Review: Onyx Storm

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The long awaited third book of Rebecca Yarros's smash hit Empyrean series may be the very middle point of the planned five book saga, and the point where every bookstore of every size is doing midnight release parties probably for the first time since the original Hunger Games trilogy ended, if not the original Twilight Saga, but it's definitely at a point where Yarros can absolutely afford to throw all the chaotic dragon shit at the wall and see what sticks, and it's never been more clear than now with how much of a magnificent mess we've gotten.

Though it's not unexpected that there isn't going to be a ton of drama and a ton of endless cliffhangers and plot twists, somehow, this book really manages to be messier than its immediate predecessor. And given that Iron Flame was a bloated 600-page monstrosity with poor print quality even in its allegedly special editions, that's saying something. This book is shorter, but with so many previous villains committed to Malek already, Yarros's strategy at this point is to string journeys together for the characters, across the continent to more places than the endpaper maps can name, with a new villain or two lurking around every corner to the point where you have to wonder why Violet and her cohorts so much as accept a cup of tea anywhere new they go.

And to think Violet's supposed to be smart, having wanted to be a scribe instead of a soldier. I think that might be the single driving factor that keeps me reading this series as long as I have - well, that plus my tiny glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, even Yarros (who has previously claimed to be a "Dain apologist") will realize that Dain and Violet wouldn't be a bad match after all. Hell, even some of the fans are starting to come around on him, comparing him more to Chaol than to Tamlin as it's become increasingly clear that he's more than the bad decisions he's made in the past.

But then, this is also the same book that does a deep dive on just how awful Violet's taste in men is, confirming the long-standing theory that her first serious relationship was with Halden Tauri, who feels like a knockoff Maven Calore (I mean, let's be real, everyone and their mother in this series is a knockoff of someone from SJM, Veronica Roth, Victoria Aveyard, or Tahereh Mafi, but that's nothing new anyway). But Halden, he's so arrogant and aggressive (not to mention he and Violet broke up because he cheated on her with a professor) that, not unlike how Yarros leaned into demonizing Dain in the latter half of Fourth Wing, he's clearly designed to make that supreme douchecanoe Xaden look like a gentleman in comparison.

I will say this about Xaden - he's nothing if not devoted to Violet, especially now that he's in actual serious danger of being committed to Malek, more than ever.

But I still will never like him, because no matter how much character development he gets, every line of dialogue from his mouth reminds me that he's still a toxic asshole, and if he were real, I'd probably punch his lights out at the first opportunity (even if he'd kill me upon hitting me back). At this point, though, I'd say he's finally starting to earn other readers' disdain - not exactly a groundswelling, but when at least one fan post likens him to the Darkling as a "villain love interest..." (Granted, they cite Four from Divergent as another example, quite incorrectly, but since Xaden has always been an even worse version of the Training Instructor from Hell...plus, Xaden's inntinsic reveal in the second book should rightly have cemented his villain status when Dain gets demonized for far less, and yet.) But I'll always proudly say that as he morphs more from Angel to Angelus, with more than a touch of Spike in his personality, I was the reader who despised Xaden first.

After the ending of Iron Flame, I was fully prepared to read it and weep on this one, suspecting that Yarros would stop at nothing to chicken out of killing off our venin friend - because if there's any SJM playbook trick that pisses me off more than any other, it's that one.

But instead, I'm reading it and laughing, because no wonder so many fans are melting down the internet at that ending. And also because while Yarros has happily been speed-running the SJM playbook all throughout the first two books - especially with the enemies-to-lovers triangle - on this one, she's taking her sweet time and stringing along fans and haters alike with mad glee.

All I can say, as I did at the end of the previous book, is this:

Dear Ms. Yarros,



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