Time flies when you’re having fun, right? January certainly flew by. Maybe it just seems that the months go by faster because I’m getting older.

So, I jumped on the Fourth Wing/Empyrean series flights this week. I just finished the second in the series this morning after two days of almost marathon reading sessions, thanks to my Kindle Unlimited subscription. And because I didn’t want to wait until the third book went to KU, I bought it and will probably start it this afternoon (after I do some laundry and eat lunch).

My take on the series: First, I enjoyed the story. I enjoyed the “enemies to lovers” subplot. I thought Rebecca Yarros created a believable fantasy world that allowed me willingly to “[suspend] disbelief,” as Samuel Taylor Coleridge says we have to do in order to engage our imaginations. I was able to buy into the world of the “war” college, the use of dragons, and magic and all that. My major criticism has to do with the language in the book. I am not really a prude; I do not pepper my own language with four-letter words because that’s not how I was brought up. I found the graphic language excessive. In fact, I found it distracted from what the characters were saying. Perhaps because I expected it in the second book, it was not as distracting, but I don’t think it was as prevalent.

Of the first two books, I actually liked Iron Flame better even though it seemed longer. I liked the twist at the very end (no spoilers, other than to say, there is a very interesting twist in the cliffhanger ending). I can’t help it; I’m a retired English teacher, so I do look for themes and foreshadowing and the like, and one of the themes that strikes me is the “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” theme. This theme is especially strong at the end of Iron Flame. Other motifs that appear throughout the series are “coming of age,” even though the characters are adults in their twenties (the characterization, though, makes them seem more like adolescents than adults), loyalty and betrayal, family/sibling/parent-child relationships, and the “found” family.

Last year, I began keeping a book journal/reading log, and I am continuing the practice this year. One of the things I do is list the genre of the books I’m reading because I will get into a rut if I am not making conscience decisions about what I’m reading. Sometimes, making those classifications is not easy. Fourth Wing and Iron Flame are definitely in the fantasy genre with its use of talking dragons and magic, and it is a romance as it traces the development of the relationship between Violet and Xaden. (The new term is romantasy), and I think it falls in the YA classification with the young protagonists. That being said, I would not recommend this novel for younger teen readers. I also classify this book as dystopian in many ways. It has the autocratic leadership with a secret agenda hidden from the citizens in the name of protecting them as well as the use of fear to control the characters. Fourth Wing reminded me of The Hunger Games in the way the cadets were allowed to kill each other off in order to secure their places as riders.

After I finish Onyx Storm, I will return to By Another Name. I do have a tendency to binge-read when I start a series in progress. Unfortunately, I will have to wait a couple of years before the fourth book in the Empyrean series is published. Rebecca Yarros has stated that she is not committing to the one-year turn around for this next book due to the mental and physical stresses that schedule puts on her. And there are some new books coming from the Book of the Month Club and the Aardvark Book Club in the next couple of weeks as well. February will be a busy reading month, too.