Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros – Review

Published: January 21, 2025

Publisher: Red Tower Books

Series: The Empyrean #3

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Pages: 527 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 4.25 Stars

Synopsis:
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.

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This review contains spoilers for all three books in the Empyrean series. Proceed accordingly.

Aside from Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca Yarros has to be the most popular romantasy author at the moment and Onyx Storm is definitely the most hotly anticipated romantasy of 2025. I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book since Iron Flame’s release in November 2023 because what a cliffhanger it left us readers with! There were so many potential directions the story could have taken, and I’m not mad that it took what I felt to be a safer, more predictable direction.

Violet and Xaden are coming to terms with their new normal since Xaden pulled magic from the earth itself in the final battle of Iron Flame and began turning venin. A select few of their squadmates are aware of this change and so much of the beginning of Onyx Storm focuses on maintaining both this secret and the safety of Violet and the riders and fliers. Violet is determined to find a way to cure Xaden by reading every available piece of literature and tracking down the seventh breed of dragons, known as irid, in the hopes they have some lost knowledge that could help. 

There are many things I enjoyed about the book, the main one being that Violet is less annoying this time around and she and Xaden are somewhat less codependent on one another. That’s not to say they aren’t still entirely obsessed with one another… Xaden is just being distant, but Violet understands why and isn’t pushing it too much. Character maturity! Possibly my biggest annoyance in Iron Flame was that the two seemed to be fighting for at least half the book over him not sharing information for very good reasons. That’s gone in this installment, though I do think that’s largely due to how some of the side characters have changed over the course of the story as well. I also continue to love the dragons, the romantic aspect, and interactions between and/or with the rest of the squad. Some of the secondary characters are really starting to shine!

There were also a few things I didn’t love, like the middle section where Violet and a select force of riders and gryphon fliers go in search of the irids. It was not as exciting as I thought it might be. The world building felt somewhat perfunctory and ultimately quite shallow, which was a little bit disappointing. Each location the group visited was different in such an unsubtle way it was like a caricature of worldbuilding. One prizes wisdom above all else, one welcomes all visitors but you have to play a game that could be deadly, one values only warrior-like traits, etc. While it wouldn’t do to make the search for the irids too easy, this was tedious and didn’t add much value for me as a reader and I don’t think these kingdoms will be that important in later installments.

Overall, I think this book improved on the things I didn’t love in Iron Flame, but had new things for me to be critical of which may slightly outweigh my minor annoyances with Iron Flame, so it’s getting a slightly lower rating. Even though I spent the first several chapters proverbially treading water as I tried to reorient myself to the sheer number of characters, this book was still massively entertaining and I had a ton of fun reading it. There were moments that made me literally gasp aloud, which is rare! Once again, Rebecca Yarros has left her readers with an ending that could lead anywhere in the next installment, though I’m not expecting the fourth book anytime soon as I recently saw an interview excerpt where she stated she hadn’t even begun writing it yet.