Onyx Storm

• Author: Rebecca Yarros
• Genre: Romantasy
• Publication Date: January 21, 2025
• Publisher: Recorded Books
• Series: The Empyrean #3

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.

I buddy read this with Julie @ One Book More to finish our binge of the series. And while this read was significantly slower paced, it gave me more time to absorb the story and speculate as to where it was going. Although this was another fun buddy read, unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the 5 star rating that I gave earlier books.

Things started out really well. After almost a year and a half’s rocky road of education at Basgiath War College, our cadets are facing new battles to stay alive, as a battle for the very fate of the kingdom looms in the near future. Violet has to travel and try to amass allies or Navarre is doomed. She sets out with her crew of found family to try to save her world, but they have no idea what they’re in for.

I found myself questioning so much while reading this. First, there are a bunch of unresolved family issues that arise, and I found myself looking at every new twist in a whole new light. Second, I couldn’t help but ask myself ‘who left so-and-so in charge?’ on a pretty regular basis throughout the book. I was enjoying all the different perspectives we got as Violet and the Quest Squad travel throughout their world. It was really interesting to learn more about the dragons, themselves, and how they communicate. 

We get a lot of insight into the dragons themselves. I couldn’t help but have a soft spot for both Tairn and Andarna, both of whom play really big roles in the story. There’s a lot of growth in the characters, Sawyer in particular, but I was so disappointed to see Violet completely lose herself in her relationship. And there was also a villain that was the kind I couldn’t help but hate, although looking back she was written as a fantastic villain.

Yarros writes some of the best spicy scenes that I’ve read lately, and the tension between Violet and Xaden (aka Shadow Daddy) was fantastic, and it kept me constantly waiting for the next scene, since there were several different factors impeding their relationship, one after another. We were both really worried for Shadow Daddy because he is facing an even bigger threat to his life than most of the others in the wing.

The newer side characters started to grow on me more, to the point where I actually wrote ‘Cat is getting less awful,’ although by the end of the book, I viewed her very much differently than when I started this one. Found family is one of my all-time favorite tropes, and it was done damn near perfectly. The wing is made up of various people with vastly different talents, and all they have in common is that they want to get out of this school/battle/anything else alive and together. They’ve already dealt with plenty of loss in the series for the most part, and I was really hoping they wouldn’t face as much loss in this one. My hopes were cruelly dashed.

In this book, all of the plot lines that were threaded through the series are tied up, but the pacing felt a little different in this book, and it didn’t work as well for me. It was relatively slow for the first half, and right around the halfway point things sped up. At the end, things felt both rushed and not fully finished, but that wasn’t my biggest issue with this book. Inconsistent pacing and how the story was told was outshined by a different issue.

This is a spoiler-free review, so I can’t talk about some things in the story. My biggest dislike about this was how Violet has been strong and independent and in control of her own mind for all of the first two books, and she has completely backslid in this book to the point where she isn’t necessarily a fully-realized character at all. I hated seeing Violet be reduced to the kind of new adult who can’t maintain their own identity when in a relationship. Instead, she keeps saying ‘one mistake doesn’t mean that a person is lost,’ yet I got the feeling that she wasn’t keeping tally of the mistakes the person was making—instead, she just focuses on ignoring all the mistakes and trying to reassure herself and everyone around her that all these slips and mistakes aren’t really signs of losing the person when they clearly are. I was so sad to see one of my favorite characters fade to a one-dimensional outline for so much of the story, while my other favorite became overly jealous of everything their partner did that involved people of the opposite sex. 

There’s some awesome representation in the book. Obviously, the disability rep is even better in this book. Violet is still dealing with her EDS, and I loved how her representation just focused more on how she manages it instead of finding a way to magically fix it. There’s another character who lost a leg in a previous book, and watching their rehab process was fantastic, especially since it allowed the character to work through some of the issues associated with their recovery on page. It was a refreshing side note to see that Violet’s father took his wife’s last name! Sexuality isn’t as big of a thing in this world as it is in ours, and there are queer characters in the story who don’t have to hide who they are. 

Overall, this was a good conclusion to the story, although I was disappointed in seeing Violet’s character arc just completely flatten when she was growing so much in the first two books. This is a fantastic example of both blood family and found family, which isn’t a surprise in the dark academia setting of Basgiath War College. Any kind of life-or-death situation has the potential to create deeper relationships between survivors, and we see this throughout the series, as the found family group is forced to adapt to the loss and addition of various members. And while this wasn’t my favorite book in the series, it was still a great read that had me on the edge of my seat and no shortage of plot twists. There was even one that made me gasp so loud my extra-skittish dog actually jumped off the bed in alarm. But it was so worth the ten minutes I had to spend coaxing her back into my room. And I chose to listen to this as an audiobook, narrated by Rebecca Soler, Teddy Hamilton, Justis Bolding, and Jasmine Walker, and they did such a great job. I still feel comfortable recommending this, and honestly? All the hype was well-deserved. Just have something on hand to help with the book hangover.

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