind her back – the other is driving her characters relentlessly along to the next twist in the tale, and there are many of them.

            Frail, tiny Violet Sorrengail has survived her first year at Basgiath War College, bonded with not one dragon like other riders, but two:  Tairn, one of the largest and most fearsome, and Andarna, a half-grown ‘adolescent’ who also decided that Violet was her darling;  between the three of them they make a formidable team, especially when Violet’s signet or special gift, manifests itself:  she finds that she can throw lightning bolts – if only she can ever learn to aim them!

            She is also in a sizzling-hot romance with impossibly handsome Xaden Riorson, erstwhile revolutionary and lover extraordinaire – of her, no-one else.  Violet has her own allure, and emerging gifts of leadership and compassion which wins her devotion from all the other students, so much so that they follow her when she finds out that all their teachers have been lying to them:  evil magical forces are poised to strike their continent, and their leaders – including Violet’s mother the General – are downplaying attacks on outlying towns and subsequent terrible fatalities, saying that all is under control, when it obviously isn’t;  well, it’s time to rebel, to go off and train properly to fight these new, terrible foes and to do so, they must unite with Gryphon fliers, traditional enemies (according to their former teachers) but devoted to their country as the Dragonkind are.

            Ms Yarros has woven a complicated, very detailed plot;  this reader had to go back every now and then to get the finer points down, but she doesn’t falter for a second:  all the I’s are dotted and t’s crossed, as they should be.  There are many great secondary characters, especially amongst Violet’s classmates, and their funny, smart-alicky dialogue is a huge relief from the breakneck pace as we are dragged yet again to a cliff-hanger that I never saw coming until the very last page.

            And I still want a dragon (or two) for Christmas:  I am small and frail, just like Violet – surely I’m eligible?  FIVE STARS.