Iron Flame
Rebecca Yarros, 2023
Fantasy Contemporary fictionRomance
A dragon rider faces her second year at a war college where love, loyalty and lethal secrets test every bond she has. Love and dread run close together here, with a witty voice, dramatic war-college stakes and a pace that keeps pressing forward.
Feels like longing, dread and hope. About love, war and death.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy dragon-rider fantasy with romance, sharp banter and loyalty tested under pressure. It is the second book in the Empyrean series, so starting here may leave you missing the first book's relationships and political setup.
Why read it
It gives you a tense second-year story about love, loyalty and lethal secrets, with enough momentum to carry you through its darker turns.
A page from the book
What does a place cost you after it stops asking for something obvious?
The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity. Rebecca Yarros.Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series became a BookTok phenomenon; Iron Flame, its second book, was an instant No. 1 bestseller on release in 2023.
Books that feel like this
More by Rebecca Yarros
Onyx Storm
Rebecca Yarros, 2025
Dragons, a war college, and a rider who plans to outthink everyone. Violet leaves the wards to find allies — and a secret big enough to break them.
Threshing Day
Rebecca Yarros, 2023
A dragon-riding academy where survival is a test, secrets are currency, and the wrong attraction can be as dangerous as the skies.
Fourth Wing
Rebecca Yarros, 2023
A bookish cadet is forced into a lethal dragon-rider quadrant, where dragons choose their riders, allies become rivals, and the only way out is to survive.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Iron Flame for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy dragon-rider fantasy with romance, sharp banter and loyalty tested under pressure. It is the second book in the Empyrean series, so starting here may leave you missing the first book's relationships and political setup.
- What is Iron Flame like?
- Love and dread run close together here, with a witty voice, dramatic war-college stakes and a pace that keeps pressing forward. Feels like longing, dread and hope. About love, war and death.
- What should I read after Iron Flame?
- If you liked Iron Flame, try Divine Rivals (Rebecca Ross), In Five Years (Rebecca Serle) and The War of Two Queens (Jennifer L. Armentrout).
A taste of the feed
Whose offhand verdict about you did you overhear and never forget?
It hadn’t taken long for Iris to learn what he truly thought of her. In fact, it had taken only half an hour after she had first met Roman. She had overheard him saying to one of the editors, “She’ll give me no competition. None at all. She dropped out of Windy Grove School in her final year.”
Divine Rivals · Rebecca Ross
A sentence that argues love isn't a promise but a presence, not a destination but a way of standing in time.
You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now. Love doesn’t require a future.
In Five Years · Rebecca Serle
The kind of vow that would hold even if the world burned down.
Whether she ruled over all the lands and seas or was the Queen of nothing but a pile of ashes and bones she would - will - always be my Queen. Love is too weak an emotion to describe how she consumes me and what I feel for her. She is my everything.
The War of Two Queens · Jennifer L. Armentrout
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