Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros Series: The Empyrean #3
Published by Red Tower Books on January 21st 2025
Genres: Epic, Fantasy, Fiction, Romance
Pages: 544
Buy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org
Find on Goodreads
After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.
Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.
Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.
They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.
But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.
The Empyrean series is best enjoyed in order.Reading Order:Book #1 Fourth WingBook #2 Iron FlameBook #3 Onyx Storm
After the massive cliffhanger of Iron Flame, I was anxious to get my hands on the next entry of the Empyrean series, Onyx Storm. Though the ending of Iron Flame showed main characters, female lead Violet Sorrengail and male lead, Xaden Riorson dealing with the knowledge that the worst case scenario had happened, Onyx Storm grounds this all to a halt in favor of filler and a slow descent towards an inevitable fate. Along this descension, it’s harder and harder to like main character Violet.
Sadly, much of Onyx Storm felt very forced to me. Before the series was a five book series, it was supposed to be a trilogy. Regrettably, this novel feels like an example of too much of a good thing being, well, not a good thing. After the tense battle and cliffhanger ending of Iron Flame, it’s shocking to go back to the humdrum of everyday life at Basgiath War College. It feels like a whole lot of nothing is happening for most of the novel. The pacing doesn’t help either. Admittedly, I never wanted to put the book down, even with the hills and valleys of action, but I sure wished there was a middle ground between having virtually no action and tons of it.
Onyx Storm required quite a bit of suspension of disbelief for me. I am well aware that it is a romantasy novel, so realism is probably not at the top of the list of concerns. However, as stated in my review of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, I was disappointed with the disability representation. I did think there were some improvements in this area in Onyx Storm, but it was not enough for my taste. Much like the fantasy setting is there to dress up the romance of the series, I feel like the disability representation is there to do the same thing for Violet.
I was happy to see that Violet actually recognized she couldn’t climb another flight of stairs after 24 hours of flying on a dragon or that Xaden actually held her upright with his shadows, but these types of moments seem few and far apart. Violet will internally mention she’s in pain and within the same sentence, basically go, “oh, well,” and carry on to fight a whole battle and to not mention the pain again. It doesn’t feel realistic. For her to be able to so easily compartmentalize her pain is a feat I wish I had as someone with multiple chronic illnesses (for the record, none of them are EDS, so I’m not an expert on that condition). Not only did I feel that Violet wasn’t struggling enough, but I also felt that she was just not scared enough.
I know the woman is trying to save the entire world and her most precious person, but she’s never anxious about her physical limitations and their consequences. For example, she’s never afraid that she’s going to say, dislocate both of her knees at once, and not be able to mount her dragon in time or to save someone she cares about. She’s never worried that this is the time a mender won’t get to her in time and she’ll be forever sidelined. As someone living with chronic illnesses, I spend so much time trying to think of every single possible issue I might encounter and to prepare for it. Just when traveling, I’ve got portable heating pads for pain, various painkillers, three different forms of electrolytes, and hand warmers. I know she’s living in a medieval fantasy world and obviously doesn’t have access to these things like I do, but Violet doesn’t remotely have any plans in place to help her manage her condition or to help her succeed in her goals.
The closest thing she does to pain management is soaking in the tub after a long day in the saddle. And of course, that does the trick completely. But most of the time, the novel simply skips ahead, choosing not to show any part of her resting or recovering. It is discouraging in a novel with a female main character with a disability that it’s not worth noting the bad days or the sleepless nights due to pain. I also never see Xaden giving her massages or anything of the sort. And of course, her condition doesn’t affect their sex life at all. It’s also shocking that her classmates, for lack of a better term, all seem to magically know how to perfectly relocate her limbs without any medical training.
“‘Nobility doesn’t play into rank, at least not for me.’ Aaric glances my way. ‘Andarna chose Violet, and though there are four superiorly ranked officers with us, it’s Violet’s mission. She’s in command. And with the exception of her rather questionable taste in men, I’ve trusted Violet’s wisdom since childhood.’”
It was also really hard to believe, as someone who has a partner in the Air Force, that a cadet, Violet, is continually put in charge of military operations. Though Onyx Storm posits that the reason she is thrust into leadership is because she has Tairn and Andarna, with Tairn being a “general” of dragons, so to speak, it’s clear she is not equipped to be in this role. I was truly surprised that Onyx Storm didn’t utilize her sister, Mira Sorrengail, who is not only an officer, but also a pretty famously competent one to help her out. Instead, both the Sorrengail siblings, who were such a huge focus of Iron Flame, are mostly sidelined in this novel.
“‘Thought you’d at least be logical, Violet.’
‘Me? You’re the ones acting based on feelings and with no evidence whatsoever. My decision to trust him is based purely on the facts of our proven history.’”
It didn’t help matters that Violet was constantly getting on my nerves. She is supposed to be so intelligent, but she makes impulsive and incredibly selfish decisions left and right. I watched with dismay as Violet yelled at superior officers, royals, and abandoned her post to do what she thought was best with her minimal years of actual combat or political experience. I was absolutely gobsmacked that she obstinately decides to continue sleeping with Xaden, in spite of his (and their friends’) well founded concerns for her safety. Instead of respecting his wishes or the very valid concern that should something happen to her, it will also happen to Sgyael, Andarna, and Tairn, she refuses to consider other options.
I found her determined denial of the danger Xaden presents and her inability to think with her head and not her heart (or nether regions) frustrating for someone whose intellect is supposed to set them apart from everyone else. She has no problem gaslighting herself and her friends to continue doing what she wants. Regrettably, it reads like she’s the victim of an abusive relationship.
“‘No. He’s not evil.’ I lift my chin.
‘He’s not him, either,’ he counters.
‘That’s why you stepped between us in Hedotis. He’s not fully in control and you know it.’
‘Are any of us ever in full control—” I start.
‘Don’t do that.’”
Plus, much of Iron Flame was dedicated to Xaden and Violet’s arguing over keeping secrets. Though Violet found out Xaden was the leader of a rebellion and needed to keep her in the dark about certain things in case of interrogation, she resented him for it and continued to press him for complete and total disclosure, despite the consequences it could have for his people. In the very beginning of Onyx Storm, she casually tosses out that she has to keep secrets from Xaden (because of plot reasons) and I was astonished by the sheer hypocrisy. Another issue in Iron Flame was that Xaden hadn’t shared that he had been betrothed before. Well, guess who had a whole @ss first love that Xaden didn’t even have a clue about? I also just could not believe how I had to read hundreds of pages of their arguments over secrets for it to be a COMPLETE nonissue in this novel when the decision on what to share is at her discretion. This is just not how a healthy relationship works.
“Holy shit, Violet, do you have any respect for your own life? Or is it just Riorson we’re concerned with now?”
And it’s obviously not even remotely healthy. I feel this is almost always a problem in romance novels to some degree, but Violet has clearly moved past love into obsession and firmly set down roots into martyrdom territory. Gone is the woman who determinedly chanted that she wouldn’t die today, and tellingly, the blurb of the book even crosses out that very motto in favor of, “I will save him.” Since Violet’s self-harm has potential repercussions for not only her dragons, but also the entire world, it makes it really hard to empathize with her. In fact, in Onyx Storm, the dragons and their bond with their riders really take a backseat altogether. Though a rider cannot live without his or her dragon and it’s stated over and over that the bond between rider and dragon is the most important bond anyone could ever experience, it’s clearly not on top in Violet’s priorities, feelings, or hierarchy of needs. With this narrative choice to have Violet see Xaden as more important than anything else, it feels like whatever balance between romance and fantasy that was still clinging into place was lost.
““You are our lightning wielder, and while your life may not matter more than other riders’, your signet does. You are the weapon and will have to learn to accept the sacrifice of others in your name if you want to win this war.”
Thankfully, on the whole, Xaden and Violet didn’t annoy me quite as much in this novel as they did in Iron Flame, but I just wish there wasn’t so much of a focus on their sexual attraction all of the time. Every single time Violet looks at him, she immediately goes into a monologue diatribe on how freaking sexy he is. I know this is a romantasy, but I felt like I was being beaten over the head with her attraction to him. Every time she sees him it is more intense than the last time apparently. Couldn’t Violet comment on his personality for once? Couldn’t the two have something they enjoyed doing together other than having sex or sparring? I just don’t feel an emotional connection or a true partnership between them.
I guess there wasn’t much of an opportunity for this as Onyx Storm decides that suddenly Xaden needs to be a combat professor and the two can no longer have a relationship because the LITERAL general of the army hates Violet on a deep and personal level. So, of course, everyone who isn’t Team Violet has decided to report the two if they so much as stand too close to one another. Yep, you read that right. This is the sort of contrivance that makes the novel feel more like a Young Adult one with spicy scenes than an actual adult romantasy.
I was really hoping that in this novel we would see Andarna find a mate with a rider, who would suddenly be competition for Xaden. Since Xaden is already struggling to control himself, I think it would’ve been far juicier if he were forced to suffer Violet having another bond. Because of the nature of the bond, Xaden would have been forced to allow them to spend time together, and to defend this other man or to face Violet, Adarna, and Tairn dying. This would have allowed for many opportunities for Xaden to show jealousy as well. Instead, readers have to deal with yet another forced separation of Violet and Xaden, plus the introduction of her truly loathsome first love, who offers literally nothing to the story other than irritation and another display of Violet’s never ending hypocrisy.
Relationships aside, I wasn’t thrilled with the plot either. In what feels like the villain-of-the-week introduction, a new Maven Venin appears out of thin air to be the ultimate counterpart to Violet, complete with matching silver hair and lightning powers. Though there are obviously other venin out there, I wondered at the addition of this counterpart who has supposedly lived for hundreds of years, but whom no one has never heard of, unlike other Sages and Mavens. It was a little too convenient and I wished the first two novels in the series had offered even a glimpse or mention of her existence. I also felt that there were already more than enough plot points going on with searching for more of Andarna’s kind, fighting a war, figuring out the secrets of Violet’s parents, making the gods more important to the world, and revealing Violet’s Second Signet, without throwing in a completely new villain. Violet’s second signet, which was revealed, also felt pretty mid to me, but Onyx Storm assures me it is actually far more dangerous than her ability to wield lightning. I guess I will have to wait for the next novel to see how this is true.
Unfortunately, there are other major story developments in Onyx Storm that aren’t given the time or page space or story they deserve. Without time for these developments to soak in, they are undone pretty soon after. In a book this large, it’s hard not to feel the lack of distance between the problems and their inevitable solutions. This means that the emotional payoff in these moments is not nearly as high as they could be if they were dragged out longer, even for multiple novels. This is another narrative choice that makes the novels read more like a member of the young adult genre than an adult epic fantasy series.
Similarly, I was not a fan of the ending. The entire novel is told through Violet’s perspective until the ending of the novel, just like Iron Flame. I really didn’t care for this change. It was jarring and made it very hard for me to tell what was happening. I wish the novel would stick to Violet’s perspective or let us read from other characters’ throughout the entire novel. Switching perspectives during the most climactic part of the novel just feels cheap to me somehow. It also meant I had to reread the ending to figure out what had happened as Onyx Storm shows us in bits and pieces by jumping from character to character during the tumult of battle and character deaths. What’s more, I was unable to feel the tension like I did in Iron Flame, because I remembered how the cliffhanger didn’t really end up going anywhere conclusive for so long in Onyx Storm. That narrative choice gave me the attitude of Violet and Xaden having plot armor and being able to deal with whatever came their way.
I really think the author’s talent shines brightest when she is writing dialogue between characters. The banter between the characters in this novel is really enjoyable, as is the development of the side characters. I definitely gained a new appreciation for the side character, Ridoc, who is usually not taken very seriously by anyone. He is the only one who manages to get through to Violet on any level and I was so thankful for his logic. He showed better judgement and capability than most characters in the novel and I really enjoyed seeing this growth.
“Aaric nods, then looks back at me with eyes that are identical to his brother’s and a gaze that couldn’t be any more different. ‘Are you in over your head, Violet?’ he asks quietly. ‘No.’ I swallow. He narrows his eyes, then nods before following his year-mates up the steps.”
Surprisingly, Dain is one of the characters I enjoyed reading about the most. I was happy to see his redeeming qualities reappear and for him to show up for Violet so much. I also really liked the character of Aaric and his relationship with Violet that is both supportive and rooted in mutual respect. It feels like there is more of an actual emotional connection between them, even without the benefit of telepathy. I was disappointed that he wasn’t more of a focus of the novel and I hope that future entries in the series utilizes him more. I know this is basically sacrilege, but I would love it if he ended up being a romantic interest for Violet, but I have no idea if that’s in the cards.
Though I ultimately didn’t really understand most of the narrative choices in Onyx Storm, I was still very much entertained by them. And with all of that being said, I liked Onyx Storm, even if often in spite of itself. By a day after its release, I had finished the whole novel. I do think the entire series is really fun, even if a lot of the novelty has worn off at this point. Even though I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the direction the novel chose to go in, I am still invested in the characters, their world, and what happens. I know I’ll be reading the next book in the series on day one.
This post may contain affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
I’m just about to start the audio version today. So I only skimmed. I’ll need to come back and read fully later.
Anne – Books of My Heart
Oh, yay! I’ll be excited to hear what you think 😊
You have Bluesky for following you but not for sharing your posts? I do it through Jetpack.
Anne – Books of My Heart
I think I have it set up correctly now 🙂
Fabulous review as always! It’s crazy how addictive these books are.
Thank you, Meghan! It sure is