3.5 ⭐

'the first year is when some of us lose our lives. the second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.'

i was looking forward to reading this and continuing this series, but once i started i felt like the beginning of this book was honestly not that great. i was disappointed by the weak start to the story and thought that if the book continued to be like that, i wouldn't really have a fun time reading it, which was a huge letdown. however, after maybe 100 pages or so, it started to pick up and become interesting. the thing i've enjoyed about both fourth wing and iron flame is that they both consistently keep a fast pace and a lot of things are always going on, so the story doesn't drag out, and that's really important for me when i'm reading a book as long as this.

however, there are so many things in this book that i just found unnecessary and ruined the reading experience for me. firstly, wtf was up with violet and xaden?? seriously, why does violet have to nitpick every single aspect of their relationship? like, i get it, xaden hid stuff from her in the first book but he's going to have to keep secrets when he's the leader of a freaking revolution and doing all the crap he's doing. i just feel like the whole thing with violet not trusting xaden was added in there to create tension between them. same with the whole 'other woman' trope with cat. it literally added nothing to the story and was just a waste of pages.

violet's character as a whole also really annoyed me. she's made out to be "one of the strongest riders" when she literally can't even ride her dragon without a saddle or fight someone without breaking like 100 bones. there were also so many characters and names of people to the point that it got very confusing. and most of them weren't even that great, although i will say that dain's redemption arc was pretty good. another thing that was excessive was the history of the world and the names of places, and generally just information in this book. i seriously had no idea what was going on half of the time.

despite all of this, i really enjoyed reading the last 100 pages or so with the final battle. it was really interesting and the tension was added at just the right places. and although i'm not completely loving this series so far, i have to say that rebecca yarros writes the most insane cliffhangers out there. like, seriously, that cliffhanger/plot twist in the last 2 pages was so freaking good. i can't wait to see how this gets resolved in the next book.