Dain (A Tale of Threshing Day)
Hello, all. Welcome back to the review of Threshing Day, a supplemental anthology for The Empyrean.
I was dreading reading this one. Yarros’s demonization of Dain and associated abuse in the mainline books sickens me. The fact she kept doing it long after Dain ceased to be a narrative obstacle, rather than either easing off or committing to Dain as an antagonist, makes it seem like Yarros has unresolved hatred for someone Dain represents and keeps him around so she can fantasize about harming that person. I was worried that Dain’s story would be further dedicated to defiling him.
The story we got instead is pretty bad, but if Yarros’s goal was to stab her strawman a few more times, she was subtle about it. Dain’s flaws are mild enough for him to remain sympathetic without becoming pathetic. He is a guy in a rough situation doing the best he can. If anything, this story makes him even more sympathetic in the mainline books (though I assume this was accidental, because it also means Violet, his suber observant friend who psychoanalyzes people, is even more deplorable for treating him the way that she has). The main issue with this story is that it represents the first instance in this anthology of a character contradiction that spawns a plot hole.
Buckle into those Special Snowflake dragon saddles. It’s time to purge some initiates.
STATS
Title: “Dain”
Series: The Empyrean (Supplemental Anthology)
Author(s): Rebecca Yarros
Genre: Fantasy (Epic)
First Printing: September 29th, 2026
Publisher: Red Tower Books
SPOILERS & DISCLAIMER
This post will provide heavy, unmarked spoilers for the entirety the Threshing Day anthology up through the end of the story being featured. Mild, unmarked stories for later stories may also be provided, while any heavy spoilers for later stories will be confined to clearly marked sections. I will do my best to keep the first paragraph of every section spoiler-free.
Heavy, unmarked spoilers will also be provided for all mainline books of The Empyrean (Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, and Onyx Storm) released prior to Threshing Day. I’m going to assume that you’ve read those previous reviews, but it won’t be necessary to understand this review, as I’ll be doing my best to recap or reference recurring issues or prior canon as it comes up.
For more information regarding the standards by which I’m going to be rating these stories, please see the post titled “Focus and Continuity (A Prelude to Threshing Day)”.
WHAT WE KNEW ABOUT DAIN BEFORE THRESHING DAY
Dain started the story as the Good Boy Love Interest. He existed to be a contrast with Xaden and a symbol of the safety Violet was choosing to leave behind. The closest thing he had to a character trait was his strict adherence to the rules.
If the story had ended with Chapter 16 of Fourth Wing, I would include Dain on the list of characters. Past that point, though, he is reduced to an object: a punching bag for Violet and those allied with her to abuse at very turn. He is the epitome of someone broken down to build others up, only the breaking down isn’t justified in the narrative and no one gets built up, so it’s just abuse that Yarros expects the audience to go along with. Then, going into Iron Flame, he becomes a scapegoat who nevertheless shows unfailing loyalty to Violet. Onyx Storm then makes him an object of humiliation.
If Dain were a character, then either something would have snapped, or else his contributions would have been recognized. Yarros could have made him the villain in either the back two-thirds of Fourth Wing or Part 1 of Iron Flame. That didn’t happen. She could have had his decision to steal Asher’s research for Violet be something that had actual weight and led Violet to seriously reflect on how she treated him. She also didn’t do that - the theft happened in the background, and Violet just accepts her prize and moves on without giving him his due. I wouldn’t quite say he is an object like Xaden, but he certainly isn’t an entity with existence outside of Violet.
CONTENT
At the start of his Threshing, Dain has an unwelcome visit from Colonel Aetos, who has apparently been a helicopter parent since Dain started at the Quandrant. We learn how Dain’s mother left his father and how his father is now overbearing because of it. Colonel Aetos urges Dain to keep an eye on the rebel children and report any Codex violations directly to him. He then urges Dain to bond with a green dragon.
Dain goes into the forest to bond. A green dragon presents itself - but so does a red dragon, whom Dain is instinctively drawn to. A dragon speaks in Dain’s mind, urging him to make the right choice. Dain chooses the red dragon (which, naturally, is Cath). Cath asks Dain where his loyalties lie, and Dain declares he is loyal to Cath above the Codex or his father.
ANALYSIS
Plot and Worldbuilding
The structure of this story is almost identical to “Brennan” - only this time, the story actually works. As with “Mira”, this story is wafer-thin and very weak, but it is indeed a story geared around a character arc. I will explain this more below.
During the conversation with Dain, Colonel Aetos makes it clear that the rebel children are up to shady dealings and that he wants to tell Dain all about the venin. This means that, at best, a member of the rider leadership who apparently has the authority to empty out a military base without any approval from higher up is aware of the rebel children being up to something shady, but is unable to stop them from smuggling weaponry. It is a plot hole that is only closed by heaping more incompetence on the rider leadership.
On the worldbuilding side, we get a second contradiction, though one that is less damaging. “Xaden” made it very clear that the Codex prohibited the rebel children from assembling in groups of three or more. Here, it’s stated that the rule was new to Dain’s year (i.e. it would not be in effect when Xaden had his Threshing). This is a detail that would tear another plot hole into “Xaden”, because the whole reason the rebel children split up into groups smaller than three in the first place was because the Codex made them do so, meaning the encounter with Alic would have ended immediately rather than being dragged out until Masen stumbled onto the scene. However, per the standards I previously set about continuity within the anthology, I’m going to mark this as a flaw in “Dain”, not “Xaden”. In “Dain”, it doesn’t damage anything.
Dain
Character Restored
This story makes it clear that Dain’s existence is defined by pleasing his father. His devotion to the Codex is due to a desire to live up to his father’s expectations. Outside of his father, his only positive relationship seems to be Violet, with him being content that Violet will be safe among the scribes while he is fighting on the battlefront.
Dain is the first rider in this story to be defined first and foremost by fear. At first, I worried that Yarros was trying to break Dain down by making him out to be a coward. That’s thankfully not how things play out. That said, the way Dain shies back from his father is consistent with how he shies back from Violet whenever she showed her teeth. I don’t know if Yarros realizes this, but by making this choice, she made it even harder to ignore that Violet is abusive towards Dain. He reacts the same way towards her tantrums that he reacts to his father’s abuses of authority, and his efforts to please her mirror his efforts to please his father. Violet is also meant to be Sherlock Holmes when it comes to deduction and psychoanalysis, and Onyx Storm makes it clear that she understands Dain has a strained relationship with his father. What I’m trying to say is that:
Violet’s treatment of Dain reads just as negatively as his relationship to his father.
Violet, the “rational woman” chosen by Tairn for her “intelligence”, should have noticed the parallel.
In other words, even without her self-insert Mary Sue being in this story, Yarros manages to make her even more vile for how she treated Dain in the mainline books.
The Arc
As with Brennan, Dain’s story consists of a conversation with his father that rehashes a dynamic that was already effectively conveyed, followed by him bumping into a dragon and bonding after being given the ultimatum to take a leap of faith. The difference is that Dain’s story works. This comes down to a single simple variable: Dain’s leap of faith actually has something to do with his conversation with his father.
Colonel Aetos pressures Dain to choose a green dragon. After all, Colonel Aetos’s dragon is a green dragon, and he sees green dragons as an epitome of the virtues he wants people to recognize in Dain. He scoffs at Dain’s suggestion that a red dragon might be a good match.
The moment where Dain meets Cath is presented as a binary. Does he heed his father’s expectations, or follow his instincts and be his own man? He chooses the latter and bonds with Cath. His declaration that his loyalty is to Cath above all else is really just formalizing that decision.
In isolation, this is the best-written story of Threshing Day thus far. It’s incredibly basic and lacking in nuance, but this is the first case where bonding with a dragon was actually earned by character development. Dain went into Threshing as one person and came out the other side as another after a pivotal choice that was adequately set up.
… in isolation.
The Reset
Yarros did not have to have Dain declare his loyalty to his dragon over the Codex and over his father. By including this, she announced to the audience that Dain has changed. This implies that Dain will no longer be bound by his father’s expectations or the rules. He will, at the very least, trust the judgment of dragons above all else.
One year later, in Fourth Wing, Dain is back to his original characterization. He strictly adheres to the rules, as his father would want him to. He reports Codex violations freely. Even setting aside the issue of what Cath thought about the events of that book, the fact he does not trust Tairn enough to leave Violet’s survival in the dragon’s claws as soon as her Threshing is done flies in the face of his little declaration to Cath in this story (unless Yarros is implying he doesn’t trust Tairn because not trusting Tairn is somehow an act of loyalty to Cath, which she hasn’t provided adequate information to support).
This is not a small contradiction that can be handwaved by saying that this is his true characterization and that Yarros will soft-reboot him in Book 4. Yarros pinned blame for the climax of Fourth Wing on Dain. The characterization that drove him to report Xaden’s Codex violation to his father is a lynchpin of the plot of the first book, and by extension, the entire series to follow. Dain has to be the person he is at the start of this story in order for her to get her desired plot. By writing an arc that establishes Dain to now be a completely different person, she has torn open a plot hole.
Cath
Dain’s dragon is not a character. He issues an ultimatum and demands fealty, which is baseline for dragons in this story. If anything, the fact that he urges Dain to be his own man here and then evidently had no impact on his behavior in Fourth Wing makes it clear that these traits exist solely to drive Dain’s plot hole-opening character arc.
RATING: 4/10
This story could have been an 8/10. The value of that functional character arc cannot be overstated, especially since the narrative mostly holds together beyond that. The problem is that continuity is a thing that needs to be respected, especially in an anthology where Yarros keeps going for memberberries or explanations to things in the mainline books. Colonel Aetos couldn’t get any evidence of the stolen alloy with a full year of suspicions? Dain’s arc resets magically in time for Fourth Wing? Yarros doesn’t realize that she has made Violet’s treatment of Dain analogous to his treatment by a character we are meant to hate? These are not insignificant issues, and all of them were unforced errors.
SOMETHING TO SLEEP THROUGH
Next Sunday, we’re going to talk about “Bodhi”. The title character of this one isn’t much of character. I’ve always had trouble telling him apart from Garrick. Bodhi’s story could have been a chance to correct his weak writing, but instead, it comes across like Yarros was just adding filler to ratchet up the total number of stories to 13.
In the interim, if you’re looking for your fix of gritty fantasy, my free serial Moral Support is ongoing. It’s a Dark Fantasy story where motorbike-riding Persian alchemists face off against medieval Balkan soldiers in a haunted forest. Chapter 1 through Chapter 5 Part 2 are now available!
Thank you all for stopping by. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoyed what you read here. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
