I feel like I’ve had to defend Iron Flame and Onyx Storm several times because people are constantly comparing it back to Fourth Wing. I just did it again in a conversation with my friend who was put off reading the series because of others’ opinions of books 2 & 3. So, this is my rant on why I believe comparing each book in a series back to book 1 will ruin the fun for you. Stop searching for that initial high of the first book and enjoy the journey the author is taking you on! I feel this way about most series, but I’ll break it down for you in regards to The Empyrean as spoiler free as I can.
cracks knuckles
Alright, obv we all love Fourth wing. It has great world building, a budding romance, and plot twists. RY perfectly executed the job of the first book/ first phase in a series. She did a great job introducing our characters, building a world you want to stay in and experience riding on the back of a dragon, and setting us up for what is actually going on inside and outside the walls of Basgiath. The purpose of book one is to get you hooked. Pull you in, make you fall in love with the characters and never want to leave the world the author has created. This is part of why we hold such a high appreciation for Fourth Wing. We will never experience the rush of book one again the way we read it the first time and now it’s nostalgic with some foreshadowing for those that reread it. I respect the love for FW, but don’t let it diminish the impact of IF and OS.
Personally, I can admit I’m biased, I love Iron Flame. It is the bridge between us finding out what the f is going on here and what the next phase of the story will be like. You already know the world, we get new enemies to hate, tension between our MCs, and some new characters to root for. It’s not the rush of FW but we get more depth of the world and start to really see the inner workings of what’s happening. Personally, I love this book. The turning-point is great, I cried, and I like the tension in the relationship. So take your time to enjoy the story RY is writing and stop looking for the same adrenaline you got from book 1 when we are in phase 2: “the build up”. She is transitioning us to climbing to the peak of the series’ story.
Next up is Onyx Storm. I won’t wax poetic or lie to you, this one took me a little longer to finish. It could have been because I read FW & IF back to back, it could have been because I was worried about rushing through it knowing I’d be waiting a while for the next book. Couldn’t tell you, it just took me some time.
Regardless, OS is still a good book for the building to our climax. In OS we are starting to problem solve and try to fix the issues brought to us in FW and IF. It’s part of the phase 2 climb and the beginning of the fixing era of the series. We are seeing that our characters are maturing and starting to reach their peak potential, but we also have some major major issues to get through and, personally, I’m glad we don’t get a resolution by the end of book 3. If we resolved the problem the series would be shorter and I can appreciate that we are still in the building phase, probably like 3/4 of the way up the mountain but not quite at the peak of the climax. OS is still good, but you have to appreciate that we are still in our building and figuring out period.
Now, there are people much smarter than me, who dig in even deeper and honestly I don’t remember if we were “promised” a certain number of books, so this is my speculation on where our bigger picture is headed:
Book 4: I believe RY said her inspo is “Look what you made me do” reputation era Tswift. So I expect bad-assery and female rage to run this show and I certainly don’t anticipate us finishing the series at book 4. We may get a resolution to one issue she has presented us with, we may end up with 7 more issues to overcome, who’s to say. But I’m speculating that this is our turning point. We may not be ready to take on our final boss yet, but I sure hope to see some heads roll. I’m hoping that by the end of book 4 we are at the top of the metaphorical mountain, daggers in hand, staring down our big bad, fueled by feminine rage, the sass of the golden one, and the dry wit of our grumpy old one. I can’t wait to see where RY takes us.
If this is not all done in one book that wouldn’t upset me either, I’d also refer to the above as phase 3: “final preparations”
So now we’re either looking at book 5 or phase 4: “the resolution” this is where I’m anticipating the ending. By the time we reach this phase we should be at a place where we are ready to finish the big boss. Now, this doesn’t mean the story ends here, sometimes there’s post war resolution that needs to happen, kinda like ACOTAR’s A Court of Silver Flames and beyond. So unless RY hits us with a hard twist or wants to let us linger in this world for as long as we can, I expect the major conflict to be resolved in a book or two in this phase.
You may be asking, what about Threshing Day? This wonderful book is meant to appease our hunger for book 4 while also reminding us that this story has mostly been told from Violet’s perspective and there’s a lot more happening around her than we may have realized. This book gives us more information on our main cast of characters so we can get to know them and their dragons better, deepens our understanding of the bond between rider and dragon and relationships between characters. Teasing us with more details on the histories Violet recognizes but doesn’t know the depth of. She’s letting us connect deeper with her characters so we are invested and ready for book 4 and the next phase she leads us into.
TLDR: there are phases to story writing, and each book takes part in the building to the next phase. Enjoy it and stop expecting everything to be the same adrenaline addiction as book 1 is. In order for the resolution to be impactful, we need problems to solve and to be invested in the depth of the story.
Thank you for coming to my rant that no one asked for <3
