this post is longer than iron flame
lit fic friends i'm sorry i love u
Rebecca Yarros has sent me on a downward spiral of epic proportions.
For context: I’ve been at my parents’ house for almost a week now. A phenomenon happens when I come here, and I suspect it’s the same for many, which is that I regress to my most juvenile, unhygienic form and stop combing my hair and grow out my mustache and won’t shower for five days straight. And I just wait for my mom to bring me snacks until my room is stacked with bowls, stacks of bowls so high you can barely see the various seltzer cans and cups I’ve hoarded. I journey from my room to the bathroom down the hall to the kitchen also down the hall and to the living room right next to the kitchen and then I go to bed. My only trip out of the house will literally be to the airport to fly back to New York.
Now, you could read all that and think, Mithra, this very much seems like a you problem. Don’t bring Rebecca Yarros into this. And to you I say, phooey! Haven’t you ever heard of reading the whole newsletter first? Anyways …
reads
So this is what happened. I finished Iron Flame in a frenzy because I really didn’t want to haul it on the plane (but carried it in my tote bag around the city in the event of self defense). As I said last week, the plot had me utterly confused, and this did not change. To be fair, I am a fast reader; I am so greedy and eager to devour something that I often miss some essential details in a situation. And I did have a bit of a one-track mind here as I was also speeding through random minutiae so I could get to parts involving my new fictional boyfriend Xaden Riorson. But, in my defense, this plot is pretty fucking unwieldy.*
I’ve seen critics saying that this probably should have been two books, and I understand why — I think the pacing probably would have improved had the first part been its own separate novel with more room to breathe. The events of part one and part two feel a bit too disparate at times. I found myself thinking of plot points I was absolutely certain happened months ago in FW but actually took place earlier in this book about 300 pages ago.
It also doesn’t help that I’m not a very visual thinker, and I have an incredibly difficult time understanding the environment and picturing the settings and buildings in books in general. A fantasy book does not make this difficulty of mine any easier. So I can’t blame Yarros for my inability to process certain things, but I also don’t think she’s as descriptive and detailed of events and places as she could be given the unreal amount of content she’s throwing at us. She’s not the deftest writer, and it showed up here more than in Fourth Wing because there’s so much more to juggle.
But at the same time, the romance is still great, I really love the characters, I had an absolutely joyous time reading it, and I was deeply engaged. So I did something I usually never do: I decided to work to understand the other parts of this that I don’t care about as much to help enhance my enjoyment. I undertook a time-sensitive research project, starting in the deep dark depths of Reddit, realizing that’s always a bad idea, and then —
Yeah, I reread Fourth Wing in about a day on an illicit copy on my phone. I’m not proud of this. My screen time increased 20%. My vision is blurred but my insurance doesn’t cover my current ophthalmologist. I have so much on my poor little Kindle to get through before the clock strikes midnight at December’s end. But I had to do it to get a better grasp on what goes down in part two of IF — and, because I like to be honest with you, I just really wanted to read some of that enemies to lovers introduction again. This time, I took NOTES. Yeah, I did some WORK. I figured out who the creatures are and what the whole war thing is about. Then, obviously, I had to REREAD Iron Flame so I could apply my knowledge to its goings-on. Still thought it was full of a lot of unnecessary and unexplained shit, but was able to understand the gravity of where our characters end up.
This begs the question: Should you have to reread something to get and appreciate it sufficiently, or do the best authors make it so you can take what you need from your initial go-round? This was, of course, a task I greatly enjoyed, but I do think my first read should have been a bit more seamless. I feel a little crazy, so I’m going to stop talking about this and still give Iron Flame a 4/5, maybe a 3.9 if I’m feeling grouchy when it comes time to post on Instagram in a few years given my current output.
Now you might be thinking, okay, well, you spent about two nights straight rereading both of these behemoths on a random website on your phone where you had to pause every two paragraphs to exit out of an ad. That’s a bummer, but not that low. Rebecca didn’t really do you that dirty.
I regret to inform you that it does, in fact, get worse, and she did.
I foreshadowed some Sarah J. Maas involvement earlier, and we’re going to throw her into the mix as a guilty party here. Having now reread the Empyrean Series, I can see that Xaden is rather similar to Rhysand** (my former fictional boyfriend) in their whole shadows and darkness and bad boy nonsense (swoon). I’d been making those comparisons while reading, and I thought to myself: You know what could soothe this hangover while I wait for book three? Revisiting the romance that this may have gleaned a kernel of inspiration from.
So I reread A Court of Mist and Fury, the Empire Strikes Back to A Court of Thorns and Roses’s Star Wars. A primer for anyone new to my reading habits: ACOTAR is an idiotic book that I could not put down. I didn’t care about Feyre, I was bored by Tamlin, and the end is so batshit fucking crazy that I was confused as to what book I was reading the whole time.
ACOMAF, on the other hand, while not an achievement in writing in any form, is absolutely delightful. SJM bamboozled me. The romance is perfect. The point is that I then reread that (also on my phone but I have an illicit PDF downloaded so I can revisit it at anytime) so I could return to the story that really started me on my very short so far romantasy journey.
And HERE’S the real problem. For some reason, ACOMAF is my ultimate comfort book, something I should think about bringing up to my therapist Debra, and when I get sucked into it again, I want to relive it again and again and again. It renders me rather unmotivated to read anything else. So I’ve been in a little bit of a terrible loop where I’m now rereading the second half of that one again, and also part one of Iron Flame and making comparisons, and, yes, there is a direct correlation between not seeing my “real life” boyfriend for a week and an uptick in my romantasy reading, but that’s for another time.
No, actually, THIS is the problem, because once I finished ACOMAF, I simply had to read A Court of Wings and Ruin, the slightly boring, less sexy third book, even though it’s dumb because I don’t have control over my faculties and I just have to read about what happens to Feyre and Rhys again as if it changed at any point since I last read it. And THIS time, it made me TEAR UP. A FEW TIMES. How is my emotional attachment DEEPENING? This does not bode well for forcibly removing myself from the spiral. And you know what? I’ll admit it. I did A Court of Frost and Starlight, too. (at least it’s a novella.) I will not sink to the depths of A Court of Silver Flame — not yet. I have time to pull myself up and out. I just have to have the willpower.
I don’t know if I’m properly articulating what’s happening. It’s not like when I was a child and reread the Harry Potter series back to front ten million times over (YER A TERF JK!!!). It’s more on par with when I can only watch Community for a week over and over and over and I don’t want to watch it anymore but the idea of watching anything else is out of the question. This usually clears up within a few weeks, but as I have an absurd amount of books to get to before the clock strikes midnight on December the thirty-first, I’m hoping that pouring my soul out here will hasten the process. So, yes, thank you, Rebecca Yarros, for ruining what was supposed to be my week of peaceful reading.
*Not Crescent City levels of unwieldiness — if you suffered through House of Earth and Blood, give me a call because I’m going to tell you it’s maybe worth it to read House of Sky and Breath for that ENDING, no spoilers, and then you can join me at the House of Flame and Shadow release party in January that I will not actually attend because meeting SJM fans irl is terrifying to me — but still pretty wacko.
**fuck now realizing Xaden is also like Azriel with all the shadows and shit. WE MARCH AT DAWN FOR AZRIEL BOOK
other … things I’ve been reading …
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, because now we will quickly discuss books that are not about men who are lords of the night. I suppose that might be a disappointment to others, and it is to me as well, but we have to forge on.
I mentioned this many newsletters ago, but the first time I had heard of Biography of X was when I went to a Tables of Contents event back in April and Catherine Lacey was one of the featured authors. I ended up grabbing it because the cover looked cool, but I was also intrigued by Idra Novey’s Take What You Need. She was very lovely at the event and we chatted on Instagram afterwards, which made me more motivated to pick it up. (Tables of Contents is a cool club of cool cats who bring in authors to do readings and they pair the readings with food inspired from the book. Not the obvious stuff, either, and not just books with overt references to food! They once paired a book that mentioned leg sugaring with a dessert inspired by sugaring one’s legs. Photo at the bottom of the newsletter.)
I’ve finally read it, and I think it’s fascinating. It’s about a woman, Leah, who grew up in Appalachia and is visiting her deceased stepmother’s house for her will. Leah’s very sensitive to the cultural differences between her life in New York and her past life here, and had a complicated relationship with Jean, her stepmother.
At first, I wasn’t really sure if I was enjoying this. There’s a very clear message here about humanity and political differences and not understanding human differences and biases against people in this area, etc., and some of the points felt a bit basic. Leah is your typical neoliberal and is terrified of everything here, though she has reason to be wary. But once I got into the chapters written in Jean’s perspective, I became quite absorbed; those are the most interesting and really carry the book. You feel a deep sense of empathy towards her, even knowing what you’ve heard from Leah. Novey is an excellent writer, taking us through the fractured narrative in a fluid and appropriately ambivalent way, and I found myself increasingly taken in after a slow start.
I did strongly prefer these chapters to Leah’s, but do think they were needed to balance each other out. Leah just feels a bit under-characterized, which may have been the point given what I just said about her being a walking stereotype — I just never felt for her quite as much, though her feelings and frustrations are deeply relatable.
While I’m not sure about the overarching narrative as a whole, I think the novel becomes something more than the sum of its parts by the end; it’s the simple, cutting beauty and heartbreak present in Novey’s writing that works so well. I have more to think about, but I will land on a 4/5 for this BUT FOR VERY DIFFERENT REASONS THAN IRON FLAME DON’T START
current reads
I’m currently in the midst of Hangman, by Maya Binyam, which traces an unnamed narrator’s trip back to his home country to visit his dying brother. So far, I’m loving the narrative structure, and it’s dryly very funny while also latently being a big bummer. I am about halfway through and wish a little more characterization had been presented to us to grasp onto at the beginning, or perhaps more of an external plot. But I know that’s not totally the purpose of this book, and Binyam is a phenomenal writer replete with biting observations. There’s a line where the narrator is listening to two grad students have an insufferable conversation that made me audibly chortle:
By then it was clear: the graduate students really were dedicated to being unoriginal. I thought to ask God to help me, but before I could ask God to help me, the good-looking man continued. (94)
While I ponder the eternal question of when it’s time to throw in the towel and just go to fucking grad school already, I will think of this line and smile.
reviews
I posted a review for Say Nothing, a rather good one, in fact, where I expand on my thoughts presented here after I first read it. Go check it out if you want to see some bonus content of photos from the time I went to Belfast, that time being when I studied abroad in Ireland, which I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet, which is crazy.
other media
this section is for your children and your elderly immigrant fathers who have just discovered the world of animated movies with talking animals
As a reprieve from my personal struggles in the death loop of romantasy rereads, my father and I have randomly been on a bit of an animated movie kick. He saw an ad for the movie Leo, starring Adam Sandler as an elderly lizard, and decided he simply had to watch it, so we did. I cannot blame him for this, because the lizard is very cute and chunky and the movie was very sweet. Definitely more on the children’s side on the animated movie scale, and I am so scared about the technology they have at their disposal in elementary schools, but very nice. Unfortunately, my father has continued to ask me if we can watch more Adam Sandler movies, and I really don’t have the heart to tell him that there is no character Adam Sandler has ever played whose tone is even remotely similar to sweet angel Leo the Lizard’s. Then, he said, “are there any more animated movies about cute animals? Like Leo? I want more of Leo.” And I said, father, I’m about to blow your mind.
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