Review - 'Iron Flame' by Rebecca Yarros

"Remember it's only the body that's fragile. You are unbreakable."

Ahh, that was pretty awesome. I'm going to need a moment to process all this.

Many moments later...

Right, onto my thoughts.

Allow me a second to gush here. I love it when a book knows what it's there to do, and that is to entertain the reader. It isn't there to be slow or boring or god forbid, pretentious (shudders). Rather, its goal is to squeeze every ounce of joy and delight out of the pages, and that's what this series does best.

Cracking open the first page, I was sucked right back into the world of Navarre and Violet Sorrengail. It's as if I've never left it. Everything I loved from the first book is here—nonstop action, characters I could root for, snarky dragons, and sizzling romance. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.

The only thing I didn't love was our main couple having squabbles for half the book over reasons I couldn't make heads or tails of. I get that Rebecca Yarros has to inject some sort of strife between them to keep things interesting, but I was just confused. But if it's that or hundreds of pages of lovey-dovey mush, I guess I'll take confounding couple problems any day.

I always have a sliver of trepidation going into book 2 of a series. What if my enjoyment of the first book was a fluke, a figment of my imagination? Or that the author somehow found the magical formula once, but can't reproduce it again? Or worse, that there's no interesting story left to tell? But I needn't worry because Iron Flame contains all the magic of its predecessor.

I will say though, going in, the length at more than 600 pages was a bit daunting. But once I started, it didn't even matter. I was riveted throughout. It felt like every single page served a purpose—except for the aforementioned confounding couple problems—building momentum and eventually hurtling towards a stunning conclusion. Honestly, if there were another 600 pages, I'd happily gobble those up too.

Before this book, I admit I was a bit puzzled that there could be five books in this series, like how much more is there to this story? But seeing the way Yarros has built out the universe and the war in this book, and especially that ending, I get now how there could be so much more to this. And I'm glad. I'm not sure I'm ready to say goodbye to Navarre any time soon, so I'm happy there are still a few more books to come. I just hope the wait isn't too long.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars