Books
The narrator notes that “The Archives smell like parchment, book-binding glue, and ink. They smell like home.” Also simple and stripped-down, this use of imagery is highly effective. It subtly conveys an important fact about the speaker. Only someone who has read a lot of books in her home would consider the smell of book-binding equipment to be equitable with smelling like home in the broader sense of the term.
Xaden
The narrator has it bad for the man who “doesn’t even have to try to look sexy…he just is…Even the most effective poisons come in pretty packages, and Xaden’s exactly that — as beautiful as he is lethal.” The use of imagery here is complex. On the surface, it is purely visual; a description of Xaden’s physicality. The metaphorical addition of being lethal like poison adds an extra component to the simple physical attraction. The imagery suggests that Xaden is impossible to resist but is perhaps also too dangerous not to try to resist.
Luca
In describing another female cadet named Luca, the narrator fails to fully put trust in her use of imagery. “A corner of her mouth tilts up into a smirk, and she flips her long brown hair over her shoulder in a move that’s anything but casual. Like me, she’s one of the few women in the quadrant who didn’t cut her hair.” This physical description of Luca is all that is needed to convey the idea that she has more natural confidence than the narrator. She immediately adds unnecessary information by confessing to envy the girl’s confidence. The word did not even need to be used as the imagery is one that concretely identifies the girl’s cocky self-assurance.
Dragons
Imagery is, of course, used to describe the dragons that are essential to this fantasy novel. “Just when I think they’re about to fly overhead, they pitch vertically, whip the air with their huge semitranslucent wings, and stop, the gusts of wing-made wind so powerful that I nearly stagger backward.” This description is overwhelmed with sensory information that effectively paints an image of what is, after all, a completely imaginary creature. The combination of visual description of wings is made visceral with the language that powerfully hints at their strength when they flap in the air.
