Romantasy is an ever-growing genre that has seemingly taken over the book world since the covid era from what I can tell, especially with their consistent appearance on BookTok. Along with BookTok growing the genre, it is also contributing new authors to the genre. With this, there come critiques. Poor writing or too much romance and not enough fantasy world are two I hear often. In my personal opinion, though, neither one pertains to the first two novels in the still unfolding The Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros took Romantasy lovers by storm after its release in 2023, making the release of its sequel Iron Flame later that same year so big that copies were selling out EVERYWHERE. (That is until people started noticing the misprints the first editions were riddled with.)
Each book follows Violet Sorrengail, a young woman who was always believed to be bound for the peaceful life of a scribe in the Archives of Navarre. However, her mother, a commanding general, has different plans for Violet and sends her daughter to the elite war college to become a dragon rider. Violet, having always been a small and brittle girl, very much expects to die, and everyone around her seems to agree that is the most likely outcome of her time with the quadrant—especially when she comes face-to-face with Xaden Riorson, an extremely powerful and ruthless rider who has his own reasons to want Violet dead.
The first book focuses on Violet in her first year at Basgiath War College, and how she finds an edge to survive day-by-day. But while she faces mortal peril at the hands of her classmates and dragons behind the Navarrian wards, the war beyond the wards continues to add to the death roll, and Violet starts to find cracks in the history she had been taught all her life.
Book two, Iron Flame, takes readers along with Violet as she faces the new reality set before her after beginning to peal back the layers of secrets her kingdom has kept. Now as she navigates the next year of her life, she has even more reason to be concerned about keeping herself and those she loves alive. Even if it could never be enough.
There are several names in this fantasy world that you may not be able to pronounce, and honestly, that’s ok. The author didn’t even know how to pronounce them either for a while. Yarros borrowed from Sottish Gaelic for the names of places and dragons and such in this series, and she faced a bit of controversy when she insisted on pronouncing things the way she had imagined them and not the way the language intends them, even after correction by native speakers of the language. More recently though, she apologized for this error and began to pronounce the words accurately to the language she took them from.
For those who hear romantasy and immediately think about the cheesy lines and tropes and weird nicknames given by the love interest, yes, those are in these books. I don’t have any issue with things like this when they are done well because they’re basic for a reason, and that reason is because so many people like them even if they won’t admit to it. The author’s writing skills grew in the second novel, so the incorporation of these tropes and things felt smoother.
I really enjoyed each of these books. They have a romance that is a key piece of the story, but it hasn’t overshadowed the fantasy world and the magic and political systems taking place within it. There are genuinely high stakes that made me put the books down at times because I was scared by how they might turn out. I don’t want to say too much for fear of giving things away, but I can say that any book that makes me feel so many emotions so strongly is a book I will recommend, and both of these fit that criteria.
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