In keeping with my recommendation of Cruel Beauty, an actual good YA book, instead of 🔥hotfire garbage🔥, aka Acotar, I thought I'd recommend another favourite of mine.
So, this time, I'm going to give an alternative recommendation to Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. This post is definitely not inspired by the release of Iron Flame.
Instead please try:
Fireborne by Rosaria Munda❤️🔥
This recommendation is especially for anyone who fell for the advertising when FW first came out, and it was sold as a YA adjacent military dragon fantasy with a slow burn romance.
So if that sounds interesting to you and you want to read an actually well written story, go check out Fireborne.
Fireborne is a YA fantasy, the 1st book of the Aurelian Cycle (a completed trilogy).
It follows its two main characters in a military academy through their training to become dragon riders.
I personally have pitched this series to irl friends as a genderswapped Anastasia (animated movie) with dragons.
The story takes place right after a big revolution. The people overthrew the dragon riding aristocracy.
Our main characters meet up in an orphanage, where they grow up together and end up joining the military academy to become dragon riders.
A lot of the story revolves around the questions that come up when a newly formed government is put through crisis.
All seen through the eyes of the protagonists, who as teenagers are old enough to know what life was like before the revolution, but young enough to have grown up in the new system.
The story does a great job of dealing with the struggles that come with uprooting old deeply ingrained systems of oppression while trying to build a newer fairer system.
The dragons are an integral part of this theme. Unlike FW, in which magical abilities and creatures are added without regard for how they might impact the world or themes, in Fireborne, the dragons are the embodiment of political and military power.
When the aristocracy ruled their oppressive regime, they were the only ones allowed to own and ride dragons. After their fall, the new regime allowed regular people the opportunity to become riders.
However, the number of dragons is still limited, and the new regime, comprised of former revolutionary leaders, want to keep the new riders under their control.
So, in the end, they still come up with a system that allows for abuse and oppression because access to power remains restricted to a chosen few, the dragon riders and those who control them, the newly established government.
These themes make for really complicated and nuanced conflicts without easy solutions. The sequels make a great job with further expanding on these themes.
The military elements also all make sense in this series, and they employ logical means to train their most valuable military assets, their dragon riders unlike FW.
It also features one of my favourite slow burn romances (at least in YA), the relationship has actually depth and tension, while also providing believable reasons why the characters can't just get together.
I'm actually really salty that Fourth Wing took off practically overnight, while Fireborne has been out for ages and has consistently remained underhyped. But I guess it isn’t spicy... 😒
So, for anyone who picked FW up without realising that it is actually just a very trashy smutty romance mascarading as a high fantasy, I highly recommend reading Fireborne which comes with the added perk of not being written by a known zionist.
65 notes
·
View notes
I don’t usually make posts like this, but I’ve been seeing a lot of anti-intellectual junk lately, and I really think we need to put the word “pretentious” up on a shelf until people learn what it actually means.
It doesn’t describe someone who likes artsy-fartsy deep meaning media. People who are pretentious are fake. They’re posers trying to be sophisticated and unique, not like other girls. They pretend to only like stuff they think will make them sound cool when they talk about it. They want to act like they know something you don’t, and they want attention for it.
By definition, if you genuinely enjoy something, you can’t be pretentious. If it resonates with you, and you analyze it, and you don’t care what people think, that’s the polar opposite, actually. If you love obscure experimental prog music, if you watch underground high concept indie films through English teacher eyes, if you spend hours in a modern art museum reading each piece as a vessel for storytelling, if your backpack’s full of poetry books that inspire you, if you play underrated games that were someone’s passion project, if you have an interest in studying the classics or the masters, you are not pretentious.
Of course, some people just don’t like some stuff, and that’s fine, but that’s not what this is about. Don’t let anti-intellectuals shame you for enjoying things just because your interests are inaccessible to them, because they refuse to be brave and put effort into critical thinking. You’re not stuck up for refusing to overlook the craft of artists.
126 notes
·
View notes
Did Claire not wanna ride Carmy like a mad woman?
Everybody talking about how unsatisfied Carmy looked after sex with Claire. He seemed detached and disillusioned. He was so ill at ease the next day he had a panic attack and realized Syd is his peace and they had that metaphorical fuck under the table.
But can we back up to Claire. I’m sorry, she’s wanted this man for over a decade, sought out his real number, finally has sex and you’re telling me it just looked like cuddle time? You’re telling me she didn’t want Carmy to wreck her? You’re telling me she wasn’t going to ride him crazy?
Or they didn’t tell me, they showed me. I’m sorry, no. Carmy is so fine. Ain't no way you been wanting this man so deeply for so long and that sex was PG. I get FX may not be that kind of network but are you telling me this is as wild as it gets? With JAW in the lead role? We all saw Lip. We know what he can do.
So this makes me wonder. What are they trying to say by keeping the sex so tame? It could be a contractual thing or a creative decision to not be super graphic, but they could have keyed the primal passion in some way. And I can get if it wasn’t from his side, although if he’s supposed to have wanted that woman that long, more should be expected. But obviously he’s conflicted. But her?
What a waste. Somebody finally gets this man in bed and all we got was some wide eyed staring? They were so dry. And really I’m disappointed in this woman for not taking it up a level. You get your dream boy in bed and it was so lame. No, it wasn’t a naked, sexy thing. No it was not.
86 notes
·
View notes
People really need to stop giving antis well thought out reasons as to why they ship things because 1. It won't work. They'll still think you're disgusting and 2. You're basically just going "no but I have a REAL reason to ship this!" and throwing people who just sorta ship things for shits and giggles under the bus
If an anti asks you why you ship something, just go "lol cuz I like it" and block them. That's all they deserve
24 notes
·
View notes