We all love a spicy romance book for some light reading on the weekend, but only a few novels in this inundated YA market manage to hit all the right notes, and Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing saga is certainly one of them.
The story is set in a fantasy world and follows a heroine named Violet Sorrengail. Violet has trained her whole life to become a scribe in the military school called Basgiath War College. Violet is weak and sickly, so when she’s assigned to a fighter quadrant known as Fourth Wing despite her afflictions, she has to overcome numerous perils to prove her worth to both the school and her mother, General Lilith Sorrengail.
As this is a YA romance fantasy, you can expect a lot of romantic tension between the protagonists, especially Violet and the leader of Fourth Wing, a brooding youngster called Xaden Riorson.
The folks over at TikTok would have reviewers believe that Fourth Thing and its sequel Iron Flame are among some of the best books to come out of this genre in recent years. But in case you just want to review the steamier chapters without reading the whole book — you know, just to get a feel for how this book handles intimacy and whether it’s really up your alley — we’ve got this covered.
The spicy chapters in Iron Flame, explained
As you’ll probably know, the main romantic relationship in the Empyrean Cycle revolves around Violet and Xaden. So all the scenes listed below happen between the two of them. Without getting into too much detail, these are chapters in Iron Flame where scenes of an intimate nature take place:
You can expect to see two mild scenes in Chapter 12 and Chapter 20, but if you want to get to the really spicy stuff, you should head directly for Chapter 27 and Chapter 37. Chapter 48 also features a sex scene between Violet and Xaden, and Rebecca Yarros really doesn’t mince any words, so be forewarned that things will get pretty graphic.
So far as “spicy” scenes in fantasy books go, Iron Flame is up there in the mature section. A lot of books, like the acclaimed Court of Thorns and Roses, allude to sex scenes and even depict them to some extent, but Iron Flame and its predecessor really flirt with the “smut” categorization, even if they don’t necessarily end up there. That’s all to say this may not be for you, but definitely give it a go before moving on to safer choices like Cassandra Clare and Sarah J. Maas.
