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A review by skconaghan
Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
adventurous
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
There is a brilliant fantasy story full of high altitude action and snarky dragons with a riveting plot tucked between the abundant vocabulary-sparse pages of this tiresome juvenile romance written as nasty cheap trash. ‘Erotica’ is too classy a term. This novel is only so agonisingly long because the plot (which alone would make a normal sized novel and would be excellent) is sadly secondary to the author’s obsession to pen repeat trashy sex scenes and rehash a lingering disagreement between the lovers that drags on and on and on and yawn…
This is the sad state of ‘modern literature’ folks. Here is my breakdown:
1. Plot—an absolutely astounding 5 stars, hands down fantastic for about 200pp scattered throughout, with politics, magic, dragons, deception, traitors, a rebellion—but overall, it is all so desperately tedious. By 80% I was exhausted from circling back to the same old same old yet again. When someone said, ‘…[so many hours] and we’ll all be dead’ it was like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and I was filled with hope. Yes. Please. Die soon all of you.
2. Writing Style—💩repetitive, lean (but wordy), crass dialogue often lost in the inability to identify the speaker (this was sometimes the writing, sometimes a narration issue*)… a few times flashed sarky humour and wit, which kept me going, as well as the promising plot.
3. Character Development—🤧a sneezed booger left on the page with lots assumed and not much developed—easy to lose track of many of the secondary and tertiary peeps due to lack of development, but no worry, they mostly die—though some develop a personality along the way.
4. Language (as in: use of sophisticated vocabulary, beautiful and aesthetic quality)—⚠️limited, juvenile, crass, vulgar, frequently foul, never poetic; story is king here, language is a mere tool.
5. Relationships—☠️toxic, narcissistic, full of bloated confessions and stormy immature ungrounded emotions everyone flings like silly string and daggers at one another without forethought or consideration, and the main two characters continuously revisit the same tired unresolved argument; characters hold on to irrational grudges and foster jealousy, and tensions fuel between people who barely know each other.
6. *Rebecca Soler’s narration is nasal, frantic, every man has the same raspy voice, every woman a whiny bite, and the whiff of accents come and go, making it difficult to identify the speaker (either she can’t do accents or forgets who has what accent because of the Garbage Island quantity of characters).
And then I got to the end and— This isn’t the end!? Ugh. It’s the end for me. Enough is enough.
This is the sad state of ‘modern literature’ folks. Here is my breakdown:
1. Plot—an absolutely astounding 5 stars, hands down fantastic for about 200pp scattered throughout, with politics, magic, dragons, deception, traitors, a rebellion—but overall, it is all so desperately tedious. By 80% I was exhausted from circling back to the same old same old yet again. When someone said, ‘…[so many hours] and we’ll all be dead’ it was like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and I was filled with hope. Yes. Please. Die soon all of you.
2. Writing Style—💩repetitive, lean (but wordy), crass dialogue often lost in the inability to identify the speaker (this was sometimes the writing, sometimes a narration issue*)… a few times flashed sarky humour and wit, which kept me going, as well as the promising plot.
3. Character Development—🤧a sneezed booger left on the page with lots assumed and not much developed—easy to lose track of many of the secondary and tertiary peeps due to lack of development, but no worry, they mostly die—though some develop a personality along the way.
4. Language (as in: use of sophisticated vocabulary, beautiful and aesthetic quality)—⚠️limited, juvenile, crass, vulgar, frequently foul, never poetic; story is king here, language is a mere tool.
5. Relationships—☠️toxic, narcissistic, full of bloated confessions and stormy immature ungrounded emotions everyone flings like silly string and daggers at one another without forethought or consideration, and the main two characters continuously revisit the same tired unresolved argument; characters hold on to irrational grudges and foster jealousy, and tensions fuel between people who barely know each other.
6. *Rebecca Soler’s narration is nasal, frantic, every man has the same raspy voice, every woman a whiny bite, and the whiff of accents come and go, making it difficult to identify the speaker (either she can’t do accents or forgets who has what accent because of the Garbage Island quantity of characters).
And then I got to the end and— This isn’t the end!? Ugh. It’s the end for me. Enough is enough.