Well I couldn’t drop it completely so I ended up finishing the sequel to Let Us Be Your Poison recently.
Dance in the Flames wasn’t as good as Poison but in some ways it was more fun to read since it was a lot less dark and heavy. Most of the conflict in Poison was character drama related, it was all internal and personal, and for most of the story there was a huge divide between the Whiterose and Bumbleby pairs and everyone had a ton of emotional baggage and personal issues to get through. The conflict in Flames is much more external and by the start of it the Team RWBY girls are all close to each other and are fully in the “ride or die” phase. So that’s nice.
But the conflict in Flames falters and makes it less interesting than Poison because the villains suck. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. The conflict revolves around Ozpin, Ironwood and Glynda and they just suck as villains in the story. They’re complete cartoons, they’re incompetent, one-dimensional, they do things that make no sense, they’re not interesting or allowed to have anything redeeming or complex about them, the narrative is horribly biased against them in all facets. Ozpin and Ironwood are just stupid assholes and Glynda is completely crazy for no reason. It unfortunately makes Ruby less likable too because everyone is caught up in this selfish, petty, pointless, bullshit.
The politics and philosophy of the story are the same as always, that hasn’t changed, so you’d know what to expect. The author is very passionate so I’ll give them that. They clearly care a lot about what they’re writing.
The best part of the story was everything revolving around Winter. Nora was also good in this one.
Still an interesting story, and surprisingly much more relaxed overall than Poison, but not as satisfying because of that. Poison’s ending was the culmination of so much insane character drama and the strained relationships between all four members of Team RWBY. Flames just couldn’t really match up to that.
I don’t know why Ruby wears glasses in these stories and I can never picture her wearing them in my head.